The More The Pay, The More You Suck

In my travels throughout the maze of the corporate world I have learned many things, most of them useless. However, a few observations have stood out, and they are as follows:

- If your job has the title "Analyst" in it, be advised that "Analyst" is actually Greek for "Departmental Bitch." Your education, skill, maturity, communication acumen, and all the other tools that your professors in business school drove through your skull as important to your success do not mean a fucking thing until you have shed that unenviable title. Get promoted as fast as you can, because while you are an Analyst, everyone is trying to kill you. Seriously. They have meetings in their glass covered conference rooms plotting out ways to poison your Dr. Pepper or shove you into the street when you're walking to lunch. It's like playing that game "Lemmings," remember that one? Except in this game, the object is to actually watch you die and laugh their asses off.

- Which leads me to my second point: Pay grade is not indicative of actual ability. You'd think that they would be related, and I would completely understand why you would believe this, but sorry my friends, they have absolutely not a goddamn thing to do with each other. In fact, it can be argued that as one climbs further and further up the corporate ladder, they actually lose a portion of their common sense with each conquered rung. It's like watching someone age and mature in reverse. While they can handle complicated tasks and piles and piles of reports, they lose the ability to make copies of these reports or check their own work for errors. Whose job is that now? If you guess the Analyst, then you are smarter than your boss.

It is a common observation amongst artists and artist wannabees that the key to any success artistic creation is to experience the pain, misery, angst, and poverty that the life of a starving artist can invoke. While I agree with that sentiment, I disagree that this is the sole way of experiencing the necessary trauma to bring forth the muse. Instead, I pose an alternative means to the creative end. It's a fate as soul-sucking and depressing and confidence-draining as any unemployment check or fourth night of Ramen noodles.

It is the life that millions of Americans lead every day. The life of Corporate Finance.

From this pain and suffering I have experienced over the last 7 years, I propose that I am the most angst-ridden, pain-filled, loathing-encrusted son of a bitch in America. I am the voice of the Corporate lackey. I am Bob Simpson, the Cubicular Redeemer.

Do I sit in a cubicle, or does my cubicle sit around me? These are the questions I ponder as I sit at my computer typing whatever may have just come across my desk or through my e-mail. I guess I probably should be working, but I find it so much more self-gratifying to ruminate over the metaphysical aspect of the office I visit five days out of the week. For example, I think it would be really cool if my cubicle was retractable. That way, I would know that it was there when I was gone, beckoning me to return. I would just push a big red button, like the ones in the Staples commercials, and my cubicle would sink into the ground, lying dormant until I return and actively commit to do work in the next week. That would probably just initiate another period of needless determination, though, cause I would probably just stand at the cusp of my retracted cubicle with my fingers lightly touching the button, willing myself to extract it from the depths.I think if there was an earthquake, like a really monstrous earthquake, and I tried to hide underneath the desk lining my cubicle, it would buckle and crush me to death. I think it's been planning this for a long time, planning new and creative ways to bump me off. That's another reason to not have a retractable cubicle, cause as soon as the earthquake hit I know the damn cubicle would sink underground and I'd be left unprotected. I can hear my cubicle cackling as it sinks into its safe haven while giant beams and foil-colored lights collapse on me, just before I'm impaled by one of the fire sprinkler system pipes. Then, just as I'm about to breathe my last and give my soul over to the great beyond, my cubicle would rise back up from the ground, and pee on my face. I don't know how it would do that being a neuter object, but I'm sure it would find a way.