Moose Turd Pie

I've heard from a couple of my former coworkers about how the cubicle farm I used to inhabit is going.

Straight to hell, according to one source. Some of it sounds like the annual bullshit. The annual thesis, regurgitated most in January and February, is You're Not Being Productive. Charts and graphs would be produced, showing that in October, we were X and in January we were Y.

Of course, in October, when the company is in feverish business and semi-mandatory overtime, nobody is on vacation. In January, when the job bucket tends to run on empty, everyone takes the vacation they've accumulated. They have to, due to a use-it-or-lose-it policy on paid time off earned.

Thing is, the numbers used to illustrate our precipitous fall into sloth were always based on the hours paid, not the hours worked. Even when I was in management, I never once saw anything to indicate that the variation was anything but a failure to account for whether the people being paid are in the same zip code as their workstation.

It makes it hard to miss a place, remembering this sorry script. A script which starts from the very top. The owner of the company is a decent enough fellow if you bother to find out, but a lot of people never would: I've seen the guy going through Worlds of Fun with the same grim determination and curt nod of greeting he uses when passing someone in the office.

The problem comes from his knowing that fear motivates people, and believing this makes fear a legitimate business tool. When someone gets fired, everyone else steps it up, not wanting to be next. But his maxim that 'terminations are good motivators,' misses the limited value of that fear. Nobody can run scared indefinitely.

Parents in Sarajevo let their kids play in the street during a civil war. What was their choice? This was where they were, their kids were kids. They couldn't keep them locked up in the (not much safer) house for years on end. Same way a guy can work for over a decade at a company he knows shit-cans people to rally the troops, and think it's not going to happen to him.

One person did mention that they're on relatively mandatory overtime again. Which made me nostalgic for the place all over again. I ate a lot of moose turd pie for a lot of years and swore 'it was good, though,' in large part because I could boost my base pay to the tune of 35% with OT.

Still, I hope the place isn't going as badly wrong as it sounds like. I still love a lot of the people I worked with, and I hope things go well for them.