It is not as easy as one would assume…
----By Kelly N. Patterson
First a little background music…
As you may or may not know, I work exclusively with non-profit organizations, development agencies, academic institutions, and the arts. Call me what you will, but I have yet to find a political/economical ideological system that works completely for me and thoroughly empowers the disenfranchised, and no, I am not some crunchy-granola, tree-bark bathing, do-gooder—I have never owned Birkenstocks (aka, “Jesus Shoes”), I shave and I am a chain-smoking pescotarian.
Well, one happy hour, directly following a (slightly alcohol-inspired) Pulitzer-prize winning anti-Corporate America monologue to a bunch of “suited” friends, a good friend of mine, a corporate capitalist, challenged me:
“Kelly, how can you make such harsh judgments without actually having worked for an American Corporation?”
“Touché, pussy cat.”
Acknowledging the uncomfortable truth in her query, I sought out a job in Corporate USA. Conveniently located in “www.SanFrancsico.com” just following the legendary Silicon Valley boom of the mid-90’s—where people spoke fluent Stock Options-- ridiculously enough, I was hired by, um…let’s call them “Perfidious Financial” (hint: they have a tall building on Market Street) as one of four corporate communications writers.
And yes, we, “the writers”, were the “freaks” aboard a financial battleship, easily identified (and whispered about on the elevators) due to our lack of corporate uniform (aka, “the suit and briefcase.”) I carried a day-glow, flowered 70’s suitcase, cleverly disguised as a briefcase, but I suspect I was not fooling anyone. I did not fit into the corporate environment from Day One, much less the veal-fattening pen they assigned me.
But hell, I was still going to take their $5,000 sign-on bonus and spend it as quickly as I cashed it. (I flew my whole clan from DC to San Francisco to see the opening of my first play, “Story Time with the Dead Mrs. Treat” and I treated several friends to a trip to the nonprofit Zen retreat center, Harbin Hot Springs, just outside of Napa Valley.) The Deal with the Devil (no, not a new story but how I got out of it—yes!) I would retain my $5,000 sign-on bonus on one condition: I must “loan” my soul, excuse me, services to Perfidious Financial for one year. I thought: How difficult could this be? I survived bloody Rwanda!
Much to my frustration, it became immediately apparent that my “Editor” was not actually an editor at all, but an ass-kissing wanna-be-banker with no editorial credentials whatsoever. When I referred to the Chicago Manual of Style, he looked at me as if I had an armadillo playing a banjo on my head. And when I proved repeatedly correct in the grammatical defense of my work, he was quick to blame “the lawyers”, who so carefully monitored all of our communications. However, working under a certifiable dildo is not unique in Corporate America—my friends have led me to believe this is actually the norm.
Very early into my new career as a corporate communications writer, I became skeptical of my company’s activities, and I am by no means a financial specialist. Therefore, if I sensed that my work was shady, it should have been obvious to the general public, especially the bank customers…alas, it was not until the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the OCC—basically, the watchdog of the banks) showed up (and conveniently located on MY floor) that my suspicions were confirmed.
I had a dilemma: If I were to quit (which I felt I could not in good conscience continue this deceitful work), I would have to pay back my $5,000 sign-on bonus, and between us, it was GONE. I carefully perused my contract. I handed it over to a lawyer friend (though she does not specialize in labor law) and asked, “So, if I get fired, I don’t have to pay back the sign-on bonus?”
“Kelly, you should have been a lawyer.”
The trick, however, was to get fired without committing a crime (for further reference read anything about Enron.) My original plan was to do my work (on time) but make it as difficult as humanly possible for my “Editor”—in other words, I sought to drive my editor insane. This proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought. Following are a few things I did in attempt to get fired:
Come in obscenely late EVERY day—without apologies
Invite colleagues to see foreign film matinees during “lunch break”, and then narrate entire film upon return
Bring Kimchi or Lahori Charga Curry in for my desk-side lunch (which would make the entire floor smell for days)
Do yoga in the empty cubicle next to my desk—especially the “Lion Pose”, a crowd pleaser!
When office equipment failed to operate, I put signs on the copier/fax/etc. reading: “I am Impotent!” “No me moleste!” “Gone Fishing!”
Whenever, I walked past the OCC “sanctuary” on my floor, I would rap:
“You down with OCC?
Yeah, you know me…
You down with OCC?
Every last homey!”
(The OCC, for the record, was NOT amused.)
7. Convinced my colleagues to play Bingo during our sanctioned Monday meetings, using corporate-speak terms such as “out of the box” and “the bottom line”—the weekly winner got a free lunch, a chip-in effort of the remaining three writers. Whenever someone else yelped “Bingo!” (and the editor looked up from his Boring Office Meeting Cliff Notes) everyone would yell, “Bless you!” Clueless.
8. Left several unprofessional voice-mail messages on my in-house only phone. Only the editor, the other writers, the CEO, and the lawyers had my phone number: “Kelly is on the astral plane and will be back once she reaches enlightenment.”
“Kelly is not in, but no need to panic, here is the number of a good therapist….”
Painted my nails at my desk
Walked around the floor barefoot
Chewed gum loudly, all the time
Took a cigarette break every hour (at least)
With speaker phone on: “You have a special delivery from…um, a Good Vibrations?” “Thank you, I have been expecting that forever, I will be right down—no pun intended.”
I thought my plan was fail-proof. My editor called me in one afternoon, following my viewing of “Run Lola Run!”, and instead of firing me, he said he thought I needed to be challenged…I suggested Scrabble or arm-wrestling, but he offered to double my workload and tweak my salary. Shit!
Now I began to panic. I was running out of non-criminal annoyance tactics—and I was being bloody promoted. Therefore (and I know I am terrible), I decided to give up on perturbing my imbecilic editor and distract my literary colleagues by constantly interrupting them during their work by listening to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 (aloud) at my desk or throwing small and large office supplies into their office nests. Not only did I fail to distract my crew from their diligent work, they would fiercely return my office missiles or yell, “You sank my battleship!”
I was about to give up when, serendipitously, without even trying, I pissed off the lawyers. And it all started with a preposition. Historically, the lawyers “edited” one of my letters on behalf of the CEO, and ended a sentence with a prepositional phrase. Addressing the other editorial notes, I sent the document back to the lawyers, but I changed their edits. They sent it back to me again, with a hand-written note to change the sentence back to a prepositional phrase-ending. I refused, and wrote in red ink: “This is English Grammar 101; please refer to Grade 3 English text.” Well, that just about did it.
When they phoned me, they got a voice mail message that said something to the effect of “I see dead people and I am having lunch with one right now.” In return, the lawyers left me a nasty voice mail message expressing their “disappointment” with my “unprofessional” voice mail message. I phoned them back and reminded them that I had a private line, in-house phone only. They were still not pleased, so I faxed them an apology: “I am sorry I did not realize that lawyers have no sense of humor. My humblest apologies.”
Within 24 hours, I found myself in the Human Resources “Mediation” room. And yes, “Human Resources” is the most well-known misnomer, as they are not human nor are they resourceful. The assigned HR representative was cross-eyed, which thoroughly distracted me because I could not decide in which eye to look. All I recall is something about “personality conflict.” Two days later, I was fired. You can imagine the look of surprise when my editor skulked to my desk and handed me my “pink slip”—I do believe I did a Walt Whitman-esque yawp: “My god, FINALLY!”
Yes, I did get to keep my sign-on bonus and yes, the OCC fined Perfidious Financial several millions of dollars for fraud. I consider this a Happy Ending.--By Kelly N. Patterson
Originally from Washington, DC, Kelly has worked as an international development and communications specialist on four continents. When she is not "saving the world", she is writing hate mail to the London Public Transport Authority (even though she left London a week ago!)