For Ian

[digitaldiscipline]

Date: Tue Oct 3, 2000 3:51 pm
Subject: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

October 25th, 1997.

I should have shot myself then. Instead, in search of "valuable work
experience," I accepted a position in a town I'd never heard of in an
office of fifteen people trying to support five thousand
frequently-fucked customers.

The trepidation and indecision I felt leading up to that phone call
should have warned me. The fact that the woman conducting my interview
couldn't give me directions from the nearest major airport and used the
phrase, "It's a really big brick building - you can't miss it" to get me
to the office and interview site should have clued me in.

The fact that the best apartment I found was at the end of a mile of
dirt road on top of a fucking mountain should have driven the point
home.

I said "Yes" anyways.

And I have regretted doing so almost continuously ever since.

I said yes to forty hours a week of being berated by customers
infuriated by the incompetence of my company's planning and execution.
Forty hours a week of coping with people who might have had more sense
than fingers, but only just barely. Forty hours a week existing as an
ear, a mouth, and a pair of hands controlled by a brain that wanted
nothing better, ninety-seven percent of the time, than to turn that ear
deaf, give voice to a true word, and strangle the stupid fuck at the
other end of the line, and not being able to do any of those things.

Forty hours a week of having to take it. And one hundred sixty four
hours a week of being in God's own backwash of a town. Roll up the
sidewalks at sunset. No booze for sale on Sunday (how the fuck are you
supposed to watch football?). Inbred redneck assholes as far as the eye
can see, and probably farther.

Until coming here, I'd never been threatened, asked to leave a
restaurant, or felt any kind of despise towards those around me spread
with broad strokes. I've been suspected of being a member of the group
thought to be behind the massacre at Columbine High. I've had my tires
cut. I've felt the drooling hostility from people I was supervising,
the inept contempt of the local authorities, and the bland indifference
of people who I thought were there to help.

I will be the first person to admit I am a bastard to work with on a
personal level - I expect competence from others and expect respect for
my own. But I don't play politics well, so there has never been an
avenue out of the lower legions, regardless of what the company's
promotional policies state. I made my boss's boss uncomfortable because
I never lost my rough edges. If anything, the longer I chafed in a
useless role, the rougher those edges have become. I make no apologies
for who and how I am - I kick ass at my job despite the fact that I
loathe even coming in each morning.

But for three years I have been here - moving from the lowest, most
thankless tier of technical support masochism to something less hateful
but no more fulfilling. I have sacrificed portions of my health (to
allergies), my car (winter + dirt hill = inadequate traction), my
socialization (internet and phone only five days a week, 120 miles to
friends, family, and social events). For what?

A job I detest.

Will I miss it? I think that's abundantly clear. Will I miss the
people? A few, but most of them I feel no obligation to. Hell, I
barely recognize one person in three in this cubicle farm.

For three years. But no longer.

I still don't have "valuable work experience," at least in the sense
that I can go get a job that I'd enjoy without having to prostrate
myself for headhunters or employers. I have career time in jobs I never
want to do again. I have a large cachet of bitterness towards the
nameless, insipid hordes of the online world, the slavering
mouthbreathers that pass for entry-level support personnel once the
barrel has been scraped clean, and product and personnel management
that, when it's not being inertially clueless is actively hostile.

But I have a silver bullet for the abomination. It's just a square of
paper on my cubicle wall, but it says everything I need it to.

October 26, 2000.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Comments

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

I still maintain that yours was the best letter of resignation of all time.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Looking back on this with 30 months' perspective, I guess I can see why HR thought it might have been possible for me to walk in and start shooting.

Which is funny, since I was about the only person in the county without a gun.

[dcfeline.livejournal.com]

That is fucking beautiful. Was this an actual letter of resignation???

[etcet.livejournal.com]

that was the informal one. the formal one was a memo i slipped in with that week's normal skein of bullshit:

"Customer Care Center to Become More Normal"
[date]
On October 26, I will be leaving the Adelphia TAC. I have learned a great deal during my tenure, and value that and the friendships I have made with many of you. I wish you all the best of luck, yadda, yadda, yadda. . . "

[well, it was along those lines, but that subject is verbatim - i kept that memo as a template in case i need to resign again. heh]

[etcet.livejournal.com]

pee on something they can't get rid of and that will hold the stink well - their drawer full of files, or chair, or cubicle wall.

muahahaha.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

after wiping with it?

"gee, honey, your asshole is springtime fresh!"

[liquidmyst.livejournal.com]

It truly loved this resignation letter. :-)

[etcet.livejournal.com]

thanks!