Category: Bosses

I Built This Prison: Teaser #5: Life Is a Meat Grinder


“The fact that I took it so personally day in and day out my whole life is a testimony of how severely self-absorbed I was. The prolonged nurturing of the scars caused by casual indignities was a very special pet in my menagerie of craziness. But even I would never claim that the pedestrian oppression of hierarchic systems was my exclusive prerogative.  

To be mistreated by those who outrank you (a boss or a critic) – this is just how life is.  If you try to make something of yourself in this harsh and merciless reality, no matter what it is, you must be ready to endure scores and scores of hardships.  You will have your self-esteem wrung, torn into pieces, thrown on the ground and stamped all over – hundreds of times. There is nothing new, special, or personal about it. You cannot be “out there” without experiencing a continuous inflow of sufferings.  The key is to be able to manage it without being traumatized and damaged. Which is quite a tall order.

  Generally speaking, as a species, we should’ve evolved to deal with all that shit.  How else are we surviving? There are a few rare individuals who, for better or worse, found ways of preserving themselves, of staying away from the garden-variety degradation of the spirit.  The rest of us, however, willingly and even strategically – with precision, rhythm and deliberation – stomp our feet straight into the meatgrinder.  And it fucking hurts.  Being chewed by the metal teeth of the machine (no matter what it may be – business, science, entertainment, arts, anything at all) is painful to everyone – lazy and hardworking, mediocre and geniuses, laid-back and ambitious.     

I’ve observed people and their involuntary reflexes in the workplace for thirty years – listening to their complaints, concerns, and rueful ramblings. It is my firm belief that even those who are pre-conditioned for the delusional complacency – perfectly tenderized and well-shaped for the feeder – are unable to remain indifferent to the hierarchic cruelty.”

“I Built This Prison”, Part I: Etiology of Crime, Chapter 4: Buckets of Tears… and Blood,  p. 51 – 52

I Built This PrisonExcerpt: Ozark‘s Wendy Byrde Negotiates Her Compensation


I Built This Prison,  Part I – Etiology of Crime, Chapter 3 – Delusions of Entitlement and Misconfusion of Rewards:

“In the episode 1.6 of Netflix’s original ‘Ozark’, desperate for money Wendy Byrde charges at her boss with an attempt of hostile earnings renegotiation (she is a pushy bird that Wendy Byrde, so it goes with the character). She notes that the sales are up 43% compare to the same month the previous year, while the only business change that took place was her hiring. Hence, she deserves a bonus that would correlate her compensation with her value(‼). Specifically, 50% of the income increase. They haggle and at the end the boss agrees to the bonus that together with Wendy’s salary amounts to one-third of the additional profits.

Fiction, of course. But, if the employers were actually inclined to evaluate and compensate their employees based on their tangible contribution into their businesses, the negotiations like that would be a common place. And maybe they are… somewhere. But I’ve never really witnessed anything like that. Well, something of the kind – once, fifteen years ago. But that was it.  

Of course, these are not exactly “negotiations” either. Wendy gives her boss an ultimatum because she has an upper hand – there is no comparable supply of labor in that God forsaken bumblefuck locale. There is like literally no one to do the same job – not on a half-ass, or quarter-ass, or even one-hundredth of an ass level. And so, her boss is not rewarding her for her contribution, he yields under the pressure of unfavorable market conditions.

An unimaginable situation for NYC (and I’m sure the same goes for all industrial centers), no matter what your field of expertise is! Here, an employer – even the one that is afraid out of his mind to lose you – deep inside knows that if you walk, he can find at least Somebody to fill the void. You, on the other hand, may drown in the competition searching for another place.”

                                                                                                                          p.40

Off the Cutting Room Floor of I Built This Prison: Clip #2: Why Are You Crying?


 “My, as I call it, ‘crying in awe’ goes a little bit further than the conventional lacrimation with the divinity of the (oh, so appropriately named!) Requiem‘s installment –  Lacrimosa. It’s hard not to cry together with 35-year-old Mozart over the heart-breaking truth of him being within hours from the grave and  all his life’s struggles as well as our own sins and fears of the unknown punishments yet to come. Everyone with a soul, no matter how shrunken, weeps listening to that.

I, on the other hand, is known to commence the waterworks even when watching a ‘comedic’ act – if it’s brilliance manages to impact my aesthetic receptors. Like the first time I watched Bo Burnham’s ‘Make Happy’ on Netflix: twenty minutes in, the tears just started pouring out of my eyes in recognition of the boy’s astonishing talent. Stuff like that – in the movies, at plays, in the museums, over books…

And don’t even get me started on J.Ivy’s poetic contribution into Kanye West’s ‘Never Let Me Down’ – it’s profound beauty invariably triggers my tear ducts, every time I listen to the song… 

Unfortunately, that’s not the bulk of my tears production. Genius is rare, desperation abound…

♦♦♦

…Even though they were the biggest contributors into all that wetness, it wouldn’t be fair to place the entire blame for it on my most prevalent pain bringers – my parents first and my employers later. Even in my personal safe heavens of academic institutions – the places where my abilities and efforts have always been singled out, appreciated, rewarded, and even lauded – once in a while, there would be somebody to trigger the tear ducts. This primarily goes back to my Soviet youth – the time when I was powerless to do anything about, for instance, a Philosophy Department Chair openly expressing his surprise about what he perceived as an incongruity between my wild Jewish hair and my deep knowledge of classical marxism. (Dude! I had straight A’s in everything – that’s just how I was.)  And that’s the truth of it – sometimes random strangers can be as harmful as people who already know your soft spots. It’s funny how this type of small stuff sometimes ends up to be so devastating. It’s so difficult to shake off such pointless rudeness. Its emotional violence feels as if a metal-studded cat-o’-nine-tails landed between your shoulder blades. And then, your breath catches, and you lose control of your ducts…

And what else can you possibly do but go and let it all pour out? In secret, of course… What other quick and ready means you have for mitigating the impulses to throw punches and yell, for disarming the triggers that have a potential of sending you into scandalous fits. Effectively, it helps you to dissociate: Regardless of what was happening inside my mind and at the center of my soul, I still went to work every day and performed all my duties, attended meetings and functions; kept the bosses’ businesses and my own household running smoothly, without a single visible glitch. Never a fucking mess in public. With all the pain hidden so deeply that other people, affected by the same terribly hostile environments, would frequently marvel, “How the hell do you manage to stay so composed? How do you bear this? How do you keep yourself so calm?” And I would just smile in response, while letting the nuclear devastation scorching away my sanity… Years of control-building and the aforementioned secret crying – that’s how…

Yet, the bile’s buildup had to manifest itself on the surface in some ways…”

                                               Deleted from I Built This Prison, Chapter 4 – Bucket of Tears… and Blood  

 

  

 

Quote of the Week: At the Core of My Memoir I Built This Prison


Preface:

It must be disclosed that I don’t really find G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Stories all that great. (Why is it that I so frequently write about things, people, and situations I truly dislike? I wonder what a trained psychiatrist would say about it?) As far as the mystery writing goes, I find them… unnatural, too artificially constructed, almost illogical… For everyone, of course, but the author and his deducing reverend. But naturally, they don’t count, because they are cheats, holding all the cards and the red herrings up their sleeves.

Moreover, I consider G.K. Chesterton a racist, which makes him absolutely unacceptable to me as an individual. Some of his descriptions and the choices of words simply appalled me back when I read him.

(If you feel tempted to verify yourselves that my accusations can actually be substantiated, read God of Gongs. That’s why I’m sharing the link to The Complete Father Brown Stories below. [And no, I’m not an Amazon Associate – it’s purely for your convenience.])

It is hard for me to imagine that any truly unprejudiced and open-minded thinker would be using such language, regardless of his/her native historical period and commonly accepted jargon of the correspondent time. And no, he is not just putting those offensive words into his characters’ mouths for the sake of the conversational authenticity. He uses them as his own narrative descriptives. It’s despicable and utterly inexcusable as far as I’m concerned.

But! One can find a grain of wisdom even in a truckload of manure. And this one goes straight to the heart of the main conflict suffered daily specifically by the American workers in employment of the entrepreneurial business owners – the same antagonism that cemented the foundation of my own madness (“I Built This Prison”):

“[He] made himself big by his own considerable abilities: and there’s no doubt that many of those on whom he has shown his abilities would like to show theirs on him with a shotgun. [He] might easily get dropped by some man he’d never even heard of; some labourer he’d locked out, or the clerk in a business he’d busted… In this country the relations of employers and employed are considerably strained.” 

G.K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown, The Mistake of the Machine 

Three Business Owners and Five Sales Directors Walk into a Bar…


We used to complain about our country being divided into two colors, red and blue.  Boy, I miss those clear-cut times when we had a few personal liberties to fight about!  Now we are a fucking Pollock's painting!  Social, monetary, ideological, intellectual, and cultural (some even say micro-cultural) differences create a broad variety of political blends and affiliations.  At this point, we have pretty much slid off the two-party platform; we are now swimming (or drowning) in a multi-faction cesspool.  

It definitely looks to me like the 2016 primaries are far more divisive and tumultuous than the presidential election will be in November.  Each candidate, on both sides of the partisan divide, represents a very distinct combination of views and positions that categorically separate him/her from others.  Accordingly, the supporters are broken up into a multitude of tiny puddles, not two oceans.    

Pollock's ConvergenceThis made Politics into a more dangerous and touchy subject than it has ever been. I always tried to uphold the propriety rules and stay clear of the political discussions in public, particularly with co-workers, business relations, perfunctory acquaintances, etc.  But nowadays, I am literally left with only one place where I can express my opinions openly – my own home.  Even in this blog I keep myself in check.  

But there are people who will talk politics anywhere.  They are usually either (i) very brave and willing to take a stand; (ii) too powerful or confident to care; or (iii) absolutely tactless and have no idea that they make others uncomfortable.  The combination of (ii) and (iii) is also very typical.  And, of course, I happened to work with one of those.  It seems that this business owner believes the impossible – that everyone in the room shares his opinions on… everything.

When I end up in one of the awkward situations he creates (usually during business dinners), my choice of actions is simple: ignore (just get myself busy with food or something) or deflect (hopefully there are people with little kids at the table - trumps all other topics).  Sometimes I find a reason to avoid going to an event with this dude altogether; which is what I did the other week during the company's Annual Sales Summit.  

And dammit!  He actually managed to instigate a rare political exposé: he asked everyone around the table (two other business owners and five sales directors) to declare their choices of Presidential Candidates!  I cannot tell you at what level of intoxication these people agreed to basically reveal their political stands  ("No judgement!" was guaranteed, by the way); nor can I warranty the truthfulness of the disclosures.  However, I can testify to the fact that everyone was surprised and/or traumatized by their own unusual candor: one by one, all eight participants came to my office the next day to confide their bewilderment and share the results of this bizarre poll.  And now I am sharing them with you, my readers (in the order they came through my door):

  1. Business Owner (the instigator himself), 60:  A liberal Upper West Side exterior, rotten chauvinist interior (just imagine late Nora Ephron writing a really obnoxious character); born and raised in Westchester County, he'd spent 30 years of his life running his own business in Pacific Asia before returning to Central Park West –  Hillary Clinton;
  2. Business Owner, 46:  The company's founder and CEO; a remarkable woman who remade herself from a basic Chinese wife into an extremely independent and self-reliant woman – Michael Bloomberg;
  3. Sales Director, 48 : A Midwestern gentlemen with deep roots in 250 years of family traditions; a trained chemical engineer, he spent most of his life in business development and sales; an avid hunter and a boater – Jeb Bush;
  4. Sales Director, 41: A Texan of Korean descent; another engineer who actually has spent most of his career in chemical manufacturing; someone capable of setting up a production line from A to Z; a tech savvy guy with unbearably weak handshake and darting eyes - Jeb Bush;
  5. Sales Director, 45: A third-generation raw-materials distribution professional; born, raised, and still residing near the New Jersey Shore; recently divorced with one daughter whom he loves more than anything; after three beers will bust out pretty credible vocal quotes from Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac (beats 'n all), if you ask nicely – Donald Trump;
  6. Sales Director, 33: An ambitious Korean boy born in Southern California; trained within LG system for the Latin American markets, he possesses the valuable assets of fluent Korean and Spanish; while making a low 6-figure annual income, he still lives with his mom so that he can support her – No one; he stated that no candidate represents his political, economic, or life concerns;
  7. Business Owner, 49: A descendant of an old aristocratic Shanghainese family persecuted by the Mao regime, whose parents forced him into piano playing and lounge singing as possible means of self-support; yet, after coming to America at age 16, he chose engineering and business as his areas of interest; he was making a remarkable progress climbing a career ladder of one of the largest plastics producers in the US, when the company's founder (see above) offered him the partnership – Ted Cruz;
  8. Sales Director, 65: An old-school career salesman, he was originally responsible for building the core of the company's distribution structure, bringing with him dozens of his customers; a Vietnam War veteran with the combat experience and hot-blooded Italian ancestry, he is known for smashing desk phones against the walls; yet his wife, with whom he lives in Upstate New York, has been able to calm him down for nearly 40 years - Bernie Sanders.

So, here you go, ladies and gentlemen!  By most statistical parameters this group is not even all that diverse!  Yet, the results are all over the place; with some totally surprising picks (Ted Cruz? Really?!).  I mean, some respondents have named people who are not running at all or are out of the running already.  Moreover, the leading Republic and Democratic candidates only got one vote each.  It's remarkable how uncertain and confused our political landscape is!

But I have to say: that last one actually broke my heart a little.  It is unfathomable to me that someone who fought North Vietnamese commies in hand-to-hand combat; who saw with his own eyes the devastation and poverty of the people under socialist regime; who enjoyed the benefits of booming American capitalism during some of our country's most prosperous periods would vote for a socialist.  What veteran would support a senatorial failure that is Bernie Sanders?  And why?  If I had to guess, it's because his daughter and son-in-law are not doing all that great financially up there in Vermont, but they had two kids nevertheless.  The man is afraid that he will be the one paying for his granddaughters' college tuition.

And isn't this typical?  A demagogue promises people something free (without even laying down the actual plan of actions) and everyone's principles go out of the window.  History repeats itself.