The other day, I was writing this entry about work.

Then, I hit the miraculous series of keys that managed to send all my hard work into the computer equivalent of smoke. Anyway, back to work.

So, I’ve been working the last week, week and a half and truth be told - I’ve enjoyed it. I view work as a necessary evil. It’s surprising but the other day it had gotten me to thinking about people in our society today.

I had been talking to someone and I don’t know but it just occurred to me that their entire life was focused around their job. They worked long hours, all their friends were centered around the job - you know the type.

I’m not like that.

Maybe it‘s that inherit Julius (Groucho) Marx trait I’ve had all my life - I’d never belong to a club that would have me as a member. I just don’t find work the be all and end all of my existence.

Work is a means to an end for me. I work to live not live to work but I think in many ways I am the exception in today’s society. It’s just that it seems every job I‘ve had had has all this stupid intrigue as part of the package. There are power struggles, people jockeying for position and of course the emergency du-jour.

The emergency du-jour is the thing that rankles me the most probably.

It‘s usually happens late in the day when someone who has spent the better part of their day gabbing on the phone or socializing with their co-workers suddenly realizes there is a project that needs to be somewhere by tomorrow.

Like a vortex from hell, they try sucking everything and everyone around them into the whirlpool of ineptitude. I’m not a doctor and what I do doesn’t affect whether someone lives or dies but, you would never know that by the melodramatic tendencies of some people I’ve worked with in the past.

Simply amazing.

Also, I don’t buy into the platitudes which are so prevalent in the workplace today. Whenever I hear the phrase “team player” I wince. I hear that a lot at work the last few years, talk about “team players.” It‘s like working has become some kind of stupid sport.

Also, the person who is usually emphasizing “team play” wants me to carry the ball - hey, you want to be a “team player,” you carry the gd ball buddy.

Reminds me of a story: Years back I was freelancing at a place. We were doing these catalogs and it was a decent, steady freelance gig. Not bad as these things go. I was working as part of a group, there was a production person (peer) who was the lead and I just pretty much did whatever I was asked to do.

So, we did a couple of these catalogs and after three or so months the other production person thought she should be getting more money and threatened the client with leaving if she didn’t. So, of course what happened was that the “manager” in charge thought it was the perfect time to part company and that was pretty much that.

Or so I thought. Round about the time this manager decided he wasn’t going to bring my co-worker back, he started to infer to me that I would be moving up the food chain. I didn’t have a problem with that - it wasn’t as if there was an ethical conflict, I hadn’t gotten involved in the dispute between my peer and the manager and my peer had also been making a much more sizable hourly rate than mine. It seemed she had been a little greedy about the whole thing but, I hadn’t felt compelled to tell the “manager” my views that was their (the manager‘s) decision.

So, when the manager approached me, I commented on the fact that I thought there were a few ways we could streamline the whole process and save some money and make the project much more profitable overall.

The manager just looked at me and replied how the company had been making oodles of money off this particular project and he wasn’t altogether concerned about savings since the project was such a cash cow. A few days later, I figured it wouldn’t be unthinkable to get my hourly rate pushed up to what my peer had been making, especially since I would be performing much the same responsibilities she had over the past few months.

Imagine my surprise when the very same manager turned to me and screamed like a stuck pig, “WE DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO AFFORD GIVING YOU AN INCREASE!” He had obviously forgotten the conversation of a few days before. So, now I was in a quandary. I wanted to keep the gig but, how could I refuse the additional work without alienating the manager who controlled my fate.

—7.12.04

Suffice to say that was not my last experience with the (how shall we put this nicely?) oddities of the workaday world. I was able to find a way to avoid the increased responsibilites without the corresponding bump in pay and the end result was I also managed to snag a person for the ‘team’ who I respected and really enjoyed working with in the process. I’m working again and I have to say sometimes I am amazed at how much work can remind me of elementary school at times. Maybe that’s just me, but somehow, I doubt it...

The part of that story I didn’t write about in this unfinished draft was how I finagled my way out of being the point person, the bearer of responsibility without any increase in salary. I think we’d call that the ‘shaftee’ because there’s no question getting more dumped on you without a corresponding raise is called getting the shaft.

What happened was that these jobs all had very clear schedules for when they would ship and go to the printer. So, I just planned a couple of personal trips around key dates. I was freelance anyway, it wasn’t as if I was on their calendar really and the truth of it was I was (and still am) good at my job. So, with hat in hand I went to the same manager who cried poverty to me when it came to giving me a rate increase but boasted what a killing in profit they were making on these projects.

I simply explained as things had turned out I had scheduled travel during this period and would need to have another person working on these projects because I simply couldn’t be the only person on them. At the end of the discussion and to emphasize my point I simply said, “Besides, (raising my hand above my head and holding it there) I want MORE money, (then dropping my hand to a point at mid thigh) LESS responsibility. And with that, I walked away.

I did get the person I wanted to work on the project with me and I was glad for it. I never liked that manager all too much, he was a game player. I’ve run across those kind of people several times over the course of my career and I can’t say I’ve ever liked them much.