Quote:
Originally Posted by Gamblinsasin
I read this thread today whilst sitting in my uniform, looking at the clock and thinking "Ah, nearly time to go to work. Oh **** hang I've got to leave early because I want to grab some lunch."
On the way to work I got stuck behind some lorry which had backed a queue of cars up and no way past. Eventually via the supermarket, I made it work with like five minutes to spare, walked into the canteen only to see the usual people on lunch, one playing a game on their phone, the other staring out the window at nothing in particular, except maybe of a life leaking away.
I knocked back a drink declared as coffee on the machine, but actually it's closer to something that leaks from a drain and made my way to the anti happiness chamber (office).
The phones don't stop ringing, and no one wants to really answer them because it's never a nice or easy call to deal with. At which point the Manager walks in and proceeds to moan at the Supervisor, in front of everyone else because someone has been in his office, and they shouldn't have been. How could this happen (maybe locking the door would be some sort of deterant - not that you could ever suggest any negligence on his part for not turning the key, surely not?).
A **** afternoon blurs into a ****tier night. Lunch break is missed as you have to cover your work and the guy who's gone sick today. And before you know it your driving home, thinking about the beer you're going to drink. Not as a reward no, nor a simple luxury, but more as a necessity, to help you unwind, and to dream of the day in 8 days time when you're off for one of your 'authorised' weeks. Five in total out of 52 is your gift. These can be taken when you like, unless it conflicts with their plans, then they will decide when you can take one. Into bed, and off to sleep. Only 2 more days and you can have two days off.
*This is why I would chose to play Poker for a living*
This is the reality of work right here, especially in call centres and admin roles. I found myself laughing my ass off at this post, not because i enjoy the suffering of others but because i have in the past found myself in these exact conditions.
To Gamblinsasin, why don't you chose to play poker for a living or head down a different path professionally? Life leaking away, spot on.
Bukowski wrote this, i think it ties in pretty well with the theme of this thread.
Hello John:
Thanks for the good letter. I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don't take lunch. Then there's OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there's another sucker to take your place.
You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: "Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?"
They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:
"I put in 35 years..."
"It ain't right..."
"I don't know what to do..."
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the **** out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I've found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.
I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: "I'll never be free!"
One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
yr boy,
Hank