I'm Just Here for the Check

I can only describe my current career related mental state as being the final stage of professional grief: acceptance.

Things at Corporate Happy Fun Job are fun indeed. At present, I can best compare our management to my dating and mating habits prior to the boy:
1. Inability to learn from past mistakes
2. Noteworthy powers of denial
3. Insistence that a difference in appearance must indicate a difference in substance

Also similar? If I could go back in time, I would kick my own ass. And if I were the evil overlord, I would most assuredly be dispensing some ass kickings to the people captaining this particular ship of fools.

I have accepted that for the time being I should at least maintain at least a small amount of humility because I do have a relatively secure job, even if at times said job can best be likened to inserting pine cones into my butt. It is what it is. If I could travel back in time, shortly after I got done kicking my younger self in the head for her dating habits, I'd send her off to learn how to do something fucking useful. Alas, non. C'est la vie.

That being said, I am NOT A FUCKING IDIOT. So when I realized today that various co-workers and I were all more or less working for free in an increasingly vain effort to meet the whimsical flights of fancy--also known as goals--laid out by management, it took me approximately 30 seconds to decide that this shit was going to stop. I do, and will continue to, work my ass off. I do a difficult job and I do it well. However, it is a job. My family, my friends, my knitting, my booze, my books . . . these things are my life. My job is a Life Subsidizing Device.

What really blows me away about this entire thing is that so few of my co-workers were even really that pissed off about it. What the fuck, over? I get being afraid for one's job, but really? There is always a bum outside the blood bank looking for a handjob.

Whatever, I went and had a chat with the HR person that basically said we were being indirectly pressured to work for free. I believe she broke into a mild sweat and her butt cheeks took a bite out of her ergonomically correct office chair. That in itself was pretty much worth the conversation.

Seriously, fellow Pink Collar Wage Slaves. Repeat after me. "I am not your bitch."