800 Employees
May 10, 2007
Finally, a day off after what feels like a thousand years. It was only a week and a half, and I should probably be disappointed that I didn't finish out the week for a full week's pay. But the stale air and dim fluorescent light made me want to jump out the window, so I was happy to be allowed to take the elevator and walk out the front door, instead. My eyes are still dry, cramped, and blurry from staring at a computer monitor for so long. My wrist is weak and my fingers numb.
"We need to get you in here full-time," the woman I was working with said.
I laughed uncomfortably.
She worked there as a freelance producer for almost a year before they hired her full-time. She was excited about the steady paycheck, the health insurance, and the paid vacations. I guess she thought I might be too. I have to admit, the idea crossed my mind once. But it got steamrolled at the crossing by the What-the-Hell-Are-You-Thinking Express.
I've only had two full-time jobs in my life. Neither one of them lasted more than two years, and there were about ten years in between. I know millions of people work 9 to 5 and do it for a lifetime, and I can certainly understand why they do it; I just can't understand how.
The company I've been freelancing for has 800 employees. Some of them seem to be simply biding their time until who knows when, while the others are utterly miserable, humorless, and cranky.
To get anything done, you have to carve your way through so many layers of protocol that everything takes four times as long as necessary. And when you think you’ve finally gotten through, you hear the dreaded words: We just have to let legal look at it. Walking past the lone line of cubicles on the way to the bathroom, I overhear people saying the same thing: "Tomorrow, let's do it tomorrow, how's that sound?"
Periodically, a voice comes over the intercom. I heard it say, "The Wednesday morning hot sheet will be meeting in the Brainstorming room in ten minutes," and tried to imagine what the hell that even meant.
I sat in on a meeting the other day for an internal review with ten people I'd never seen before. Ten layers of bosses, each with a progressively more meaningless job title than the next.
The people I work with directly are all very nice, if a little jaded, and the money is good, so I don't mind working there once in a while, doing my job quickly and getting out of there before I lose all perspective. But I'd suffocate if I had to go there every day.
"Are there any little office hotties at least?" Brian asked me after I described the work environment.
"Not really. I mean, you know, plenty of corporate-casual Jersey girls eating salads in their cubicles, talking on the phone, but otherwise—"
"Corporate casual Jersey girls. Mmmm, yes, I know the type. I see them around all the time. Very nice. I need to find myself one of those."
If Brian actually found one of each of everything he had to "find himself one of," he'd be a very busy man.
"I delivered a neon sign to J-Lo's place the other day," Brian said.
"No kidding?"
"I mean her fashion company. The showroom."
"She has a fashion line? I didn't know that. What's it called?"
"JLo."
"Of course."
"So we made this sign with a bunch of light bulbs behind a plastic cutout of the logo. A hundred and sixty 10-watt bulbs. That's 1600 watts. You turn it on, and the thing is like a fucking hair dryer. I told my boss that it wasn't a good idea, but he kept saying, Just put it up, just put it up. So I deliver the sign and hang it. Three days later, the guy from the showroom calls. The sign had totally melted. It was excellent."
"It probably looked really cool."
"It was totally embarrassing. Anyway, there were all these hot little Hispanic chicks working at the showroom. Totally out of control. Of course, you couldn't stand to hear any of them talk for more than two minutes — so excitable and loud. I wanted to say, 'Please, don't speak. You're ruining it for everybody.'""
