Dead-end job memoir
This is the first of a two-part Salon piece on working at a dead-end customer service job. This genre of memoir is really compelling to me, maybe because I'm so thankful to not have a job like that, but also because it's the 21st Century equivalent of Orwell's labor-condition memoirs like Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier.
This was the awakening, the realization that I had officially and for all time put my head in a noose and the hangman was taking his sweet time. And that's the day I officially stopped caring. Never stay late. Never work overtime. Never offer opinions. Do not go the extra mile. At one time, I offered to train new employees, without a raise in my salary, just so that I could take the time to train them more thoroughly (training was fast becoming an afterthought, as people were needed immediately to answer phones. It didn't matter what they knew how to do). The problem was that the people who were training me told me as much, and I refused to believe them. But the equation was simple: Management is entrenched. They're not going anywhere. The department is too unwieldy from turnover to create another position. So why would management struggle to improve the call-taker's lot?
· Salon 1 of 2 [blatantly pinched from Orwell Library
· We've come quite a long way:: Year in Review
· Modern Dating Manifesto [via Boing]