Gripe#7: The Hum Of The Corporate Machine

I hate my job.

It takes so much willpower just to accept how dull and pointless everything feels. There is hardly ever any variation from the patterns and I'm pretty sure the information we're spouting out on a regular basis is already quite hard-wired into our systems (much more so than the “non-existent iPods” situation back in my Circuit City days). There's no life to it, no dynamics, no thrill. On rare moments, something comes up to challenge you, throw you a curve ball but none of them really get your blood going. All the time, it ends up being just a different spin on the same old situation. None of what happens really strikes me as worth my time or even of remote interest. Sure, concern and interest are easy enough to fake and I'm quite able of pulling it off without even the slightest slip but it all feels for naught. Sure, I get paid but Circuit City paid me too (and paid better, I might add) and there I didn't feel like every day was a monotonous repetition of the same old thing.

Just once, just once, I'd like to have a day if discord in this unrelentingly dull symphony. A day that will shake things up, change a couple of details around and throw us all (customers, reps and higher-ups alike) for a loop. But chances of that happening are less than minimal. A snowball's chance in Hell, to use the expression. Besides, the more things change around here, the less anything actually changes. There's no point hoping for anything different to happen because in the end, it all falls apart and becomes ruined because nothing ever escapes the monotony. I'm pretty sure it will soon come to a point where I can literally sleep through the job and still get it done, albeit with the odd glance to the screen to verify a couple of things. Yeah, by the end of my contract I would likely have developed that talent/trick/knack. I can practically do my job halfway good in that state as of now and I've only been here halfway through the deal (of which I still feel like I got the bad part of the deal here). So I'm stuck here. Bored. Dumbing down faster than I thought possible. Ready to sell my soul to find some sort of worthwhile, permanent escape from all this insanity.

Am I bitter about this whole affair? Maybe I am. Certainly, I wouldn't be complaining if I actually liked what I was doing. Then again, I liked what I was doing back in Circuit City but I complained there too. But that was less a matter of me liking what I was doing and more my not liking certain aspects of it. That was Circuit City. In Dell, it isn't the case. This is more a case of me disliking, no that's not the word, more like despising the very thought of doing what I do, of working who I work for and not merely certain aspects or bits and pieces of it. I honestly can't stand this whole state of things and want to slip out but, sadly, I have some reasons for my wanting to stay. Some of them are practical but others are...less so. Nevertheless, I have my reasons for staying in this dullness.

Firstly, this is a job and I'm damn lucky to have it regardless of how much I hate it. Sure, it gets to be the most monotonous piece of crap in all existence pretty quickly but it pays the bills. In this rat-bastard of a country, having a job with halfway decent pay (which I get but only marginally) is not just having a job, it is a bloody achievement. The mere fact that finding work in this country is so damn hard and finding a reasonable amount of financial compensation for an equivalent amount of work hours is damn-near impossible.

Second reason would be the people I work with. They're not all the kind of people I'd be happy to be trapped on a deserted island with but for all intents and purposes, they're people I can get along with. Well, to be truly and completely honest, not all of them. Just a few. Okay, maybe just one or two of them. Yeah, that sounds more like it. Sure, I get along with them well enough but I don't particularly feel like I would be willing to spend more time with them than work requires of me. In as much as I find them likable enough, I personally don't feel any level of attachment to most of them and that is not likely to change soon. I can be pretty stubborn when it comes to things like that, as I've personally noted over recent times.

Third reason is...well, that's a bit more vague. Vague enough for me not to want to divulge it here. This final reason I'm not too sure of if it even can be a reason. Not on grounds of validity but on grounds of actual existence. There is no certainty of it being there but it feels like it is. Naturally, feeling something exists is different from it actually being in existence; at least, that's how it is for me. But if this final reason is true and that it is there, I certainly have at least one good, solid, non-financial reason for staying. If it isn't, then even with the other reasons I'd likely think myself a fool for believing it to be so and for staying any longer than what my own sanity dictates. Sad, really.

For now, I try to break the monotony here and there by lashing out at something when I'm alone (the Calabite in me thrives on it, really). Usually, it isn't anything physical but more of a mental thing. An idea, a thought, a whiff of inspiration all rendered into just so much cerebral dust under a blaze of ruthless entropy. I feel compelled to take my ideas apart, reverse-engineer them to the point that it would be impossible to actually know what it was before I started tinkering with it. It happens so often it has become a fact of life for me. Take a thing of beauty and tear it apart. And I ask myself why I haven't been able to actually write anything worthwhile in so long a time. The answer has been staring me right in the face this whole time. I truly am oblivious to the obvious.

For the moment, I am seriously considering resigning. Well, half of me anyway. The rest of me wants to stay for the reasons stated above but mainly for the third, undefined reason. There are days in everyone's life that just feel wrong. Yet, in my case, this whole move feels wrong. Have I reached my limits? Have I finally snapped? Or am I just starting to realize I'm not cut out for all this, that in my existence there must be something more? I'm sure there are people content to be where they are, to be a part of the humming symphony of the corporate orchestra but me? Somehow, it doesn't feel right to me. I'm the guy who goes to the symphony to try and detect a single dissonant note amidst the sea of perfect instruments and harmony. It isn't searching for flaws or defects. It is the desire to see the unique and the dynamic even in the midst of the singular and routine.

So here I am. Pondering my options and seeking a way out even though I'm not even completely sure that I want a way out. Typical of me. Fighting with myself. Definitely a Demon of Factions but I can't quite determine if I'm an Impudite or a Calabite just yet. I can so easily slip into either glove but I'm seeking a more comfortable fit this time around, as compared to my previous one, a Lilim of Dark Humor with a couple of Attunements and Rites from Fire, Theft and a wee touch of Fate. Or the manipulative and refined Balseraph of Fate, formerly a Seraph of Creation, that came before her.

Life goes on, I guess. My leaving won't affect these people in the least aside from losing one of the people who can decipher the technobabble that is innate to our work. Damn it all. My free time is almost up and I need to get my mindset back to working. Night has fallen and I am young but I feel so ancient that I long to wither away and die.

Komm Seusser Todd...

Moments like the above make working worth all the effort.

Tama Na Yan, Inuman Na!

translation: That's enough, let's go drinking!

Once again, I’ve been doing a bit too much thinking by myself. That’s no surprise, of course. People who know me know I tend to do that.

It really does start to get to me that the more problem-laden a girl’s life is, the closer I am to her as her friend. One of them, at one point, suggested that I was cursed or jinxed to be the one that acts as a sort of omen to those problems, that knowing me somehow causes them to start cropping up. A jest on her part, to be sure. Still, it does tend to make me think. I can’t wrap my head around the reason why I feel so much more comfortable, so much more open around people I know have problems in their personal life that are in no way connected to me. I find it at best odd, at worst highly disturbing. Maybe it turns me on in some way, the problems that loom over their heads that I can only hear about and attempt to console them? I certainly won’t put it past myself since I have rather twisted tastes at times. But I rarely see them as more than just my closest friends at the time. Sure, moments of weakness are there where I entertain thoughts of becoming, to a degree, romantically involved with them but those rarely ever go into any form of action. Although, in a way, there’s all much the same – not in the strictest sense though, as they’re all different – when it all comes down to the most basic aspects of it.

So with that, the latest in the list – Marie Grace Medina – is really no different from the ones that came ahead of her in the line. Well, to be honest she is different. Well, to be completely honest, she’s quite different from them. She’s got a very rough, calloused aura about her, for one thing. She’s definitely the most capable among them when it comes to handling her problems. She’s dealing with them quite well, considering what I know of them and how I’ve seen her react sensibly. Okay, maybe drinking them away isn’t really that sensible, but at least she’s not wallowing in self-pity for excessively long periods of time – at least, not that I’ve seen so far and I’ve been observing her for a while now. She’s certainly the most emotionally stable among the problematic girls I’ve been so fortunate to become close to before. I like her quite a bit and enjoy hanging out with her more than most of my other work buddies, even though I think both of us know that we have hardly anything in common. Still, as she put it once – and the exact degree of seriousness and accuracy of this is in doubt as she was likely drunk at the time – I’m one of the few people at work that she knows cares about her enough to really worry for her well-being. If it is worth nothing else, it is worth my time to see her through and see what happens to her, for better or worse,

Now, moving on.

I can’t recall the exact date but I certainly had a lot of fun when some of my work buddies came over and hang out at my house. It all started exactly seven days prior when I somehow let it slip that I’d be left alone for two days in the house. Grace, at the time at the lowest point I’ve seen her so far emotionally, had the idea of getting a few people together – probably the people she considers I’m most comfortable with among the whole ABU 3 unit – and getting piss-drunk. The idea stuck in my head and hers and in time, it actually looked like it was going to work. Naturally, it did but since nothing was ever really planned and a lack of any concrete thought put into the details of it, it had a few hitches. Now, the ones that actually came were as follows: myself, Lei, Pao, Mikki and Mariska. Later on, Grace arrived (about an hour later, I guess) and then, much, much later (at a time when sleep was the common activity) Che. I managed to convince Mariska to come along despite Rich being too busy to go; she managed to get Pao, Mikki and Lei to tag along as well – something I wasn’t expecting, except maybe for Lei.

We had some odd moments along the route to my place, naturally. A mild comedic moment formed when Mariska, who had the money to buy tickets for the MRT, forgot to purchase one since it somehow passed out of her mind that there were four of them. It must have been the lack of sleep that caused us to have a few good laughs out of that. We had cheap food on our menu, bought from a 7-11 along the way – aside from my buying a small bottle of vodka and a Pepsi. A little closer to my place and a taxi ride afterwards, we found a place to get their beer from. I’m still actually trying to wrap my head around whatever silly little notion got into Lei’s head that made him buy five massive bottles of Red Horse beer. I still don’t have any idea what made him do that and I don’t even want to know what he’s planning on doing with that last bottle that he went home with. After Grace talked us into it, we ended up having a Yellow Cab pizza being delivered and, for some odd reason, I wasn’t in the mood to eat any but I certainly didn’t stop them from taking it all in. She went home with leftover pizza slices – what few there were.

Ah, what fun. We all had a lot of laughs at everyone’s expense. There’s the now stuck in my head line “Get a room!” which I must have heard almost thirty times from different people (mostly Grace, myself included) directed at Pao and Mikki who really looked like they wanted to be alone badly. I must have pointed out that the room next door was empty, quiet and had a nice, comfy bed but they insisted on us staying. Lei let us all have a poke of fun at him with a self-started ‘Vilmanian’ joke (foreigners and Filipinos younger than 21 or who have never listened to older people talk about movies and actresses of the past won’t get the joke) as Mikki was surfing through the channels. This continued on sporadically until they fell asleep. We had a lot of laughs at poking fun at Grace’s serious but, frankly, very poorly worded – especially with Lei around – questions. Thankfully, she was cool with the joke too and, aside from the occasional quip, we managed to get around to letting her vent out her feelings on her current problems without interruption. Then we got back to making fun of each other – a particular favorite of mine is the constant pointing out that the guy Mariska likes in the office is gay. That was fun for me in a poetically just way since she had a couple of laughs at my expense at one time insisting I was gay because of my tastes. I don’t think anyone else found it funny but I did find the fact that Pao seemed intent on putting Mikki to sleep something worth a laugh or two. Lei was just funny all around, walking about in his boxer shorts and drinking the largest quantity of beer among the whole lot. And in the background was the loud blaring of the TV but later replaced by the sounds of my laptop’s speakers blaring out my entire music collection – aside from instrumental, J-pop and anime tracks. At some point, one of us (I don’t recall) got a message from Che asking where we were. Naturally, we began to wonder if she was planning on coming over since we all knew she was somewhere important prior to that. I called her, asked a few questions and handed the phone to Grace to give her directions mainly because we could barely understand each other. After we all burned ourselves out (we just got off from work and it was getting late. For us.) they all fell asleep one by one. First were Pao and Mikki, Mariska followed suit and then Grace didn’t need any sheep any more. For a few minutes, Lei and I talked about the old days of Magic: The Gathering but then, he drifted off to la-la land too. Then, I got a text from Che saying that she was nearby and needed someone to pick her up. I went out, left the lot of them sleeping and then helped Che to my house before I let her sleep too. She eventually woke up later on and confided in us the problems with her boyfriend and what went on earlier between them. I couldn’t catch all of it since I had to help out Mariska (who wanted to leave early but got lost) and Grace (who took a shower) but I got the gist of it. A few more laughs, some time spent relaxing and a very angry Mariska (who managed to find her way back to the house) later, they all agreed to just get together and go home since we all needed some level of sleep. Me more than them since I hadn’t slept while they got a few hours worth. As I said, Lei left with the last of the beer and Grace left with the rest of the pizza. Ah, what fun.

I seriously needed sleep, rest and some time to restore my sanity after that but it was well worth it. It was good bonding time with the gang and I hadn’t had that kind of bonding with my friends – from anywhere – in a long, long time.

Oh, and I’ve finished the Soviet campaigns of both Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge, re-finished Halo: Combat Evolved (this time under the Heroic difficulty) and I’m actually starting to enjoy watching Justice League Unlimited and The Batman, as odd as that may be for me since I dislike Superman, The Flash and most of the JLU members I’ve seen so far. And I’ve decided to play Dino Crisis 2 again, for no good reason. Not to mention continuing random research on Wikipedia.

That’ll be all for today, folks.

Questions, Questions

Sometimes, there are just some days that really, really don't feel right. There's nothing wrong and nothing particularly out of the ordinary happens and such but somehow, you can't shake that annoying, gnawing sense of something being out of place, of the Force being just slightly out of balance one way or another. Almost instinctively, you just know something is up. Maybe not at your end of the world but somewhere it is...

Take, for example, my 03-21-2006 shift. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, personal or call-wise. Sure, a few strange comments and odd names dropped here and there but that's not unusual for me, especially after my run in Circuit City (which I dearly miss the good parts of, the bad parts seem to be consistent throughout any account/call center/company). Funny thing is that, regardless of how ordinary and run-of-the-mill the day was, I couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. I just couldn't quite put my finger on it but I had the strangest feeling something was up, that this whole day wasn't what it seemed. I've had days like that back in Circuit City, where everything was fine, simple and clean but I felt that something just wasn't right, something didn't flow. But, of course, that's a pointless discussion. I can't make heads or tails of it, really, so no point trying to drag it out since that would be an exercise in futility to write and repetitively dull to read.

A rare, rare few of you will recall an odd philosophical question I posed once. For those who don't, allow me to repeat it: What can change the nature of a man? (Taken from Planescape: Torment)

I've been mulling over that since before PS:T but when posed upon The Nameless One, I was suddenly re-inspired to try and figure out an answer to it. It's one of 2 questions of that nature that I honestly think the absolute, single, correct answer doesn't exist. It can vary from one to another, when you really think about it.

For example, I once came upon the possible answer of 'Regret'. It made sense at the time. A man with the weight of a missed opportunity or the sins of the past on his shoulders would likely be driven to an extreme change in his personality, his very nature. It happened before, with St. Augustine (if the records of the Catholic Church can be believed on the matter) and I've seen it happen, albeit on rare moments, in people that I know personally. It does happen and regret can make a person change but not often and for every case of it happening, there are more where even a world of regret doesn't. There are many with more than a lifetime's worth of regrets but none come close to even the slightest change. 'Regret' works for some but not all.

So that got me thinking on something else: 'Power'. Certainly, the old adage on power is true. Power does corrupt but corruption depends upon something that is already within the person corruption draws it out and enriches it. Corruption does not change a person, it merely brings out the worst in that person and magnifies it almost to the point of making them seem like a completely different person. Power can magnify what's already in a person but it doesn't change a person. It cannot be held responsible for changing the fundamental nature of a person's mind or his nature.

'Love' perhaps? Certainly, if there are a number of anecdotes and quotes on power and how it changes people, there are even more for love. It is certainly one of the most powerful emotions out there, if not the most powerful (and it is, by some standards). But does love truly change a person? Sure, people's behavior changes as they try to become what they think the object of their affection wants or is looking for but deep down, they are still who they are and their nature is fundamentally unchanged. Given a suitable situation, their true colors will emerge time and again. While love can undoubtedly get a man to change his behavior, maybe even his habits, can it get him to change his basic nature? Behavior can be very different from one's nature, if you've been analyzing (or in my case: overanalyzing) this sort of thing long enough on a lack of sleep.

Personally, I find this an incredibly intriguing question. Although, as my train of thoughts here shows, I do not really believe that there is one, clear, absolute answer to the question posed. In the end, like the answers to the questions ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you want?’ it comes down to the individual’s own circumstances, flaws and points of polish. There is no single, all-confirming answer. It will vary. Or maybe there is an answer but that I haven’t thought of it yet or haven’t heard it yet. A lifetime is a long span of time and I’ve only begun to scratch the length of it in seeking The Answer.

Che, a friend (not a particularly close friend since I’m not really close to most of the people at my current workplace but a friend) has been going through some stressful times lately. I won’t go into the gory details because I don’t have all of them and even if I did, I won’t disrespect her privacy by divulging them all here. Let her do that on her own, if she wants. Suffice to say, I could clearly tell that the guy she’s with isn’t worth the trouble that he’s putting her through, not to mention completely undeserving of her. Che’s a nice girl, very upbeat, very charming and definitely deserving of better treatment that what she’s been getting from him. I’d be irate over this if I hadn’t seen it so much before that it really doesn’t strike me as enraging or anything of the sort. I firmly believe Che should make a move and let him go without any sugar-coating or softening of the blow and I advised her to take someone with her when she does, if only to serve as her back-up since I can tell that she’s taken an emotional beating out of it and she’ll need someone there for her when it all comes crashing down.

Now, another friend (same general degree of closeness as Che) Shobe is having problems of her own. This situation I know even less details of and that gives me an even worse position to try to view the problem as objectively as possible. I’m not really even sure of what her problem is about, to be frank.

Then there’s the vagueness of the problem that I see with the one closest to me in my current place of work, Grace. I don’t quite see what the problem is but I can tell that it’s there and it’s affecting her more than she’s letting on. I suppose I don’t really know her that well but I can see there’s something wrong with her life outside of work, something that I can’t place and therefore, can’t help her out with. Frankly, the most I can offer is to be with her while she’s drinking herself into a stupor – which she seems to want more and more with each passing day. While I know the grim, dark humor-ish words and sentences she drops here and there can be alarming if you take them all in that context, I try to shrug them off as just effects of what she’s going through. I’m really hoping that she clears that up soon, for her sake.

All of this has given me a sudden realization: the girls I’m closest to always seem to be the problematic, so-damn-depressed-their-considering-doing-something-stupid kind. Why, there was Nina with problem of having a mother and mother’s side of the family that doesn’t seem to care about her, father that’s good-for-nothing-but-target-practice and the least of her worries, her education and finances. I felt closer to her than anyone else before her. I didn’t really feel very close to anyone back in my college days or in my Vocativ (or whatever the Hell it’s called now) days or even TeleTech. The people I met there are people I consider friends but, admittedly, the people from my degree in ollege aren’t the kind of people I’d like to spend long periods of time with if I had much of a choice. Initially, they were but after a while, the differences just wore on and on. Vocativ people I trust, I value them and I really felt bad having to leave the company and my buddies there. Of course, the latest in the list of girls with problems is Grace of Ambergris. It seems like the worse the problem the girls have, the closer I feel to them and the closer we become as friends. And in Grace’s case, people even have the silly little notion that we have chemistry, as insipidly stupid (Saminga is smart enough to realize that there isn’t chemistry between us) as that idea is.

Then again, even within my Ambergris batch, Factions is subtly worming about. The cracks have appeared and, even at this stage, the roots of internal groups have appeared. There’s an obvious, tight-knit (or seemingly so) group that’s clear to see but there’s a bit of misconception of who’s in it and who’s not in it. There are other groups but I don’t think they’ve formed a solid enough connection to be seen as a Faction within a Faction like the previously mentioned group. However, the formation of two more sub-Factions emerged with the assignment of Team Captains and there are a couple of us that believe we’ve somehow ended up with the wrong one – one of us thinking it more recently than others. Of course, I’m adaptive and I try to get along as best I can with everyone, almost as if I was an Impudite of Factions…tempting thought, that. I haven’t RP’ed in a while and IN is always good for getting back to that old vice.

And of course, that project based on call center life and times is still coming along…

Currently:

Listening To: Kiss ‘Psycho Circus’ (the album), Vanessa Mae ‘The Art of War’

Looking For: Alice Cooper ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly soundtrack, V for Vendetta soundtrack

Downloading: random tracks from the Legend of Dragoon and Lunar series soundtracks