I was thinking of you because of the DHL layoffs and finally got around to looking you up. I googled you and read your Asylum piece. I agree that it was corporate greed. I wasn't aware of the disparity in payrolls. I'll share that tomorrow at work.
We're experiencing the same in Seattle. All of the IT jobs will be either eliminated or moved to Phoenix. All of the non-IT headquarters jobs will be eliminated or moved to Florida. This will all happen before next summer. From the people I've talked to from previous DHL acquisitions (Danzas and Loomis) only about 20 percent of the people end up moving. I may be offered a job in Phoenix but I have no desire to go there so I'm looking around.
I give the new DHL Airborne Express until summer of 2005 before it self-destructs. The Phoenix IT people are disorganized and spending far too much money.
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I found your defense of The Matrix: Reloaded insightful and stimulating. As a fan of the series, it helped to soldify some of the questions and thoughts I had after seeing the film which were a little jumbled in my mind. It also gave me a better appreciation of the movie. I hope you will write something on Revolutions as well.
Here's some work movies that came to mind after seeing your top ten list. I haven't seen serveral of the movies on your list so I don't know if these belong in the top ten. (I do plan on renting them though) Here goes:
Falling Down (w/ Michael Douglas)
Glengary Glenross
Jerry McGuire
Joe vs. the Valcano
Thanks for providing a source of thought provoking entertainment during my down times at work.
-Dave
Most of what follows are responses to my recent layoff(Sept. 2, 2003) from DHL and the essay I wrote about it: Re: Layoffs
Dear Inmate,
Sorry to hear that you have been laid-off from your job. When you decide to write a book, let me know, I'd like to buy one. As a matter of fact, I'll even send you a $50.00 retainer to get one of the first copies! Hell, I've received at least that much enjoyment from your writings.
Good luck in all that you do!!
Rodney
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hello glen
hope all is going well for u , as best as it can be expected
hope family is well
i get to play more golf now
see my kid more
just thought i would drop a line that i am still holding my head high even after what those sobs did
jeff
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Hi,
just came upon your website last week, since I was also laid off on Sept 2, after 16 years with DHL!!!
Man, I wish I had seen your site before, so I could have shared it with my co-workers!! I thought we were the only ones who thought that most of the DHL corporate mandates about sort + delivery procedures were BS!.
Anyway, just wanted to drop a line to tell you that we are out here!
Bret
Raleigh, NC
p.s.- have you noticed the corporate spin put on the number of employees laid off?? They are throwing around the figure of "only 6%" of employees being laid off, BUT, I noticed that they are basing the 6% on the COMBINED DHL/Airborne total workforce.......That's BS, I think it's got to be like 30-40% of DHL employees who were laid off........
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hi
i stumbled upon your website when i did a google search for 'dhl downsizing'. i, too, am a former employee of dhl. i worked for dhl systems in burlingame. when they announced the move to the phoenix data center in dec 2001, i was of course shocked and pissed off. i didn't want to move from the bay area, and to phoenix, no doubt. (my apologies if you like that place). i kept telling dhl that i would move to phoenix, just so i wouldn't be laid off prematurely. thankfully, i was offered a job in san diego around the same time i got laid off from dhl. so here i am, loving it and working for another corporation. most of my friends that worked for dhl moved with the company. of course they all hate it. even more so now that a round of layoffs are happening, although they were told they wouldn't be affected. hmmm. we'll see about that. anyway, it was kinda nice to read your article. basically it's the same way i felt when it happened to me.
take care,
rose
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I stumbled across your website while surfing the Internet and I thought I would add some food for thought. When I worked at a hospital in Boston, we (the lowly corporate drones) experienced massive layoffs, which seem to be a theme nowadays. I finally got the ax from an Interim Boss, whom I never got a long with, but I was around long enough to witness a CEO getting the ax just like the rest of the herd, only it was different. I noticed you pay careful attention to corporate semantics. The CEO of the hospital wasn't fired, canned, terminated, laid-off, downsized, etc. Instead, if you're higher up on the food chain, you resign, or step-down. You leave on your own accord, because you thought it was appropriate, but you surely don't get outsourced or fired, that type of language is reserved for underlings. I remember reading about the fact that the CEO was leaving (another way of putting it nicely), and I took notice at how they delicately danced around any wording that might bring shame, or worse yet, put the former CEO in the same boat or category as the rest of the drones. There was careful thought and great attention paid to the wording surrounding the termination of the CEO. Even when the higher-ups face the music, it is somehow different and not as bad, it's not embarrassing or shameful. Instead, it's more like a general turning over his sword to concede defeat.
When I went into my little meeting when I was getting the ax, I knew what was about to happen because the Interim had a smile on her face and she asked me to close the door. She said, "This isn't working out," and that she wasn't "sure of what I did all day?" Never mind the fact that she worked Tuesdays-to-Thursdays and made six figures to "delegate" authority. I was asking myself, what the fuck does she do for the three days she makes it into work? Delegate is a euphemism for pawning off the shit you couldn't figure out, or that you didn't have time for onto your underlings, the drones in the cube farms. I also noticed that office doors were always kept open so that bosses could hear and see what you were up to, while you rotted away in your penalty cube, but I knew that they were making personal phone calls when they closed the door and the knee-slapping laughs began. I just love the corporate world; you spend your life making a living.
Rich
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Just discovered your site the other day and have been reading it every spare moment since. Nice work. (maybe work isn't the right word...)
I'm 35, married 12 years 2 kids and 9 months ago go my first real corporate job. Man, do your words ring true. I could never understand how people could be so stuck, but now I get it.
Thanks for the inspiration,
Rod
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Here's my recommendation for a great movie about the banality of the work place:
The Haiku Tunnel
Joni
A corporate drone herself
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Sad, but true, I've been comparing an aspect of my life to the activities in an asylum. I knew a little about asylums, wanted to find out more and there was your site. I admire your writing. Very well constructed!
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Dear Inmates,
Google has made for the most curious kind of perceptions of the world: I wondered what sort of place would have "Wendell Berry" and "Robertson Davies" together, and here you are!
Jon
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[This is a response to my failed attempt to escape my current employer.]
Thank you, Glen. Will be watching you closely. Glad to have you back in the joint. Sorry, yet kind of happy, to hear about your shabby tunnelling enterprise. Are you insane? Where could you have escaped? Better stay here. Keep us company.
Johnny
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Dear Inmate,
You know how I came to read you? I was chatting with a friend who asked me what "corporate bullshit" meant (I had used the concept in conversation). Instead of defining it on my own (I suppose I know what c.b. is, btw), I tried to retrieve and forward an email I had once received on a mailing list describing just that. Couldn't find it, so I searched "corporate bullshit" on GOOGLE. It returned more than expected, but on the first page of results, there you were!
"Corporate bullshit" becomes increasingly known as a worldwide concept nowadays. Amazingly, it can only be revealed by "corporate irreverence" and quality sense of humor. Until proved otherwise, I personally hold you Americans responsible for the invention of the "corporate bullshit" now in use with worldwide corporate snobs. If ever it turns out that an American invented the "corporate irreverence" antidote, I might just drop charges against Americans and find somebody else to put the blame on.
Finding your Asylum (which is more like a shelter for sane people, rather than an institution for the mentally ill) was reassuring to me that human nature might just have what it takes to overcome the corporate challenge.
Johnny Dobrinescu
Attorney-at-law
Bucharest, ROMANIA (Europe)
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I am over come with the irony of being at work while reading this document [Josef Pieper Book Review]looking over my shoulder to make sure that I am not caught being idle, or neglecting my utilitarian functions! I certainly agree with the diagnoses of the problem particular to the ever expanding 'western culture' of busyness as business and the belief that production and goods are raised above the level of being servents to society and have become the masters of it. This particularly manifests itself in the newly industrialised countries that produce goods to feed the global parasite! Anyway back to work!
[unsigned]
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If you really sell comfortable toilet seats[Here's the Essay], please let me know. I am one of those bathroom readers and dreamers with sleeping legs!
Tom Mawhinney
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I'm grinding my teeth--not in rage nut[sic] frustration.
Here, in an otherwise delightful tale[The Taradiddle Award], you used "different than" rather than "different from." Shame, shame, shame!
[unsigned]
Sorry to be responsible for your increased dental bills. You are right--"different from" is the preferred usage, though, and I just looked this up because I am no grammarian, "different than" is acceptable. In the interest, however, of attaining grammatical purity and possible sainthood in the annals of English usage I will change it at some point in the future--the problem may have occurred because I was drinking a Coors.
In the interest of helping you surpass the grammatical sainthood that you most surely already possess, might I suggest that your otherwise delightful letter would have had more impact without the typo? Or were you merely suggesting that my ignorance warrants me the title "nut"?
Admittedly, mine was the more egregious error.
In all seriousness, something difficult for me at times, how did you find my site? I always ask people this who I hear from(technically, it's okay to end a sentence with a preposition, though not preferred).
Thanks for writing,
The Inmate
Thanks for the good-humored response!
Haven't looked over your site much, really; but what I saw I enjoyed.
Was it Winston Churchill who said, "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put"?
Finally, damn! Spell-checkers have ruined us all--but laziness hurts, too.
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