Dear Glen:
Great website. I Googled myself today and saw your reference to me (13 October 2003). I thought you might like to review an e-mail thread, so that you could get the WHOLE story.
Happy New Year to you.Bill Speer
Principal-Speer Consulting, LLC
www.speerconsultingllc.com
To: Bill Speer
Subject: Budget questionYou were in the news:
"But a retail analyst said yesterday that unionized supermarket workers such as checkout clerks are largely overpaid. Under the expired contract, clerks earned as much as $17.90 an hour."
"The wages seem to be high relative to skill," said Bill Speer, president of Speer Consulting in Coronado.
Speer said many companies across the country have required workers to shoulder some of the burden of rising health care costs in recent years. "
Let's look at this a little, shall we? "As much as"---is the the maximum paid--NOT the average. Let's do some more math!A worker makes appoximately (maximum) $17.90 an hour---you take home about 500.00 a week. Your rent for a one bedroom apartment is $705.00 a month not including any utilities (which is really good for Los Angeles). You have two kids that you are supporting alone and one car, which means after just deducting rent, you have a total of 795.00 for all of the other bills. How much do you spend just in one week for food, gas, general living expenses? If the wages seem too high to you, you have a gross underestimation of both the cost of living and the demands of the job.
Yes, workers have been asked to "share the burden"--I agree. But it seems like this burden is not being shared, but merely "transfered".
From: Bill Speer
Subject: RE: Budget questionNot surprisingly, I was misquoted. (It happens too often in the press.) The reporter asked if I thought that clerks we overpaid with a wage of $17.90/hour. Among other things, I said, "It may seem that the wage is high. The grocery business operates on very thin margins, often as low as 2%^, so there will always be downward pressure on wages. But I don't think that either the union workers or customers will be particularly sympathetic to a desire for wage reductions until there is actual evidence of competition in the marketplace from WalMart and Target Superstores. I believe that the chains have a more valid case asking workers to share the cost of some of the health insurance premiums. This is the direction that corporate America has been going for the past decade."
I generally support the aims of the union. This reporter has been attempting, for several days, to get me to say that the union could be busted as a result of the lockout/strike. I don't believe this, and I have done my best to provide balance analysis since this dispute arose.
I've received two irate calls from union members, the first at 6 a.m. this morning. I have not been afforded the opportunity to present my side of the interview, but would welcome any clarification you might share with your coworkers.
Bill Speer
Principal-Speer Consulting, LLC
www.speerconsultingllc.comTo: Bill Speer
Subject: RE: Budget questionWow, thank you for your reply!
I am sorry that anyone would have phoned you at all. Unfortunately people are scared and upset. Fear causes people (and companies) to act out rather than think things through. The press has not helped this as most of the articles we are reading are inflammatory. The company is scared of the current state of the economy and their competition. The workers are scared that they cannot afford to support their families. I will share your information with as many people as I can. Try not to take the phone calls to heart---people do not feel that they are being heard and it was probably their only opportunity to feel like they could vent all of their frustration at someone. Unfortunately, that was you.
It is a hard thing to try to shove what seem to be more costs, less benefits, and less wages down employees' throats---especially all at once. Yes, this is the direction that most corporations have been going in the last decade. Many companies have also been replacing permanent employees with temps or simply getting rid of more tenured employees and replacing them with cheaper new hires. I believe this is short term thinking. I think that the employees are well aware that they need the company in order to survive, but is there reciprocity? Where does it end?
Again, I will send this to as many people as I can and hope that there is some common ground found soon.
******************************************************I'm watching Gerald Scarfe at the moment which means you've still got some paint left on the trowel - true scatology beats sulphuric acid.
Scatology.html: Nicco Mach was the father of spin: yes, he was a student of political theory, no, he had no discernable moral limits, which is how he got to be a Medici political secretary. It's all very well claiming caricature, and even allowing the charitable scope needed to understand his survival in the Borgian world of renaissance Italy, he at no point places any values whatsoever on his advice, it is pure pragmatism, which was the only acceptable criteria in his milieu. Modern government is to a certain degree constrained by a legislature which does have values, among them equity, objectivity and democracy.
In the corporate world, having been in a situation identical to your CEO myself, you miss a point. It is not the change in the organisation's culture which has led to his quandry, but the result of a thoroughly mediaeval power struggle: you survive as long as you can, and at least these days you can walk away and begin again doing something else, you don't find yourself stuck in a dungeon for the rest of what will be a short and brutish existance. There's only a fistful who get to the top, and fewer still who stay there: the rest of us are forced to regard them from below, which gives rise to the mushroom scenario.
Your next study should be the art of writing job references for departing staff: this is one of the few thriving areas of skilled abuse, basically because there is little probability of revenge - we've lost the art of the dark alley, thankfully.
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Sir
I've just found your web site by accident whilst undertaking research for my own ISMS site - The Institution of Silly & Meaningless Sayings (www.isms.org.uk <http://www.isms.org.uk> ). I think I could have years of fun reading through your site content and, I think, others could benefit from reading it too. To that end I've added a link from our ISMS Lynx page to your home page. I trust that this is OK by you . . . . .
Best wishes and I wish you continued bread and water. I'll be back!
regards
S L Rottenpig-Rules
Chairman & Chief Executive, ISMS[Editor's Note: ISMS is a good site. I was particularly interested in the "Bullshine Generator." It looks to be a very useful corporate tool for cynics and readers of The Corporate Asylum.]
*****************************************************
maybe our sites do have a few things in common. aside from the obvious: your site is what my site wants to be when it grows up.
[see below]
*****************************************************
your website has nothing to do with my website (www.parabowla.com) but i'm linking it anyway( i would like to if that's ok with you). very funny and original. i haven't read through the whole site yet but i will. check out my site. it's not as funny as yours but i like it.
nick
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Subject: DHL Sucks
Hello Inmate,
There is a website named exdhl.com. I don't know if you and the ex DHL employees who contacted you would care to expand the conversation over there or not. I've been trying to get people to come forth with some stories about DHL either not doing mandatory trainings, faking training records, or other instances where DHL has broken or possibly broken FAA or DOT regulations.
I know for a fact that JSG had a hazmat shipment get through that contained corrosive material and DHL got fined close to $100,000. In addition to writing your book* I believe having the US gov't investigate DHL and finding enough instances of this kind of stuff will result in massive fines and possible loss of license to operate in the USA. What an achievement if we can pull it off.
The Inmate Responds:
I understand your anger. Initially, I also wanted to see DHL make a crash landing. What DHL did to us was wrong. However, I don't think the direction you're heading in will accomplish what you think.
In the first place, if DHL crashes and burns the most people who will be hurt by it will be those more or less like you and me. There are still a lot of original DHL people left in the U.S. who had nothing to do with this decision. I hope they can keep their jobs. The decision to do this was made by a few people with power. If there was someway to directly punish them, I'd be all for it, provided it didn't mean I had to spend every waking hour trying to accomplish that---which brings me to my next point.
Unfortunately, these things happen and evil people prosper and continue to live their lifestyles---but that doesn't mean that we can't prosper and also enjoy our lives. The best thing here, I think, is to move on. Certainly we can sound off about what happened to the people we come in contact with and by other means in the hope that our opinions will in someway contribute to the decline of these kinds of actions. This will take time--a lot of it. But it seems to me that it is important not to let a thing like this dominate our lives and/or become a source of bitterness that diminishes our own quality of life. If that happens then we've lost a lot more than just our jobs.
Regards,
The Inmate
[note: The book I have been writing and upon which this website is based is not about DHL, but about corporate culture in general, its influence in our lives and how to successfully battle against it.]
Received 16 August 2001
InmateI just got onto your site after a lenghty break and was reading your Taradiddle awards. #4 reminded me of a similar though less expensive experience. I was to play music with the rest of my band for a Government Department Happy Hour. As carrier of the equipment I drove my heavily laden station wagon (what do you Americans call them---estate wagons or something) onto the footpath near the gig-site because all the kerb-side parks were taken up with construction vehicles. As I started to unload a parking cop approached and uttered the corporate line something like, 'Sir, I cannot authorise you to park your vehicle in this location.' After explaining to her that I had no real option and I wasn't causing anyone any inconvenience and would only be there for 10 minutes she uttered words something like, 'Sir, I cannot authorise you to park your vehicle in this location.' I argued the toss with her for a few more minutes during which time one of the Departmental guys saw my problem and came out and started to unload my gear onto a trolley and take it upstairs. A cunning plan developed in my tiny brain and I kept her talking for enough time for the lads to complete the unloading . . . though I had to put up with a few more episodes of 'Sir, I cannot authorise you to park your vehicle in this vicinity.' Finally I agreed with her and drove off.
Love your work
Non-ongoing Inmate
Canberra AustraliaThe Non-ongoing Inmate writes, "'Non-ongoing' is what those in control of the
Australian Public Service have decided (over many workshops and brainstorming sessions) to call what used to be sensibly known as 'temporary' employees."Dear Non-ongoing Inmate,
A brilliant technique for dealing with a brainwashed employee of the government. If we here at The Corporate Asylum had anything to send you(t-shirts, coffee mugs, certificates of merit, cool Inmate of the Month parking spaces) we promptly would, but since we do not we cannot. It's comforting to know that this kind of corporate nonsense is not only an American trait---or maybe it's not. I have a theory that what it is that the world should most fear is not dictatorships or communism or democracy or pick your cause, but a corporate culture(or maybe it's meetings, workshops and brainstorming sessions) that more and more is permeating our world regardless of race, creed, country, religion or beer preferences.
Thanks,
The Inmate
Received 15 July 2001
Re: Toilet SeatsYour article was hilarious! I was in the process of trying to find a special seat when I ran across your article. Really really hilarious! I am trying to find out where I can learn to make special ones like my mother gave me. It's acrylic or something, anyway, transparent, and has tacks, razor blades and barbed wire in it. Kids are afraid to lift the lid. One night about 100 people had to look at it (neighborhood party) after one person came out commenting about it. [This is a response to Re: Toilet Seats and Rest Rooms]
[unsigned]
Dear Nameless Admirer,
We have several of those in the rest room where I work--I don't actually work in the rest room--except that the barbed wire, razor blades and tacks are glued to the top of the seat to encourage worker productivity.
The Inmate
Received 12 July 2000
yes indeed- the two essays from the inmate complement each other. That
is a compliment.Ole Stromgren
Copenhagen Business School
Ole,
Thanks for pointing out my usage and/or spelling error. I need all the
lessons in humility I can get. It has been corrected and I am, of course,
in your debt for upgrading the quality of The Corporate Asylum.The Inmate
From the Desk of The Corporate Asylum's CEO
The web page with the error, What is The Asylum?, contained the following sentence: "This web page contains two complimentary essays." I am dismayed and disappointed that the error, which appeared on this site for more than a year, was not pointed out to me earlier. You're all fired. Have a nice day.
Received 23 May 2000
Mate,I believe I just found why I got connected to the WWW (okay, I sent this
from work but I shall continue devouring your site at home).I work for a Commonwealth Government Department, in HR, editing a corporate newsletter. Like yourself, I'm amazed and offended at the level of tripe we're expected to swallow. I like to think I'm fighting from within and provide a reasonable alternative to the usual claptrap but I realised today after discovering your site that there's no way the wardens would let me get away with any real comment for very long (that's the sneaky bit for your ego).
It's a well paid job though and it lets me spend more time on my real job of being at home playing with my family. My ego is satisfied by past glories (I was once a sub editor and motoring writer) and counting the hits on my web site. . .
Fond regards and Missing you already,
The G'day Cell Mate
Australia
Received 7 February 2000
Since you had a cow the last time there was a typo and nobody told youThe Inmate Responds
about it . . . in your journal entry, when you're talking to the UPS guy,
you're missing a word. It currently says "Thank God I don't for UPS."
Should probably have "work" in there somewhere.Just trying to be helpful :)
The Ex-Salt Miner
Dear Ex-Salt Miner,Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The Inmate
Received sometime in late December 1999 from the Ex-Salt Miner regarding The Inmate's attempt to get a meaningful 10 year anniversary award almost four years after the fact:
Ooh - you got to choose from a catalog? For my 3 year anniversary at a company in outer Egypt, I got to choose between a calculator and a bud vase- both with the company logo. For my 5 year anniversary I got a pen/pencil set with my initials engraved. Unfortunately, those also were defaced with the company logo (although better than the alternative of white marble coasters with the company logo in red).I must admit, I can empathize with you over the "gifts" for years of service. I actually use my calculator. I think I hid the pen/pencil set in my desk. But when I'd been with the company for 3 years, my boss took me and another co-worker out for a fancy lunch. It was nice to have the recognition and the food. For the 5 year anniversary, I had a different boss. She held on to my "reward" for almost a whole month just so she could present it to me in a monthly meeting. I did not appreciate the delay, but I did not get along well with her, either, so it may have been a reaction to her personality.
I think the best anniversary response I ever received was a handwritten letter on my one year anniversary with this company. The president wrote it. I'd never been formally introduced to him, and I'm sure he had no idea who I was. But the fact that he spent the time to hand write a note thanking me for a year of service meant more to me than a pen and pencil set 5 years later.
Since you have the letters stating that Cheetah Express would give you a watch or something else later, I think you stand a good chance of getting something out of the new catalog. But I think you'll have to write more than one letter to get it. I look forward to reading them as they are posted.
The Ex-Salt Miner
Received 14 November 1999 from the Ex-Salt Miner:
Subject: the toityThe Inmate Responds:I'm not even sure that's how toity is spelled - looks like the other half of hoity-toity, doesn't it? But a "d" (toidy) seems more unrefined somehow.
Anyway . . . I thought I'd toss my two cents in re: toilet seats. At my old job, men, including my assistant, would disappear into the bathroom with parts of the daily paper, and "take a break." It got so bad that the CEO himself sent out an all-company memo forbidding people to read in the bathroom. It was a memo full of misspelled words and bad grammar. It threatened to cancel the company's subscription to the paper if people didn't quit misusing it. I almost fell off my chair laughing and wondered if that were grounds for worker's comp. Then I sent it out to almost everyone I knew.
The ex-Salt Miner
Dear Ex-Salt Miner,Received 7 October 1999 from The Escaped InmateThe important questions are these: Do you still have that memo? Can I get a copy? May I post it?
The Inmate
Hey there, Innie. (I've been around your site so long that using your full name seems a bit too formal. Hope you don't mind the familiarity.)The Inmate Responds:A few thoughts on one of your most frequent topics - the idea that one of the big problems with modern life is that it's too fast. I take exception.
Take a look at the means by which we are communicating - a system dependent on scads of machines performing thousands of tasks at dizzying speeds when we could be using vellum, quill pens and pigeons to transmit written words back and forth at a more leisurely pace. Yet I don't see you complaining that the internet (or computers) are bad for people.
Or consider the state of medicine today compared to, say, fifty years ago. There are treatments available now that could not have been imagined then. Again, due to the speed at which research has been conducted and disseminated. Slowing down that process could be catastrophic for millions.
Speed isn't the problem with our world. It's just an easy target since so many people feel like they're being pushed and pulled too fast and in too many directions. The problem is primarily a problem of priorities - not even explicitly time-related priorities, but the priorities generally prevalent in society.
Many people choose to live in new houses. Most new housing (in the western U.S. especially) is built on land that was most recently either undeveloped or agricultural and far from the existing urban core. The buildings are usually mass-produced, less than three stories tall and fronting a broad swath of asphalt. That series of choices, together with increasingly similar choices made recently regarding commercial properties and massive societal pressure for all adults to drive single-occupant vehicles as their primary means of transportation, leads directly to the huge amount of human life, sanity, money, natural resources and time sacrificed to the daily commute. A different set of choices about land use and transportation could give people lots more time and even a greater sense of community. But those aren't high enough priorities on the part of enough people to counteract the underlying problems I mentioned.
Take another example. As you have observed, pressure is great in our society for people to do everything possible to move up. Businesses take advantage of that pressure by making ever-increasing demands on the workers who want to move up. If workers, particularly white collar workers, stood up for themselves (and each other) rather than bending over backward to move up, work could be a much more livable, if perhaps a somewhat less lucrative, and much less time-consuming pursuit. Again, that is not a popular priority.
Businesses believe they must stay a step ahead of the competition, so they create a flurry of activity to convince themselves that they are doing so. If they concentrated on the substance of their business as opposed to their perception of their own position relative to their competition's, they'd find they had plenty of time to be creative, productive and successful, regardless of where the competition might be headed. But the perception, rather than the reality, is the priority. A quick (but, alas, not original) fable to illustrate how our preconceived notions and obsession with status impair our ability to discern what is real: The pope takes a trip to Los Angeles, but the airline messed up and didn't get the popemobile there on time, so it hired a limousine to take the pontiff to his destination. The pope told the driver that he thought it would be fun to drive the limo himself and asked if the driver would mind. The driver obliged, so they traded places. As the pope got underway, he started driving somewhat faster than the speed limit and before long the police were on his tail. After pulling over the limo, the officer radioed in to his boss, "I've got a major VIP in a limo that was going 90 on the 405 and I don't know what to do." The boss asked, "Just who is the VIP?" The officer replied, "I'm not quite sure, but he's got the pope as his chauffeur."
Another problem comes when people are too eager to be the first to follow the latest fad. The spin machine spits out fads all the time and those who decide they must be among the first to have this or that trinket or try the latest diversion sacrifice a great deal of their time (among other sacrifices they make) in waiting with the rest of the crowd that has made the same decision. Was The Phantom Menace a better movie in its first weekend than it was thereafter? Does a toy lose the characteristics that make it fun once a newer toy is introduced? Herds don't make rapid progress toward their goals, no matter how much they scurry to and fro. Those who make their own decisions, rather than abdicating that responsibility to the media, are free of that encroachment on their time, in addition to being just plain free. Sad to say, we are a tiny and apparently shrinking group.
Much of what passes for a lack of time and too much pressure to speed up is really a consequence of unreasonable obstacles. It takes a long time to drive to work because: most everyone is driving at the same time, the roads are way over capacity, workplaces are far from residences and from existing transit systems, employers don't trust employees to telecommute, no one will spend the money to expand transit systems and the NIMBYs won't permit new roads to be built near them. It takes a long time to get a task at work done because it requires the input and/or approval of so many different people, most of whom have little or no interest in seeing the task completed. It takes forever to get through the express line at the supermarket because one customer feels she's too important to obey the no checks rule (and the supermarket is too cowardly to 86 her!). Any wonder that so many ads for trucks are about running over or around obstacles? Fight or flight is what people want. Too rarely, though, do they make the effort to come up with creative solutions that can obliterate real obstacles in their lives. It can be done --indeed it must be unless one wants to meet a most unpleasant end.
Still, even though I eschew the house in the country, the fast track and the latest of everything, "at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot drawing near" - that's just because I'm sentient. If I were living 30 or 300 or 3000 years ago, it still would have been the same. That line of poetry (from Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress) is from the 1680s and echoes many writers from many centuries before him -another example of "there is nothing new under the sun." All of our futures are ever accelerating and ever contracting - something we have in common with all our predecessors and any future generations that survive the consequences of today's blinding stupidity. Carpe diem is still as good a piece of advice now as it was centuries ago to the Metaphysical poets or centuries before that in Rome before its Empire or centuries before that still when Qoheleth recorded similar thoughts in what is now known as the Book of Ecclesiastes. Those of us who seize the day generally have a clear (and quite unusual) set of priorities so we do not find ourselves short of time or rushed, despite moving so very much faster than the maddening crowd - because we move purposefully.
I wrote you a while back (6 months ago exactly, oddly enough) as the Prisoner of Suburbia. I'm delighted to report that I've since escaped. I now live and work in Los Angeles - in two of its few real neighborhoods (as opposed to suburban developments). The area where I live is too new for my tastes as it was not developed until the late 1940s, but since a great plurality of the neighbors are observant Jews, who resolutely refuse to drive on Shabbat, it isn't entirely auto-centric and, thus, is quite livable. I work in an area that's been developed since before the beginning of the decline of civilization (the widespread use of cars). There are scores, if not hundreds, of cultural experiences (museums, churches, parks, lunchtime concerts, boutiques and restaurants that are neither fast-food nor charmless chains) within a fifteen minute walk from my desk. No one who works in an office ghetto, as so-called office parks should be known, can claim that. Unfortunately given the choices of the majority of Angelenos, I must drive to work. Fortunately the drive is short by California standards and made somewhat less intolerable by the relative paucity of other drivers that take the route I do. (Stands to reason I'd take the road less traveled!) Of course I would prefer a car-free life, but until I escape California (a few years off for a plethora of reasons), that's not a realistic option.
I work for the something quite like the Asylum's antithesis - a non-profit organization that obviously values its employees much more than it values the furniture. Unlike most non-profits, it can afford to pay a very good wage, so unlike most profit-driven businesses, it does. I'm a temp right now, but I have good reason to hope for more. It isn't perfect, but perfection is too much to expect from an institution that includes humans. It's better than I'd dared hope for and it's what work should be - a place of challenge, camaraderie, reward and, most of all, shared meaningful purpose. And of course unlike the Asylum or accursed Suburbia it's physically situated as a part of a community - not apart from all community.
Just a reminder that perseverance can pay off and that good things still happen to people who don't sacrifice all their time and their soul to the corporation.
The Escaped Inmate (f/k/a the Prisoner of Suburbia)
(Read The Escaped Inmate's previous correspondence with The Corporate Asylum)
Dear Escapee,Good to hear from you again. Glad you have escaped.
Forgive me if I gave you the impression that I thought speed was the problem with modern society in the sense of fast travel, fast computers, the quick dissemination of ideas or swift ways of communicating. Nor is technology the problem. I love new technology--I love the internet--I had no pangs of guilt when I dumped my MacPlus for a newer Performa. Nor is progress in and of itself the problem. I believe we progress in a scientific/technological sense but not in philosophical one--the big questions have always been, ultimately, unanswerable.
You are right about priorities. I was reading recently in the newspaper an article about CEO's and other high level executives who have to balance time between their jobs and families. Most of the article put the blame on society, culture and corporations. It wasn't until the end that Amy Gage wrote, ". . . American men do have a choice. They just may not like living with the consequences." Those consequences involve smaller salaries, not moving up as fast and maybe having to change some diapers. Not a good way to confirm one's masculinity in today's culture.
Your Utopia has little, if any, chance of being realized in the near future(not that you think it does either), so it is up to individuals to create their own niches of sanity, which, I think, is essentially what you are saying.
Unfortunately, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, had absolutely no chance of being a better movie in its first week than those following. Why? It was a horrible movie to begin with, and that horribleness is a constant regardless of when or where you had the misfortune to see it.
The Inmate
Received 6 April 1999 from The Prisoner of Suburbia
Your asylum sounds like something akin to an earthly paradise compared to the place of my confinement.One of the most hellish aspects of my confinement is its remoteness. There are no signs of human life within miles of this place. Occasional squat bunkers interrupt a sea of asphalt. Horticultural flotsam and jetsam are scattered haphazardly. They only draw attention to the fact that this is a place that actively dishonors every aspect nature, horticultural, human, you name it. Your asylum bustles with people. Here people are invisible, stuck in mechanical transportation devices whenever they're not in the bunkers. These machines suck the very life out their occupants, sometimes slowly, sometimes abruptly. Your asylum at least has a large number of humans in it and, presumably, some of the support systems to keep humans alive. Here humans are little more than parasites connected to the gross machines.
Your asylum has sidewalks. No such amenities here. Not even straight roads, which would at least be relatively easy for the machines to traverse. Here no road is straight. The roads swerve irrationally to and fro. The roads are few and far between, so they are always filled to and beyond capacity. The great numbers of huge machines moving along the few meandering roads make transportation exceedingly slow and arduous. The lack of ready transportation combined with the great distance to any sign of human life combine as a most effective means of confinement.
The settlement camps where the authorities encourage us to stay during the few hours we aren't either in the bunker or the machine are warrens of soulless little cells that exist primarily to shelter the machines during their dormant cycles. They are splayed into unpleasant little accidents of geography, like the edges of canyons. The settlement camps actually bear a great resemblance to the asylum, but they are splayed out horizontally rather than vertically, for convenience of the machines.
Once the people are in the bunker for a time, they are constantly belittled and humiliated, particularly if they show signs of independent thought. This is true regardless of their putative status. These bunkers are thought to be the inspiration for the Borg from Star Trek where assimilation is the goal and resistance is futile. Each unfortunate who is placed in charge of other unfortunates is subjected to abuse from above. In many cases, the degree of abuse actually may increase the higher up the organization one is.
While all thoughts are punished, some emotions are allowed, particularly anger, rage, fury, sadness, guilt and despair. These are all officially encouraged. Should one attempt to permanently leave this place, their personal mechanical monster will almost certainly destroy them. Communication with the outside world is allowed, but strictly limited and monitored.
The limitations on thought and emotion combined with the symbiotic relationship with transportation machines and rationing of communication tend to make the people confined here to become more and more machine-like themselves. The higher up one gets, the more one becomes a mere extension of the mechanical monster.
Your asylum at least has rumors of parts that are good and humane. Here there are no such rumors. Every day is worse than the one before. There is virtually no escape. There is scant hope.
To compound the situation, none of the physical attributes of this place are made properly. The maxim that every object now in existence will be someone's garbage someday is truer here than anywhere else. Most of the furniture and buildings are falling apart. Some bunkers are being demolished and replaced with newer ones that are built to be replaced before they're paid for. Even Kafka's settings are scenes of pastoral bliss compared to this.
Once I worked somewhere that was much like the asylum and, like you, I had free run of a rather big chunk of it. I didn't appreciate how, for all its absurdities and aspirations to abusiveness, it really wasn't as bad as it could be. It doesn't snuff out every bit of hope. Even the most veteran wardens show some signs of being human. Grim circumstances brought me to this most heinous of all places. I advise you to be glad that you are in the asylum rather than this place.
Those few that escape this place are inevitably delighted to do so, but the scars this place leaves on them may be permanent. No one who has escaped here has yet fully recovered.
I didn't believe in purgatory until I had been here for a couple years. Then I realized that this place is quite like purgatory, a place of hellish torments that lasts for an unbearably long time, though not, technically, forever.
A prisoner of suburbia.
Received 30 March 1999
[It should be noted that although the following is an actual e-mail it is not a real one. Let me explain. This e-mail comes from a friend of mine, someone I have known for over twenty years, another inmate who has worked on many floors of The Asylum. It exudes, to my amusement, the same sarcasm I have witnessed on countless other occasions. Although I did not know he was going to send this I cannot pass this off as genuine correspondence in the same way that an advertising firm might in order to sell something that you do not need. I will, however, answer it as if it is real. I do this for two reasons: I need the practice and I want would be correspondents to know what is expected of them and what to expect from The Inmate.]
This is bullshit. Life is what you make it. If you're unhappy being in your asylum then get out and create your own business. Someone wise said the world hates a complainer. If you're being mistreated then deal with it. If your food is bland, then deal with it. If your work environment is boring, then deal with it. Take matters into your own hands. You sound intelligent. If you spent as much time working on changing your asylum as you do this web site you might change your situation.
The Rugged Individualist
The Inmate RespondsFirst, I would like to comment on an incorrect assumption on the part of The Rugged Individualist. I do not work on this website--I play on it and play is far superior to work. Secondly, I agree with much of what is said here. Employees have to "deal" with the environment where they have chosen to work(that's why I had to smuggle in the food, good garden stuff not that supermarket crap, and medication). To survive well in The Asylum it must be taken advantage of or it may take advantage of you. If that is not possible then it will be necessary to leave. But no Asylum is an ideal situation even though it may be tolerable. To simply label criticism as "complaining" is to avoid the issue(that's always easier, a strange road to take for a "Rugged Individualist") and the issue here is a corporate culture that often, not always, has little regard for employees. Valid criticism can contribute to changing bad situations. Simone Weil wrote, "There are collectivities which, instead of serving as food, do just the opposite: they devour souls. In such cases the social body is diseased, and the first duty is to attempt a cure . . ." Cures can be painful. As for "Rugged Individualism," it is ironic that this "Rugged Individualist" would use those words to describe himself or herself since it is one of the most frequent clichés being bandied about by millions trying to convince themselves of their uncommon individuality and hence its use is a form of conformity not individualism. A truly wise man, William Hazlitt, wrote, "The wisest man is the slave of opinion, except on one or two points on which he strikes out a light for himself and holds a torch to the rest of the world." As for me, I am no "Rugged Individualist." I am The Inmate.
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