Who are you trying to kid??

If you've spent more than 5 minutes or so working in the corporate environment you'll know that most of the activity that takes place bears little relevance to the supposed outputs of said environment. When I first entered the corporate environment about a quarter of a century ago it took me quite a while to understand the subtle nuances; I was naive enough to believe that we were there to perform work and get remuneration.

The place where I work has, of late, become a corporate environment. It's not as though it wasn't needed; believe me, some discipline was needed. But along the way we seem to have accumulated the worst excesses of the corporate environment. Things like 'disciplinary action up to and including termination' accompany every corporate edict. Or things like enforcing 8:30 to 5:15. Never mind that every Tuesday I'm expected to attend a teleconference that starts at 5:15, let alone the expectation that I'll jump on a plane on 3 hours notice and lose yet another weekend.

I'm looking for another job but given that it took me 18 months to find this badly paid slavery you can understand that I'm a trifle reluctant to force the issue. Taking out US Citizenship might help; it's surprising how many jobs in my trade in the Phoenix area require US Citizenship.

The other thing one notices when working in a corporate environment is the way that certain people try to foster the idea that they work 24 hours a day. It's become much easier to perform this fakery since the advent of email. Thus it comes as no surprise that a response to an email I wrote on Thursday morning about 11 AM arrived in my inbox at 10:30 PM on Sunday evening. Presumably we're all supposed to marvel at Ed's dedication.

But Ed doesn't fool me. I know his sort and I've outlived more than one Ed.