Dostoyevsky and The Office

Duck you, Pay me.

Remember the day you used my buddy’s slide and didn’t give her credit for it?

Duck you, Pay me.

Remember when you, a middle-aged married man, detained our twenty-something (also) unpaid intern after hours?

When I challenged you about it, you laughed nervously and said you were “helping” her to set up her work phone. Her work phone is a tool to be set up and used for YOUR benefit during working hours not at close of business when YOU have time and she watches everybody flooding out of the office for the Christmas holidays. Remember you are also paying her $0.

Duck you, Pay me (and her).

Remember approaching me at 4pm one Friday afternoon in November about an assignment?

Remember that I indicated I was on my way out the door?

Remember detaining me until 6pm because YOU had time even though I wanted to go home? Remember me ever mentioning that I had three teenage sons? Did it ever occur to you that they might be impatient to eat their dinner? Did it even concern you in the slightest that I had a family I wanted to get home to? I couldn’t refuse because I was not at the time aware that your company never intended to employ me despite pretending otherwise.

Duck you, Pay me.

Remember the day that you continued to insist that all four of us: you, my buddy, the second unpaid intern and I finish processing orders before eating lunch?

Normally we eat at 11.30.

The end kept dragging on and on as our blood sugar continued to fall.

All three of us dropped hints about lunchtime.

At one o’clock, last call for the canteen, you commented that we had used the morning to process the orders, which ignored the fact that you had continued to work us to long past our lunchtime and minimized the contribution of the three others (women) besides yourself, (two of whom were unpaid interns) who participated.

When I pointed out that we had used a pretty good chunk of the afternoon too, you whined that you were tired of everybody being negative.

Happens all the time you said.

You were tired of it.

I said nothing and neither did anyone else.

I felt embarrassed for you.

Duck you, Pay me.

Isn’t the department losing revenue because of a huge backlog? You won’t hire any new people to take up the backlog, despite your higher-ups having allocated resources for that very purpose. You chose instead to milk every last ounce of energy out of the current employees and exploit the slave labour of the internship system while enriching yourself in the process.

Remember the very first day I worked at your company you told me that there was a ”culture of complaining” in the group from the members you’d inherited from your predecessors?

“I am surprised to hear that” I said, not that they were complaining but that you ran them down behind their backs.

Duck you, Pay me.

Remember the time you “forgot” to invite me to a department meeting despite having been reminded by my buddy on two occasions? I was in the bathroom on the phone trying to get a real job when I got back in and a young male colleague informed me that everyone was in the meeting room. In the course of the meeting, you said:

Nobody likes to be ignored. I won’t allow it to happen to me

Remember when it was my turn to speak, I pointed out that you objected to being ignored yourself but didn’t think twice about ignoring other people, for example, not inviting me to the meeting was kind of like ignoring me.

Remember you told another colleague to stop talking.

Five minutes later you looked at your agenda and read the next item: The Atmosphere in the Department.

You talked for a few minutes about how we could be more polite to each other and refrain from snapping even though we were overworked.

This! This!

Just moments after pulling rank and basically telling my colleague to STFU.

You began to make excuses:

I am under a lot of pressure. I’m buying a house

Holy Mother of Jesus! You’re expecting sympathy from a “poor” who lives under constant threat of eviction! You can afford to buy a house in one of the most beautiful, atmospheric towns in the whole country and you’re looking for sympathy from your subordinates!

“Go whine to your own boss,” I wanted to shout at you, “Nobody here has any sympathy for your first-world problems.” But the power differential loomed tall and I kept my mouth shut, almost.

Duck you, Pay me.

TALES From Underground was my final Secret-Santa gift to you.

I gave you “Tales from Underground” in the hope that you would become a little more sympathetic to the plight of people not as rich as you, those who are marginalized in our society.

I worked (involuntarily) for free for three months to enrich you, so you could pay cash on the nail for the new iPhone and make a scene about that TV in your new house that you talked so much about.

Instead of doing the decent thing and paying me for saving your company from fines, the other manager called the employment exchange behind my back to ask for an extension of an unpaid internship.

Remember the time you complained at lunchtime about the lefties wanting your money?

We don’t want your money, we want OUR money.

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