Voting for their Amusement!
By: Art Jannicelli

The sun glared majestically off the Mclending downtown HQ like a giant black monolith. The glare in my eyes was only one reason I loathed that building, it’s parking garage was very symbolic of Mclending’s loathing of its own human resources. Only managers and people who paid out of pocket were allowed to park in their garage. So instead of turning into the well lit convenient parking, I continued down another block to Market and made a left.

After another block of dodging homeless people meandering between traffic trying to wash windows I made it to the employee parking lot and paid $4 for the privilege of parking across from a Phoenix Halfway house. I drove into the lot and parked my car, as I got out and slammed my door and set my alarm.

I then heard an awful groaning, like my car had a terrible hangover and was being woken up far to early. Nope, never mind not my car I realized as a beanie covered head rose from behind my car rubbing his crusty raccoon eyes in his black and red checkered flannel I had just woken a homeless man sleeping in our parking lot. I promptly apologized for waking him, slung my laptop bag over my shoulder and started my walk to work.

As I reached the sidewalk, I had to walk sideways to avoid stepping on the sleeping masses. As I came to the first cross-walk it became a new game of avoiding eye-contact as I was bombarded with calls for change. As I neared the corner I needed to turn to make it to the front of my building I was greeted with a warm good morning, by a gentlemen relieving himself on the side of our building who seemed to be particularly enjoyed cleaning our windows.

As I turned the corner, I was reminded again we were just the mortgage servicing department not sales. One block down stood the awesome Mclending corporate head quarters a small square skyscraper of black glass. The next block down is our building a dirty white, graffiti marred three story building. There is parking in front of our building but once again it is reserved for management even on holiday weeks when the lot is empty. It’s just not possible to find any management thanksgiving or the last week of the year.

I walked through the door past security who was engrossed in his breakfast donut, coffee, and sports section. I’d hate to interrupt him by making him check my bag for explosives weapons, or my identity; ahead of me for as far as I could see grey carpeting, cubicles, and dirty walls. I could already hear the hum of personal fans everywhere, I hoped it wasn’t going to be a hot day since our AC never seemed to be able to cool the building decently.

I made it to my cubicle and noted the calendar August 11 th 2003. As I booted up my windows 95 machine, I decided to ignore my voicemail and go to the cafeteria to hunt up some breakfast. The cafeteria is a vending machine paradise there is a massive coffee machine, and several types of food and beverage dispensers if you have the change without a single free item.

With my coffee and vending machine bagel in hand I headed back to my cubicle. Since it was now past 8am the harpies in the cubicles next to mine were beginning their morning ritual of discussing yesterday’s Springer episode and what crappy human beings their babies daddies are without a single redeeming human quality, despite at some point making the disastrous decision of screwing them.

So there in my Inbox was an email from our VP requesting we fill out our employee satisfaction survey before lunch:

Question 1, How would you describe the parking situation?

Well dismal, I shouldn’t have to pay for it across from a half way house and run a gauntlet of bums when you are selling spaces below the corporate building less then 2 blocks away.

Question 2, How would you rate your building?

From the outside a dirty white graffiti marred building surrounded by a rod iron fence to keep the bums from humping the glass as opposed to peeing on the opaque windows we have now does not look like a happy place to work. The interior is not much better with the inept security, gray featureless accents, loud talking without white noise, poor AC and air circulation period, ancient computers and office machines, and a cafeteria lacking not only free coffee but napkins and utensils as well do not make me long to be in the office.

Question3, How happy are you with your compensation?

Like everyone else here we are at least 25% underpaid but because we want to work in Stockton rather then commute we take your low pay.

After submitting my reply to the survey a few hours later I got an email that were going to have a meeting to discuss the results of the survey that afternoon in the cafeteria at a staff meeting.

So that afternoon we were herded into the cafeteria for a meeting where we were invited to have a single Costco freezer juice popsicle. Upon sitting down our VP Janet Towelly proceeded to explain the popsicles were in celebration of this month’s employee birthdays. She then asked all those employees to rise and come to the front of the room so we could all sing happy birthday to these poor embarrassed coworkers. (growing up I hated being born on xmas, as an adult it is great though, you never have to suffer through corporate birthdays and I can irritate my mom by telling her she should have named me Jesus’ ” Once that humiliation was at an end, Janet moved on to more pressing business this mornings surveys.

“According to these survey’s you all hate this building, parking is ridiculous, and you all feel under compensated.” said Janet. The silence was thick like the tension as Janet stared down her subordinates who were going to damage her raise component dependent on employee job satisfaction. Finally Janet open her mouth and said, “So obviously…. None of you understood how to fill these surveys out. So we are going to take this opportunity to fill them out together, so please take a pen and survey as they are passed around….” She then clicked on an overhead and told us how we felt….

In the end nothing changed until the staff was liquidated a couple years later by budget cuts, except for Janet Towelly.

Ultimately like voting in a two party system without real choices, your only real choice is to choose not to help legitimize that system by voting.