I really like this website because somebody will be like “there’s nothing wrong with darting out from behind a parked car into traffic, bootlicker” and you can be like okay this clearly evolved from a valid point about how the US is too car-centric. But something happened to it.
all the rights that come with marriage you should be able to have without marriage btw. you should be able to designate a person who can visit you in the hospital regardless of your relationship to that person.
you can? it's called an advance directive and if you're not on good terms with your family or have close relationships they don't know about, you should make one
or - more accurately - typically a hospital limits visitors when you are unable to make the decision yourself about who is allowed to see you. They will consult your next of kin (and if you don't specifically have someone designated via an advanced directive, the pattern for someone of the age of majority is generally spouse -> children of majority age -> parents -> siblings of majority age in order of age -> more distant relatives, stopping at the first person on this list who exists. For children, it's whoever is the legal guardian) and then that person gets to make decisions about who can visit. So if you are on good terms with the person who would automatically be next of kin, and don't want to designate someone else, you should communicate with them about who you would want to be allowed to visit you.
here's some more information
In times of emergency, you may be unable to make medical decisions or state who you want to visit you. In these situations, hospitals may re
This is presented from an angle that assumes you're queer, due to the queer community's history with this problem especially during the AIDS crisis, but it applies no matter what your situation is
"Sewing is a gateway drug to thinking through complex problems. It seems really simple; culturally, we make it women's work. Let me tell you: real sewing at any kind of level of proficiency is a bloody magic trick. Sewing, like mold making, involves mental frames that require one to think inside out and backwards. It requires one to work on an order of operations that is often taking into account the reverse. It's a really, really important skill, and if you learn how to sew, you're mostly on your way to carpentry and welding and sheet metal work. I'm not kidding: these are planar forms meeting under rules and conditions. And if you can make a sleeve work, I swear to God, you could build a house."
i made a post like this before but I can't find it now. so. I'll just redo it.
What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?
It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.
My first news thing I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. I vaguely remember watching the news with my grandparents before that, but that's the first story I remember, in part because my second grade teacher had us go play so she could watch the verdict 😂
1992 Los Angeles riots. My family was living in LA, we were actually just preparing to move so it's this weird mess of boxes and burning and my parents being outraged (not surprised) at the outcome of the trial. I feel like that being the first news story I can remember is very on brand since it was my parents who taught me how to protest.
I vaguely remember the Iran-Contra scandal being on TV a lot when I was about 7-8, and it was like, I'm pretty sure I don't have to know about this yet. But somehow I kinda knew about it anyway.
I'm not sure if it's Diana dying or the OKC bombing. That is to say - the OKC bombing happened first but I'm not sure if the memory is actually seeing the news the day it happened, or later tributes 1 year on or something.
But yeah I became aware of the world around 1995-96 and immediately got hit by OKC, Diana dying, JonBenet Ramsey, Columbine, September 11, anthrax, Iraq, peak oil, 5 years of the 2008 financial crisis, Russia invades Ukraine I, 5 years of Trump's bullshit, 3 years of Covid, Russia invades Ukraine II, inflation like we haven't seen since the 70s, and (thus far) 3 more years of Trump's bullshit.
Life has been a long road and I don't recommend it
Corporate and you: how to handle large scale group organizing and master bureaucracy without going fucking insane.
So, couple disclaimers at the beginning. This is the how to survive Corporate and why you need to learn bureaucracy rant I mentioned a few days back. This is based on my 12 years working (and thriving!) in a Corporate environment based around the US but not being physically living in the US. It's also the result of 20 years doing consistent activist work with large scale organizations and doing mostly logistics support.
Full disclosure, the realization this rant needed to exist came from a very popular blog chronicling a Bad Work Spiral and a friend sharing that with me, and me having a Weird Uncomfortable reaction to it. I will not be linking to this person because they're already having a really shitty time of it, and having a random stranger they don't know from Adam writing commentary on how to avoid landing in that kind of situation seems to me deeply unkind.
I want to be clear and upfront about this from the beginning: these observations are not meant to absolve an abusive, toxic workplace just because it's Corporate. What I'm trying to do is give you tools to navigate boundaries in Large Groups Of People, of which Corporate is one of the most common places you will find yourself in. Not knowing how to navigate the dynamic makes you vulnerable to exploitation; it never makes you responsible for it.
So with that in mind:
What the fuck is Corporate?
Colloquially, Corporate is the name we give large labor forces that are organized under a single hierarchy and function under a distinct identity. I'm talking about the work force and not the Corporation itself, because as part of the fun (read: unconscionable and corrupt) structure of modern day Capitalism, a Corporation is just a piece of paper that obscures individual ownership of things. We're not talking about the legal and financial entity of a Corporation (and the source of all those fraud ads about not paying taxes if you set up an S-Corp! Totes legit!).
I'm talking about the labor force. I'm talking about the actual people that make up a Corporation and how those people are organized and how that structure works.
Corporate at its core is bureaucracy under another name. Privatized bureaucracy, to tell it apart from Government bureaucracy, which is also deeply stigmatized and presented as an inescapable labyrinth that no mere mortal can traverse. This is equally bullshit. Don't buy that snappy, snarky nonsense. If governance and organized labor are inaccessible and incomprehensible, that only means they're forever out of reach. That you have no hope of affecting change or taking control of it.
That's a lie.
Ultimately Corporate is just a way to organize a large group of people to more or less effectively get shit done. And I know. I know. You've worked in Corporate and spent hours doing nothing. You think Corporate is the most inefficient fucking thing to ever exist. There's meetings and meetings and endless chains of emails. "Middle Management" is just a bunch of assholes collecting a large paycheck for doing nothing!
But see, that's the propaganda. That's taking your misunderstanding of how Corporate works and weaponizing it to keep you out. To keep you from seeing the purposefulness of it. If you don't understand WHY things are done a certain way, you can't identify who made those decisions and who benefits from them. And you can't really tell, at a glance, if you're dealing with a Corporate entity you want to interact with or not.
Ultimately, Corporate is bureaucracy: it assigns a role to each person and each role comes with responsibilities. What is obscured in most cases is how these roles and responsibilities interact with each other. And that's where people fail.
How it breaks down.
Let's say, for example, that you're hired as a secretary or personal assistant. And one of your roles is to manage meetings for your boss. Their entire job is meetings, it seems, with all sorts of people. And your job is to make sure their calendar doesn't contradict itself, and maybe that the meeting room is setup properly, for each meeting: i.e., if they need to present, there's a projector or the right cables or the right speaker, etc.
This is pretty straightforward, right? And when you're first hired to work Corporate, it really does feel like it's a simple job. You can manage someone's calendar. Send a few emails. Sure. And then friction happens: two very important, very busy people want to meet with your boss on the same day and at the same time. Or something is broken, in the meeting room.
The first friction, double-booking, is within the scope of your job. You need to reach out to their secretaries and negotiate time and see if it's possible to reschedule or move things around: you might need to reschedule other meetings and reshuffle the entire calendar to accommodate. But that IS your job. To manage the calendar. And that's something to keep track of to show you're doing your job properly. That you send cordial emails or networked with other secretaries to resolve this with a real time chat instead of a long email trail. Or traded favors to shuffle schedules, etc. That's within your role. That's something you're expected to do.
The second friction, however, it's not part of your job. It's a trap waiting to snare the unaware. Because your job is to make sure the meeting room is ready to be used. But your job is not to fix whatever was broken. And here is where the nature of bureaucracy/Corporate breaks some people. Some people will look at a frayed cable or a missing speaker and go "that's an easy fix, I just need to go to the hardware store." And what's worse, they'll do it. Out of their own pocket, they will pay for a cable or a speaker or what have you, and personally fix the problem. And they will feel very accomplished and satisfied with themselves. They will note this down and present it as "going above and beyond" when they talk about their performance with their boss. "Look at me," they say, "I'm fixing SO MANY THINGS."
Well, we have a name for people like that, in the Corporate sphere: The Well-meaning Idiot.
Because they're idiots. Full stop. They're in fact fucking up and documenting they're fucking up, and they're so busy self-congratulating over how Good They Are At Work, that they don't notice all the ways they've fucked up royally. But they're not mean-spirited idiots or actively trying to cause problems. They're well-meaning. They are trying their best.
It's just that their best doesn't work.
How it's SUPPOSED to work.
I know, I know. Hear me out. The thing about working in Corporate, is that there is probably someone whose job is to "fix frayed cables" and "replace missing speakers." There's probably a policy or an intake or a way to contact them and say "look, this meeting room needs to be ready by this time, and this needs to be fixed by then." And they would be able to help you deal with that friction without having to pay out of pocket for things. Or worse, they might not be able to help, because they're understaffed or underfunded, and your request not being fulfilled could be a blessing to them. Because they might have been telling their boss "we need more people/money" for months, but their boss can't actually give them anything, because there's no evidence of it. No one has complained. No one has documented it.
You went out of your way to be "a team player" and "think outside the box" and sure. You fixed your problem. But systemically. Structurally. The problem remains. The "fix cables and missing speakers" team is still understaffed and underfunded. Your fix is temporary. And possibly only benefiting you, individually. After all, if you bought the cable, you're not leaving it in the meeting room. That's your cable! You keep it for yourself and your boss' meetings.
But you will never be repaid for that cable. And you will not be graded on that cable, either. Because it's not part of your job so it's not something you're expected to do. It will get you a pat in the back and maybe some warm, social capital and maybe being treated as "a hero". But it won't reflect in your performance or your metrics or the things that decide if you get a better salary.
And that's the view that people don't see, about Corporate. Corporate runs on failure.
What you should have done was raise a request with that other team. And if they replied back and said "sorry, we're backed up and it's not possible for us to do this now"? You escalate to your boss. "Hey boss, FYI, the meeting room is not going to be ready for this meeting: the cable is broken and the team responsible doesn't have time/money to fix it." And then your boss - if they're a good boss - sends an email to the boss of that team, asking to be prioritized. To get it solved. And now there's documentation. There's evidence of an impact. So the boss of THAT team can reach out to THEIR boss and be like "see? I need more people/money." And because there's evidence, there's documentation, there's a paper trail, there's a bunch of people from varying ranks in the hierarchy speaking up about this being necessary? Yeah, something will be done.
The minimum viable solution will be applied.
And it will always be the minimum. As it should be. Remember, the point of a corporation is to make money. The reason there's policies and structures in place that demand evidence before authorizing fixes is because this is a measure against waste.
Imagine a world where, rather than going to the "fix cables and missing speakers" team, you had the option to just. Order a new cable. You don't pay for it, the business does. But you ordered it and they send it to you and it feels like YOUR cable. So instead of leaving it in the meeting room as public property, you decide to keep it. It's yours, after all. I mean, it belongs to the business, but you ordered it and it was given to you. It feels like your work laptop. Yours, but not really. But still yours enough to be exclusive.
What happens if someone else needs to use that meeting room? Well, they'll order their own cable. And now there's multiple cables, for the same meeting room, because without the friction of having a team administering those fixes and having to provide evidence of failure to release resources, you perceive things to belong to you, instead of being common goods.
Corporate policies have a tendency to be misrepresented as inaccessible and archaic and just straight up nonsense. That's propaganda. That's saying "I don't understand why this works this way, therefore it's nonsensical." Instead of "I don't understand why this works this way, therefore I should research and try to learn more." It's a thought-ending cliche designed to keep you from learning how to navigate this kind of dynamic.
And it's important that you learn how to navigate this dynamic. That you get comfortable and used to the fact "failure drives action" and "evidence justifies results."
Because that's how large scale groups of people operate.
Sike! We were talking about bureaucracy the entire time.
Bureaucracy runs on failure. Bureaucracy requires evidence of failure, in order to dispense a fix. The reason for this approach is to prevent waste. Waste can take many shapes! It can be money or food or time or people.
Bureaucracy is the best way humans have found to coordinate large scale groups of people towards a common goal. In the case of governments, to distribute and administrate common resources towards the common good. (Think, spending tax money towards improvements for the community.) In smaller scales, like activist groups or common good advocacy or sociocracy organizations the point is to divide labor up and distribute available resources towards specific goals.
Here's the thing though. In real life, we're not playing with cheats on. Money runs out. People burn out. Corporate (and bureaucracy) is frustrating and annoying until you realize the whole point is to preserve whatever resources we have and trying to route them to best possible recipient. This means people go without. This means there's always someone getting left behind.
That is the cruel reality of not having enough resources to do all the things you want to do. And in the majority of social endeavors you find yourself organizing large scale groups of people? You will not have enough resources pretty much ever. This is where compromises come from. This is where concessions and negotiation comes in.
This is where ideological purity seekers get shattered inside out and refuse to engage with the system. Any system.
Because there's not enough to go around to fix EVERYTHING. And if you don't understand how priorities are built, you are never going to be able to advocate for YOUR priorities to be taken seriously. You need to document failure. You need to build evidence. You need to SPEAK the language of bureaucracy, to get what you want.
But failure feels bad!
The elephant in the room is that failure sucks tho. Failure feels bad. Failure might require people to incur harm. Preventable harm! Harm that you could personally stop if only you step out of your role and-
Nope, nope. Look, I get it. I do. I'm brown and queer and fat and neurodivergent and VERY expendable. I understand there's a human cost, down the line. I understand there's a level of detachment and cruelty to requiring failure to action... and even then it doesn't guarantee that there WILL be a solution.
What that means is you don't put all your eggs in a single basket. And you become aware of what you personally can do. Where do you fit in the large scale system, what shape of cog are you. And where ELSE might you fit.
Because the thing that people forget in the midst of being paralyzed by the horrors is that there ARE multiple systems in action at the same time. Sure, there's government: but there's Federal and Local and State government. And even outside government, there's private and public support networks.
The lie is the idea that there's only one singular system and it's too complex and big to change or move with any kind of velocity. This is a lie. There are MANY and multiple systems of varying sizes and speeds, to respond to your needs. The more urgent your needs, the smaller the system you need to push for, because it's less numerical and more personable.
But the bigger the problem, the more long-lasting the solution you want, the bigger the system you want to tackle.
One of the most important things I have ever learned in my time as an activist has been the ability to scope out a problem and match it to the right size of system to interact with. Because yes, actually, it's insane to tell someone who is fucking starving "I get it, you're hungry, but we need DATA of starving people in order to start the multi-year process of reallocating resources to get people like you food." It's fucking evil!
It doesn't mean it's not true.
But you can get that data from a soup kitchen that's serving starving folk. You can route the starving individual to a immediate fix for their FUCKING STARVATION, while also engaging with the soup kitchen to use their data and use it as evidence to pressure local government.
All of these interactions are nuanced and complex, but they boil down to "someone has a job that is JUST to fix this, and by not routing people to them, you're fucking them up and setting them to fail." Think of all the librarians desperately asking people to use their services. Think of all the advocacy non-profits desperately wanting people to attend seminars or workshops. Because that's THEIR job and they have metrics and quotas. Because the resources are limited. And they need to justify the resources they've been given, to keep existing.
So how do I navigate this?
First and foremost, you need to accept that social problems cannot be solved individually. Please stop looking at issues as opportunities for you personally to be a hero.
Instead, figure out the shape of your cog. Where do you sit in any of these systems? And if you don't... then figure out how to join. Join local town halls. Join neighborhood watches. Join local humane aid societies.
Figure out what you are responsible for, and then try to route anything you're not responsible for to the person who is. Give them data. Give them examples. Make sure people and their needs are documented. That they don't end up as a conversation that no one remembers a month later.
Understand what are the metrics your resources are tied to. What do you need to demonstrate to get increased scopes. And also identify what are short-term solutions for those long-term goals that can be passed on to people in need.
Help people understand that challenging and reforming systemic issues is a long-haul, slow, tedious but extremely necessary process, and that it is a distinct thing from helping people who need things immediately. And that very often the people doing one are NOT the people doing the other.
Educate yourself and those around you, and do not let yourself be radicalized into paralysis. Don't let people convince you that you're too small to matter. That you can't possible affect any sort of change anywhere. But also be on guard against the people who see any kind of concession or negotiation as a betrayal. Watch out for attempts to diminish or negate efforts to improve things because they're not efforts to improve ALL things. Whether they know it or not, those people are spewing propaganda and trying to rob you of your ability to impact the world around you. Do no fucking let them.
Sure, sure, Comrade, but what the fuck do I do about my Corporate job?
Fair, fair. My main bone is the fact negativity towards Corporate structures very often bleeds into negativity about bureaucracy, which is truly negativity about large scale organization and the paths to empowerment that individuals have when they join a group of their peers.
And while these are all principles you can apply to your Corporate job, here's a few things to help you decode how to navigate that world:
Read the fucking policies.
Every Corporate job out there has policies in place. These are the ground rules. These are the things that truly dictate what needs to be done and by whom. Sure, a power tripping manager might be giving you all sort of grief, but what matters is the policy.
Read it. Understand it. If you don't understand the policy, ask the person who wrote it until you do. And then follow it.
And if you're ever asked to break or circumvent that policy: DOCUMENT IT. Get it in writing. Don't be aggressive or combative. Play the clueless nerd card.
"I'm sorry, I know in the meeting you told me to do X, but as I understand, it's policy to do Y. Can you confirm you want me to do X?"
If someone wants you, repeatedly, to break policy and is being slimy about confirming it in writing, document it yourself anyway, and consider passing it on to HR.
HR is not the enemy. They're also not your friend.
HR exists to keep the company from being sued. The moment you threaten a lawsuit, that's the moment HR starts treating you as a threat instead of part of the company.
While HR is not your friend and will not go out of its way to look out for you, personally, and you should not expect them to: HR exists to protect the company from lawsuits. Policies were written to enable the company to complete its work, comply with regulatory requirements and avoid lawsuits. When you avoid or break policies, you're a danger to the company and will be targeted by HR. Redirect that shit to whoever is demanding you avoid or break policy and duck your head to avoid the fire.
Do what you're paid to do, not what you think they should pay you to do.
The most important thing to be able to survive and even thrive in Corporate is to know what the fuck they're paying you for. What's your role. What are you responsible for. If at any point you're not sure, go ask your boss. Get it in writing. If your boss can't or won't give you clear expectations of what your role and responsibilities are?
Fucking.
Run.
Do not look back.
Do not let yourself be swayed by promises of future growth or raises.
If you can afford to, quit immediately. Otherwise, start looking for employment elsewhere.
Remember, the whole point of Corporate is that you're a cog in a machine. You have your little scope of what you're responsible for and what people expect you to do. You're the guy who wrangles the calendars. Or the dude who schedules the meetings. Or the guy responsible for replacing frayed cables. The system only works when everyone has a role and they KNOW what their role is.
When your boss can't or won't define your role, your boss is trying to exploit you. If you don't know what you're being paid for, you don't know what counts as extra. You have no real visibility as of what's considered the minimum you should do, or what success looks like. This is a common problem of companies that are large enough to be Corporate, but small enough to still have people who run things on vibes.
Nope. Fuck that. There is no amount of promised pay that makes that kind of environment worthwhile. I promise you, they will exploit you for all they can, squeeze every tiny bit of usability out of you, and then kick you to the curb and scam you out of as much money as they can, on the way out.
Figure out what you're being paid for. Get it in writing. And also get in writing what your boss considers "minimum" and "acceptable." You'll find in Corporate there's always the whole "year end review" about what you did and what you can improve and how to grade your performance. Well, you can't be graded without a metric. If you don't know what your boss thinks is "Satisfactory"? You will never be able to make decisions about your own work.
In toxic work places, this is by design. If you don't know what "good enough" looks like, they expect you to just. Work endlessly. Tirelessly. As hard and as fast and as much as you can. And that's a one way ticket to burnout city.
Which brings us to my favorite piece of Corporate advice:
Do not ever fucking put 100% on anything. Ever.
So the truth of it is, even if your manager isn't actively trying to sabotage you. Even if they're not a massive dick. Anything they see you do once is something they will expect you to do always. Unless you make a big deal out of it and get it in writing that it's a big deal and make an effort to remind them that it's a big deal? Yeah, they saw you do it which means you can do it, which means you should do it.
So no, do not stay late without overtime pay. Do not switch to work a double shift. Do not do more than you're required (BEING PAID FOR), without thoroughly documenting and clearly getting IN WRITING notice that it's a one-off and also what reimbursement you're getting for it.
But I just want to be nice to my coworkers! Right. So you're taking on the extra work instead of letting the system fail and your manager realize they're understaffed and need someone else to join. I mean, are you REALLY understaffed if you're there and able to do the work? For no extra pay? Why would they hire new people?
It all circles back to: what's your place in the machine? What were you hired to do? If they want you to change or move or do more, politely request a meeting with HR and ask to explore your options for further compensation.
You do this for money. They want you desperately to forget it's all about money. Do not fucking let them.
In the most general way, you're exchanging labor for money. However, you should be aware of whether you're selling specific actions/end results, or if you're leasing your time. These are not the same. And one might be better for you than the other.
Here's an example:
I get paid for doing a report. The report is my responsibility. The expectation is that I deliver the report on time. If I'm selling a specific action, that means I will be paid the exact same if I take an hour or forty, building the report. All they care about is that it's delivered on time. And in that scenario, the faster I can make that report, the more my time is worth.
Conversely, if the report is not as important as me being available during a certain hour window to answer questions/respond emails, I am leasing my availability. And since my boss is paying for that window of time, they probably want to see me look busy as much as possible, to feel like they're getting the most out of their investment. But looking busy doesn't mean being busy. And if it's been established that I get a certain amount of hours to do something, and I manage to do it faster? There's no real benefit to anyone about it. Because I will not get a break. I will get more tasks to do. And if it was a fluke, getting rid of new tasks is a lot harder than being assigned them.
You're not a slave. You're not a serf. Your purpose in life is not to be working 24/7.
But what if I'm idle? What if I could be PRODUCTIVE? Are you? Actually productive? Or are you putting the entirety of your sense of self on your ability to be a Good Cog and get a good grade in Working, to the point you sacrifice any kind of freedom and space to breathe you can afford? Are you actually helping or are you being a Well-Meaning Idiot and fixing shit before it fails and therefore ensuring it NEVER gets properly fixed?
It's just a job, dude. As long as you know your role and your responsibilities and you're keeping up with those?
It's okay.
A job should not feel like torture. I get it, we're in a Capitalistic hellscape and everything is awful all the time. But like. Do remind yourself, even if you can't, for any reason, remove yourself from the Torment Nexus that is your job: a job should not feel like torture. You're not insane for wanting to be treated with respect. There are in fact places where you can exchange labor for money and not be routinely exploited. I hope you're able to find one.
But mostly?
Understand the systems around you. Understand the systems you belong to. Identify when they're broken and when they're fixable.
And don't let doomerist bullshit convince you there's no way out.
This whole write up seems to have missed a couple of major sources of problems with this system that I have seen at work and in many other contexts (for example, management of my previous apartment):
The Person Who Doesn't Do Their Job (because they don't care to)
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. Unfortunately, it's not very helpful if that guy repeatedly closes out the ticket for the frayed cable without actually replacing it, and refuses to respond when you try to escalate by calling or emailing instead of submitting another work order.
The Person Who Doesn't Do Their Job (because they are incompetent)
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. Unfortunately, it's not very helpful if that guy replaces the previously frayed speaker cable with a shoddy wiring job that causes the speaker to blow out as soon as you turn it on again.
New Challenger! The Person Who Doesn't Do Their Job (because they want to suck Sam Altman's dick so bad it makes them look stupid)
Surely this schematic AI made of the speaker wiring shows the correct way to replace the cable, and not a nonsensical boondoggle that will take thrice as long to repair as it would have if the manufacturer's published procedures had been followed in the first place. (Bonus points if this person would actually prefer to do their job correctly but is being forced to integrate AI by some level of management who not only want to suck Sam off, but to be sodomized by him on live TV)
The Somebody Else's Problem Loop
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and another assigned to fix speakers. You have a frayed speaker cable. When you contact the cable guy he tells you that's the speaker guy's area and when you contact the speaker guy he tells you it's the cable guy's area. No one is willing to step up and say, the buck stops here, let's get this sorted out and back in working order so your conference room is usable again.
The Absent Management/HR
Theoretically those things above should be building a File on those guys that gets them on a PIP or, in the long term, if you as the person who has to deal with them gets EXTREMELY lucky, let go. But instead they've been at the company for ten years and because they play politics better than you they're actually about to fail upward, maybe even into a job you're much more qualified for. Especially if they're male or white and you're female or not white.
Another way this one manifests is, you escalate that SEP loop to the boss that needs the conference room, and they don't bother to pass that information on to the people who could figure out whose problem it actually is and compel them to do their damn job.
The Management That Shoots The Messenger
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. You scheduled this meeting a week ago, and submitted a work order at that point when you checked the conference room and realized there was a frayed speaker cable. The meeting is this afternoon, it is not fixed, and you have not received so much as a scheduled time to expect the guy assigned to fix cables and speakers despite following up with the cable and speaker department via phone, email, and an in person visit. You send your boss an email explaining that, despite your best efforts, the conference room will not be ready for this afternoon's meeting as the cable and speaker guy has not fixed the speaker cable. You are berated for this and possibly threatened with HR action.
You're Evil For Submitting Work Orders
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. The thing is, in his eyes, if it's a problem you could have possibly handled yourself with a trip to the electronic store and your own money, you should have done, even if it was done on your own time or exorbitantly expensive or otherwise unfair to ask of you and the people who rely on the actual tasks you are employed to perform. He has a lot on his plate right now and doesn't need to be caught up in the small potatoes problems when there are things that actually require an expert to repair. He's going to make sure you know this, and feel awful every time you submit a work order in the future, even if it's really something you couldn't handle yourself. Boy Who Cried Wolf analogies may be used.
This one shows up a LOT in education (itself a form of bureaucracy), particularly the situation where "the guy assigned to fix cables and speakers" are administrators and parents who refuse to back you up when you feel you need to escalate a disciplinary concern out of the classroom, or make you feel like you're the problem for needing their help with a student's discipline repeatedly.
What Money?
Everyone in every department and at every level of management agrees that the company needs to hire another guy in the cable and speaker department, and the data backs this up. There is no money available for this and if they "trim" any more "fat" to make some available, it's probably going to be you that gets "right-sized" out of a job.
Really?
It doesn't matter very much how competent this person is or isn't at their job. You are always going to be miserable as long as they work here because they keep stealing your lunch out of the fridge. (The security camera is broken, so it's repeatedly blown off because there is no evidence. But if you dead dove them you can bet it's you that's getting fired; they'll conveniently manage to find some evidence for that).
------
Basically, the way you've written your original post assumes that the systematic level of the corporation or bureaucracy is not dysfunctional beyond repair, and is in fact robust to the many types of stick one individual can chuck into the spokes to make it dysfunctional beyond repair, and in my experience, that is a RARE phenomenon
While I don't dispute the existence or validity of these failure modes, I think you're missing the point of the exercise.
The point of the post is to demystify the concept of Corporate and some of the common pitfalls that make people turn away at the door, from this kind of large scale organizing.
My main goal is for people to be less apathetic and knee-jerk reactionary about large scale organizing, decrying it as corrupt and broken beyond repair and using that as an excuse to not get involved at all. By all means, not denying the failure modes that you describe are real and often present, but I do dispute the idea that they're insurmountable. Like sure, there are in fact crazy toxic places that one is better off leaving, but sometimes you just. Can't leave. For want of a paycheck. Or for your own safety. It's messy!
But the point of the post is "here's some things people do not understand about how large scale organizing works and that they find baffling or confusing and how to navigate them." And also, a side of "this kind of large scale organizing is the best kind of organizing we've figured out, regardless of hierarchy so it matters that you know how to navigate and play the game so you can get involved in governance for this kind of large scale group."
Like, "a lot of the complaints people have with Corporate are not driven by Corporate being uniquely evil, but by people not knowing how to conduct themselves in large scale organizations."
It's definitely not "Corporate is always good" or "bureaucracy is problem free."
I guess what I'm mainly getting at here is, the main portion of your post summarizes as "you have problems with corporate/bureaucracy! But the ACTUAL problem is that YOU'RE not following the correct Paths and Procedures through the System and if you did that you'd have fewer issues!" But in my experience, I have tried to follow those paths and procedures many different times, in many different contexts, exactly as the policy says, and the result has pretty consistently been that there is some roadblock which keeps the paths and procedures from working as intended (and it's often a single person who is allowed to act like an ass in one of the ways listed above, because they are scratching the right backs when it matters).
Frankly I would love to have a solution for any or all of these, but I figure I'm too stupid to come up with any because I have been trying for half my life at this point and gotten nowhere
Corporate and you: how to handle large scale group organizing and master bureaucracy without going fucking insane.
So, couple disclaimers at the beginning. This is the how to survive Corporate and why you need to learn bureaucracy rant I mentioned a few days back. This is based on my 12 years working (and thriving!) in a Corporate environment based around the US but not being physically living in the US. It's also the result of 20 years doing consistent activist work with large scale organizations and doing mostly logistics support.
Full disclosure, the realization this rant needed to exist came from a very popular blog chronicling a Bad Work Spiral and a friend sharing that with me, and me having a Weird Uncomfortable reaction to it. I will not be linking to this person because they're already having a really shitty time of it, and having a random stranger they don't know from Adam writing commentary on how to avoid landing in that kind of situation seems to me deeply unkind.
I want to be clear and upfront about this from the beginning: these observations are not meant to absolve an abusive, toxic workplace just because it's Corporate. What I'm trying to do is give you tools to navigate boundaries in Large Groups Of People, of which Corporate is one of the most common places you will find yourself in. Not knowing how to navigate the dynamic makes you vulnerable to exploitation; it never makes you responsible for it.
So with that in mind:
What the fuck is Corporate?
Colloquially, Corporate is the name we give large labor forces that are organized under a single hierarchy and function under a distinct identity. I'm talking about the work force and not the Corporation itself, because as part of the fun (read: unconscionable and corrupt) structure of modern day Capitalism, a Corporation is just a piece of paper that obscures individual ownership of things. We're not talking about the legal and financial entity of a Corporation (and the source of all those fraud ads about not paying taxes if you set up an S-Corp! Totes legit!).
I'm talking about the labor force. I'm talking about the actual people that make up a Corporation and how those people are organized and how that structure works.
Corporate at its core is bureaucracy under another name. Privatized bureaucracy, to tell it apart from Government bureaucracy, which is also deeply stigmatized and presented as an inescapable labyrinth that no mere mortal can traverse. This is equally bullshit. Don't buy that snappy, snarky nonsense. If governance and organized labor are inaccessible and incomprehensible, that only means they're forever out of reach. That you have no hope of affecting change or taking control of it.
That's a lie.
Ultimately Corporate is just a way to organize a large group of people to more or less effectively get shit done. And I know. I know. You've worked in Corporate and spent hours doing nothing. You think Corporate is the most inefficient fucking thing to ever exist. There's meetings and meetings and endless chains of emails. "Middle Management" is just a bunch of assholes collecting a large paycheck for doing nothing!
But see, that's the propaganda. That's taking your misunderstanding of how Corporate works and weaponizing it to keep you out. To keep you from seeing the purposefulness of it. If you don't understand WHY things are done a certain way, you can't identify who made those decisions and who benefits from them. And you can't really tell, at a glance, if you're dealing with a Corporate entity you want to interact with or not.
Ultimately, Corporate is bureaucracy: it assigns a role to each person and each role comes with responsibilities. What is obscured in most cases is how these roles and responsibilities interact with each other. And that's where people fail.
How it breaks down.
Let's say, for example, that you're hired as a secretary or personal assistant. And one of your roles is to manage meetings for your boss. Their entire job is meetings, it seems, with all sorts of people. And your job is to make sure their calendar doesn't contradict itself, and maybe that the meeting room is setup properly, for each meeting: i.e., if they need to present, there's a projector or the right cables or the right speaker, etc.
This is pretty straightforward, right? And when you're first hired to work Corporate, it really does feel like it's a simple job. You can manage someone's calendar. Send a few emails. Sure. And then friction happens: two very important, very busy people want to meet with your boss on the same day and at the same time. Or something is broken, in the meeting room.
The first friction, double-booking, is within the scope of your job. You need to reach out to their secretaries and negotiate time and see if it's possible to reschedule or move things around: you might need to reschedule other meetings and reshuffle the entire calendar to accommodate. But that IS your job. To manage the calendar. And that's something to keep track of to show you're doing your job properly. That you send cordial emails or networked with other secretaries to resolve this with a real time chat instead of a long email trail. Or traded favors to shuffle schedules, etc. That's within your role. That's something you're expected to do.
The second friction, however, it's not part of your job. It's a trap waiting to snare the unaware. Because your job is to make sure the meeting room is ready to be used. But your job is not to fix whatever was broken. And here is where the nature of bureaucracy/Corporate breaks some people. Some people will look at a frayed cable or a missing speaker and go "that's an easy fix, I just need to go to the hardware store." And what's worse, they'll do it. Out of their own pocket, they will pay for a cable or a speaker or what have you, and personally fix the problem. And they will feel very accomplished and satisfied with themselves. They will note this down and present it as "going above and beyond" when they talk about their performance with their boss. "Look at me," they say, "I'm fixing SO MANY THINGS."
Well, we have a name for people like that, in the Corporate sphere: The Well-meaning Idiot.
Because they're idiots. Full stop. They're in fact fucking up and documenting they're fucking up, and they're so busy self-congratulating over how Good They Are At Work, that they don't notice all the ways they've fucked up royally. But they're not mean-spirited idiots or actively trying to cause problems. They're well-meaning. They are trying their best.
It's just that their best doesn't work.
How it's SUPPOSED to work.
I know, I know. Hear me out. The thing about working in Corporate, is that there is probably someone whose job is to "fix frayed cables" and "replace missing speakers." There's probably a policy or an intake or a way to contact them and say "look, this meeting room needs to be ready by this time, and this needs to be fixed by then." And they would be able to help you deal with that friction without having to pay out of pocket for things. Or worse, they might not be able to help, because they're understaffed or underfunded, and your request not being fulfilled could be a blessing to them. Because they might have been telling their boss "we need more people/money" for months, but their boss can't actually give them anything, because there's no evidence of it. No one has complained. No one has documented it.
You went out of your way to be "a team player" and "think outside the box" and sure. You fixed your problem. But systemically. Structurally. The problem remains. The "fix cables and missing speakers" team is still understaffed and underfunded. Your fix is temporary. And possibly only benefiting you, individually. After all, if you bought the cable, you're not leaving it in the meeting room. That's your cable! You keep it for yourself and your boss' meetings.
But you will never be repaid for that cable. And you will not be graded on that cable, either. Because it's not part of your job so it's not something you're expected to do. It will get you a pat in the back and maybe some warm, social capital and maybe being treated as "a hero". But it won't reflect in your performance or your metrics or the things that decide if you get a better salary.
And that's the view that people don't see, about Corporate. Corporate runs on failure.
What you should have done was raise a request with that other team. And if they replied back and said "sorry, we're backed up and it's not possible for us to do this now"? You escalate to your boss. "Hey boss, FYI, the meeting room is not going to be ready for this meeting: the cable is broken and the team responsible doesn't have time/money to fix it." And then your boss - if they're a good boss - sends an email to the boss of that team, asking to be prioritized. To get it solved. And now there's documentation. There's evidence of an impact. So the boss of THAT team can reach out to THEIR boss and be like "see? I need more people/money." And because there's evidence, there's documentation, there's a paper trail, there's a bunch of people from varying ranks in the hierarchy speaking up about this being necessary? Yeah, something will be done.
The minimum viable solution will be applied.
And it will always be the minimum. As it should be. Remember, the point of a corporation is to make money. The reason there's policies and structures in place that demand evidence before authorizing fixes is because this is a measure against waste.
Imagine a world where, rather than going to the "fix cables and missing speakers" team, you had the option to just. Order a new cable. You don't pay for it, the business does. But you ordered it and they send it to you and it feels like YOUR cable. So instead of leaving it in the meeting room as public property, you decide to keep it. It's yours, after all. I mean, it belongs to the business, but you ordered it and it was given to you. It feels like your work laptop. Yours, but not really. But still yours enough to be exclusive.
What happens if someone else needs to use that meeting room? Well, they'll order their own cable. And now there's multiple cables, for the same meeting room, because without the friction of having a team administering those fixes and having to provide evidence of failure to release resources, you perceive things to belong to you, instead of being common goods.
Corporate policies have a tendency to be misrepresented as inaccessible and archaic and just straight up nonsense. That's propaganda. That's saying "I don't understand why this works this way, therefore it's nonsensical." Instead of "I don't understand why this works this way, therefore I should research and try to learn more." It's a thought-ending cliche designed to keep you from learning how to navigate this kind of dynamic.
And it's important that you learn how to navigate this dynamic. That you get comfortable and used to the fact "failure drives action" and "evidence justifies results."
Because that's how large scale groups of people operate.
Sike! We were talking about bureaucracy the entire time.
Bureaucracy runs on failure. Bureaucracy requires evidence of failure, in order to dispense a fix. The reason for this approach is to prevent waste. Waste can take many shapes! It can be money or food or time or people.
Bureaucracy is the best way humans have found to coordinate large scale groups of people towards a common goal. In the case of governments, to distribute and administrate common resources towards the common good. (Think, spending tax money towards improvements for the community.) In smaller scales, like activist groups or common good advocacy or sociocracy organizations the point is to divide labor up and distribute available resources towards specific goals.
Here's the thing though. In real life, we're not playing with cheats on. Money runs out. People burn out. Corporate (and bureaucracy) is frustrating and annoying until you realize the whole point is to preserve whatever resources we have and trying to route them to best possible recipient. This means people go without. This means there's always someone getting left behind.
That is the cruel reality of not having enough resources to do all the things you want to do. And in the majority of social endeavors you find yourself organizing large scale groups of people? You will not have enough resources pretty much ever. This is where compromises come from. This is where concessions and negotiation comes in.
This is where ideological purity seekers get shattered inside out and refuse to engage with the system. Any system.
Because there's not enough to go around to fix EVERYTHING. And if you don't understand how priorities are built, you are never going to be able to advocate for YOUR priorities to be taken seriously. You need to document failure. You need to build evidence. You need to SPEAK the language of bureaucracy, to get what you want.
But failure feels bad!
The elephant in the room is that failure sucks tho. Failure feels bad. Failure might require people to incur harm. Preventable harm! Harm that you could personally stop if only you step out of your role and-
Nope, nope. Look, I get it. I do. I'm brown and queer and fat and neurodivergent and VERY expendable. I understand there's a human cost, down the line. I understand there's a level of detachment and cruelty to requiring failure to action... and even then it doesn't guarantee that there WILL be a solution.
What that means is you don't put all your eggs in a single basket. And you become aware of what you personally can do. Where do you fit in the large scale system, what shape of cog are you. And where ELSE might you fit.
Because the thing that people forget in the midst of being paralyzed by the horrors is that there ARE multiple systems in action at the same time. Sure, there's government: but there's Federal and Local and State government. And even outside government, there's private and public support networks.
The lie is the idea that there's only one singular system and it's too complex and big to change or move with any kind of velocity. This is a lie. There are MANY and multiple systems of varying sizes and speeds, to respond to your needs. The more urgent your needs, the smaller the system you need to push for, because it's less numerical and more personable.
But the bigger the problem, the more long-lasting the solution you want, the bigger the system you want to tackle.
One of the most important things I have ever learned in my time as an activist has been the ability to scope out a problem and match it to the right size of system to interact with. Because yes, actually, it's insane to tell someone who is fucking starving "I get it, you're hungry, but we need DATA of starving people in order to start the multi-year process of reallocating resources to get people like you food." It's fucking evil!
It doesn't mean it's not true.
But you can get that data from a soup kitchen that's serving starving folk. You can route the starving individual to a immediate fix for their FUCKING STARVATION, while also engaging with the soup kitchen to use their data and use it as evidence to pressure local government.
All of these interactions are nuanced and complex, but they boil down to "someone has a job that is JUST to fix this, and by not routing people to them, you're fucking them up and setting them to fail." Think of all the librarians desperately asking people to use their services. Think of all the advocacy non-profits desperately wanting people to attend seminars or workshops. Because that's THEIR job and they have metrics and quotas. Because the resources are limited. And they need to justify the resources they've been given, to keep existing.
So how do I navigate this?
First and foremost, you need to accept that social problems cannot be solved individually. Please stop looking at issues as opportunities for you personally to be a hero.
Instead, figure out the shape of your cog. Where do you sit in any of these systems? And if you don't... then figure out how to join. Join local town halls. Join neighborhood watches. Join local humane aid societies.
Figure out what you are responsible for, and then try to route anything you're not responsible for to the person who is. Give them data. Give them examples. Make sure people and their needs are documented. That they don't end up as a conversation that no one remembers a month later.
Understand what are the metrics your resources are tied to. What do you need to demonstrate to get increased scopes. And also identify what are short-term solutions for those long-term goals that can be passed on to people in need.
Help people understand that challenging and reforming systemic issues is a long-haul, slow, tedious but extremely necessary process, and that it is a distinct thing from helping people who need things immediately. And that very often the people doing one are NOT the people doing the other.
Educate yourself and those around you, and do not let yourself be radicalized into paralysis. Don't let people convince you that you're too small to matter. That you can't possible affect any sort of change anywhere. But also be on guard against the people who see any kind of concession or negotiation as a betrayal. Watch out for attempts to diminish or negate efforts to improve things because they're not efforts to improve ALL things. Whether they know it or not, those people are spewing propaganda and trying to rob you of your ability to impact the world around you. Do no fucking let them.
Sure, sure, Comrade, but what the fuck do I do about my Corporate job?
Fair, fair. My main bone is the fact negativity towards Corporate structures very often bleeds into negativity about bureaucracy, which is truly negativity about large scale organization and the paths to empowerment that individuals have when they join a group of their peers.
And while these are all principles you can apply to your Corporate job, here's a few things to help you decode how to navigate that world:
Read the fucking policies.
Every Corporate job out there has policies in place. These are the ground rules. These are the things that truly dictate what needs to be done and by whom. Sure, a power tripping manager might be giving you all sort of grief, but what matters is the policy.
Read it. Understand it. If you don't understand the policy, ask the person who wrote it until you do. And then follow it.
And if you're ever asked to break or circumvent that policy: DOCUMENT IT. Get it in writing. Don't be aggressive or combative. Play the clueless nerd card.
"I'm sorry, I know in the meeting you told me to do X, but as I understand, it's policy to do Y. Can you confirm you want me to do X?"
If someone wants you, repeatedly, to break policy and is being slimy about confirming it in writing, document it yourself anyway, and consider passing it on to HR.
HR is not the enemy. They're also not your friend.
HR exists to keep the company from being sued. The moment you threaten a lawsuit, that's the moment HR starts treating you as a threat instead of part of the company.
While HR is not your friend and will not go out of its way to look out for you, personally, and you should not expect them to: HR exists to protect the company from lawsuits. Policies were written to enable the company to complete its work, comply with regulatory requirements and avoid lawsuits. When you avoid or break policies, you're a danger to the company and will be targeted by HR. Redirect that shit to whoever is demanding you avoid or break policy and duck your head to avoid the fire.
Do what you're paid to do, not what you think they should pay you to do.
The most important thing to be able to survive and even thrive in Corporate is to know what the fuck they're paying you for. What's your role. What are you responsible for. If at any point you're not sure, go ask your boss. Get it in writing. If your boss can't or won't give you clear expectations of what your role and responsibilities are?
Fucking.
Run.
Do not look back.
Do not let yourself be swayed by promises of future growth or raises.
If you can afford to, quit immediately. Otherwise, start looking for employment elsewhere.
Remember, the whole point of Corporate is that you're a cog in a machine. You have your little scope of what you're responsible for and what people expect you to do. You're the guy who wrangles the calendars. Or the dude who schedules the meetings. Or the guy responsible for replacing frayed cables. The system only works when everyone has a role and they KNOW what their role is.
When your boss can't or won't define your role, your boss is trying to exploit you. If you don't know what you're being paid for, you don't know what counts as extra. You have no real visibility as of what's considered the minimum you should do, or what success looks like. This is a common problem of companies that are large enough to be Corporate, but small enough to still have people who run things on vibes.
Nope. Fuck that. There is no amount of promised pay that makes that kind of environment worthwhile. I promise you, they will exploit you for all they can, squeeze every tiny bit of usability out of you, and then kick you to the curb and scam you out of as much money as they can, on the way out.
Figure out what you're being paid for. Get it in writing. And also get in writing what your boss considers "minimum" and "acceptable." You'll find in Corporate there's always the whole "year end review" about what you did and what you can improve and how to grade your performance. Well, you can't be graded without a metric. If you don't know what your boss thinks is "Satisfactory"? You will never be able to make decisions about your own work.
In toxic work places, this is by design. If you don't know what "good enough" looks like, they expect you to just. Work endlessly. Tirelessly. As hard and as fast and as much as you can. And that's a one way ticket to burnout city.
Which brings us to my favorite piece of Corporate advice:
Do not ever fucking put 100% on anything. Ever.
So the truth of it is, even if your manager isn't actively trying to sabotage you. Even if they're not a massive dick. Anything they see you do once is something they will expect you to do always. Unless you make a big deal out of it and get it in writing that it's a big deal and make an effort to remind them that it's a big deal? Yeah, they saw you do it which means you can do it, which means you should do it.
So no, do not stay late without overtime pay. Do not switch to work a double shift. Do not do more than you're required (BEING PAID FOR), without thoroughly documenting and clearly getting IN WRITING notice that it's a one-off and also what reimbursement you're getting for it.
But I just want to be nice to my coworkers! Right. So you're taking on the extra work instead of letting the system fail and your manager realize they're understaffed and need someone else to join. I mean, are you REALLY understaffed if you're there and able to do the work? For no extra pay? Why would they hire new people?
It all circles back to: what's your place in the machine? What were you hired to do? If they want you to change or move or do more, politely request a meeting with HR and ask to explore your options for further compensation.
You do this for money. They want you desperately to forget it's all about money. Do not fucking let them.
In the most general way, you're exchanging labor for money. However, you should be aware of whether you're selling specific actions/end results, or if you're leasing your time. These are not the same. And one might be better for you than the other.
Here's an example:
I get paid for doing a report. The report is my responsibility. The expectation is that I deliver the report on time. If I'm selling a specific action, that means I will be paid the exact same if I take an hour or forty, building the report. All they care about is that it's delivered on time. And in that scenario, the faster I can make that report, the more my time is worth.
Conversely, if the report is not as important as me being available during a certain hour window to answer questions/respond emails, I am leasing my availability. And since my boss is paying for that window of time, they probably want to see me look busy as much as possible, to feel like they're getting the most out of their investment. But looking busy doesn't mean being busy. And if it's been established that I get a certain amount of hours to do something, and I manage to do it faster? There's no real benefit to anyone about it. Because I will not get a break. I will get more tasks to do. And if it was a fluke, getting rid of new tasks is a lot harder than being assigned them.
You're not a slave. You're not a serf. Your purpose in life is not to be working 24/7.
But what if I'm idle? What if I could be PRODUCTIVE? Are you? Actually productive? Or are you putting the entirety of your sense of self on your ability to be a Good Cog and get a good grade in Working, to the point you sacrifice any kind of freedom and space to breathe you can afford? Are you actually helping or are you being a Well-Meaning Idiot and fixing shit before it fails and therefore ensuring it NEVER gets properly fixed?
It's just a job, dude. As long as you know your role and your responsibilities and you're keeping up with those?
It's okay.
A job should not feel like torture. I get it, we're in a Capitalistic hellscape and everything is awful all the time. But like. Do remind yourself, even if you can't, for any reason, remove yourself from the Torment Nexus that is your job: a job should not feel like torture. You're not insane for wanting to be treated with respect. There are in fact places where you can exchange labor for money and not be routinely exploited. I hope you're able to find one.
But mostly?
Understand the systems around you. Understand the systems you belong to. Identify when they're broken and when they're fixable.
And don't let doomerist bullshit convince you there's no way out.
This whole write up seems to have missed a couple of major sources of problems with this system that I have seen at work and in many other contexts (for example, management of my previous apartment):
The Person Who Doesn't Do Their Job (because they don't care to)
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. Unfortunately, it's not very helpful if that guy repeatedly closes out the ticket for the frayed cable without actually replacing it, and refuses to respond when you try to escalate by calling or emailing instead of submitting another work order.
The Person Who Doesn't Do Their Job (because they are incompetent)
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. Unfortunately, it's not very helpful if that guy replaces the previously frayed speaker cable with a shoddy wiring job that causes the speaker to blow out as soon as you turn it on again.
New Challenger! The Person Who Doesn't Do Their Job (because they want to suck Sam Altman's dick so bad it makes them look stupid)
Surely this schematic AI made of the speaker wiring shows the correct way to replace the cable, and not a nonsensical boondoggle that will take thrice as long to repair as it would have if the manufacturer's published procedures had been followed in the first place. (Bonus points if this person would actually prefer to do their job correctly but is being forced to integrate AI by some level of management who not only want to suck Sam off, but to be sodomized by him on live TV)
The Somebody Else's Problem Loop
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and another assigned to fix speakers. You have a frayed speaker cable. When you contact the cable guy he tells you that's the speaker guy's area and when you contact the speaker guy he tells you it's the cable guy's area. No one is willing to step up and say, the buck stops here, let's get this sorted out and back in working order so your conference room is usable again.
The Absent Management/HR
Theoretically those things above should be building a File on those guys that gets them on a PIP or, in the long term, if you as the person who has to deal with them gets EXTREMELY lucky, let go. But instead they've been at the company for ten years and because they play politics better than you they're actually about to fail upward, maybe even into a job you're much more qualified for. Especially if they're male or white and you're female or not white.
Another way this one manifests is, you escalate that SEP loop to the boss that needs the conference room, and they don't bother to pass that information on to the people who could figure out whose problem it actually is and compel them to do their damn job.
The Management That Shoots The Messenger
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. You scheduled this meeting a week ago, and submitted a work order at that point when you checked the conference room and realized there was a frayed speaker cable. The meeting is this afternoon, it is not fixed, and you have not received so much as a scheduled time to expect the guy assigned to fix cables and speakers despite following up with the cable and speaker department via phone, email, and an in person visit. You send your boss an email explaining that, despite your best efforts, the conference room will not be ready for this afternoon's meeting as the cable and speaker guy has not fixed the speaker cable. You are berated for this and possibly threatened with HR action.
You're Evil For Submitting Work Orders
It's great that there's a guy assigned to fix cables and speakers. The thing is, in his eyes, if it's a problem you could have possibly handled yourself with a trip to the electronic store and your own money, you should have done, even if it was done on your own time or exorbitantly expensive or otherwise unfair to ask of you and the people who rely on the actual tasks you are employed to perform. He has a lot on his plate right now and doesn't need to be caught up in the small potatoes problems when there are things that actually require an expert to repair. He's going to make sure you know this, and feel awful every time you submit a work order in the future, even if it's really something you couldn't handle yourself. Boy Who Cried Wolf analogies may be used.
This one shows up a LOT in education (itself a form of bureaucracy), particularly the situation where "the guy assigned to fix cables and speakers" are administrators and parents who refuse to back you up when you feel you need to escalate a disciplinary concern out of the classroom, or make you feel like you're the problem for needing their help with a student's discipline repeatedly.
What Money?
Everyone in every department and at every level of management agrees that the company needs to hire another guy in the cable and speaker department, and the data backs this up. There is no money available for this and if they "trim" any more "fat" to make some available, it's probably going to be you that gets "right-sized" out of a job.
Really?
It doesn't matter very much how competent this person is or isn't at their job. You are always going to be miserable as long as they work here because they keep stealing your lunch out of the fridge. (The security camera is broken, so it's repeatedly blown off because there is no evidence. But if you dead dove them you can bet it's you that's getting fired; they'll conveniently manage to find some evidence for that).
------
Basically, the way you've written your original post assumes that the systematic level of the corporation or bureaucracy is not dysfunctional beyond repair, and is in fact robust to the many types of stick one individual can chuck into the spokes to make it dysfunctional beyond repair, and in my experience, that is a RARE phenomenon
Welcome to the USA! Where our food isn't safe to eat, the air isn't safe to breathe, data centers have priority water access and empty buildings have more rights than human beings do.
A country so free we force our children to recite a loyalty pledge every morning for thirteen years
And if you complain about any of it, then you're an Enemy of Freedom who must be punished.
FWIW, while saying the pledge is certainly normalized and (at some schools) highly encouraged, as long as you are attending a public (state-funded) school you have a constitutionally protected right not to participate. If your school is punishing you that's a pretty cut and dry court case given the mountains of precedent. And by the time you get to high school a lot of schools really do not care. I don't think I said it once in high school, nor did my classmates, and I have substitute taught at several different high schools and none of their kids cared either. They WILL make you stop walking in the hall for the moment of silence though which is annoying if you're already late!
HEY, WHO WANTS TO SEE SOME DEATH STATISTICS FOR THE YEAR 1783? BECAUSE IT'S NOT LIKE YOU CAN JUST LOOK THIS UP IN EASILY DIGESTIBLE REPORTS OR ANYTHING.
I think the measles deaths might be doubled in that count because it listed 16 deaths of measles and then broke it down in more specifics. But the point still stands.
I'm guessing tuberculosis is "consumption" and "Pthisis pulmonalis?"
I'm curious about what some of these things even are
2 dead of scarlet fever. Many more doubtlessly getting Helen Kellered to some degree or another.
Scarlet fever is strep throat, an illness I had six times in one year when I was in first grade. Penicillin cleared it up every time. So many of us lucky enough to live under the protection of modern medicine have NO idea how good we have it.
if you can accept that there will be trans men who look virtually indistinguishable from cis women, than you can accept that there will be trans women who look virtually indistinguishable from cis men. either by choice or by circumstance. and if you can't respect them the same as you would anybody else, you need to examine why that is
sorry to be a broken record every month but christ menstruation is a stupid concept. oooooh excuse me for not getting pregnant, why the fuck is there goo falling out of me about it? grow the fuck up and reabsorb that shit for nutrients.
"humans are space orcs" this and "humans are the jack-of-all-trades race" that and "humans are the ones with a reputation for trying to fuck everything" and etc but you know what I don't see too often?
humans are the moms
compared to other species on earth, humans have a really outsized "protect baby" instinct. you give a human a thing and tell them it's actually a baby thing and many humans will suddenly develop a complete and total aversion to harming it, even if it's like, a writhing mass of slimy tentacles in no way reminiscent of human infants
cats domesticated us by figuring out that they could leave their kittens with us when they went out hunting and come back and probably still have the same number as before they left. there is a decent chance that wolves did the same thing
word gets around the less parenting-inclined species and they're just like, are you doing a long haul space voyage? going to have to lay some eggs in the course of the trip? take a few humans with you. yeah they'll just start training the young and keeping from them climbing into the machinery themselves you don't even have to find specialists. I know a guy who budded unexpectedly on a freight hauler halfway through a four year trip, and not only did the humans not eat his spawn, they set up this thing called "babysitting" where they'd take turns monitoring its survival and helping to teach it basic skills
hazard is that if you're going anywhere with xenofauna, you have higher than normal odds of the humans trying to smuggle some weird creature aboard ship, though. you gotta watch 'em. on their own homeworld their officials have to put up goddamn signs telling them not to feed dangerous wildlife or try to touch the babies. most of 'em do understand the regulations and about potential bio hazards but there always seems to be at least one that loses their goddamn minds because some avian chick got caught in a mudslide or something
areudirty
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
blakekathryn
prguitarman
2087
titsay
