Half-Assed: A Homer Simpson Story

At my first "real" job after college (working for a publishing company), me and my art department friends quite quickly and easily noted a disturbing trend among office staff, a term forever "re-branded" for me by an ex-boyfriend as those low-paid women who are our "Office Cows": mostly useless ladies who wander around grazing on break room tidbits so they can gripe about their weight to anyone who will listen, gossip, backbite, email petty plots and schemes around using the company IM (not the smartest crowd, as me and my IT friends noted), talk on the phone, surf for shoes on the web, hate their friends on Facebook, and make bitchy comments under their breath each and every time you walk past them to use the bathroom, in case you ever forgot that you got your job through grueling years of hard work and a three-tier interview process that's harder than most exams the President takes on any given day, you know, because design is up there with a nuclear attack on the scale of importance for humanity. 

Oh, it isn't? Huh...well, that certainly isn't what that fat bitch behind the desk is projecting at me. She's telling me with her "death stare" that I rule the world, and so I must. I mean, it happens to me everywhere I go, so it has to be true. Kidding aside (I really do use my intelligent design to help save the world, as is the gist behind my intellectual and academic movement), gifted people are used to being the center of attention wherever we go, dull offices included. You saw "Whiplash", right? It's kinda like that, except instead of an overpaid actor starring in a hammy ripoff of every artist's actual life, it's the real thing that you cannot buy. We go into rigorous rounds of critiques with the biggest power brokers in business, while they sit there gleefully taking potshots at us, under cover of a "meeting". We're ready for it. We've been trained to do this exactly. But...you haven't had you? I imagine that must be really hard for you to withstand psychologically.

So, you do catch my drift, then? OK. That's what I thought. We can resume our regularly scheduled programming (one that doesn't include you) to return to the task at hand: the hard job done under an impossibly tight deadline (rigged for failure on purpose), with as many human douche-bag obstacles as middle management thinks they can safely get away with, to deliver you the best information available on Planet Earth, in each and every century, regardless of country or language. I'm sorry. I don't understand "Office Cow" when your mouth is full of donuts from the break room. "Gosh, she looks sooooo fat in those jeans!" (Whisper it loudly in a blatant showy stage-whisper for the best effect). Heh heh. Maybe you should go on a diet? Or, you could passively-aggressively suck at each and every task that we ask you to do for us, because you're a complete bitch who thinks we don't see your blind hate and envy coming right at us. Because we do.

You see, that's the "Homer Simpson Way": do each and every job task really half-assed, until someone better than you notices that you suck, and then re-does your shitty work on the company's dime with absolutely no support whatsoever. Yeah, just like that! Do everything really half-assed. That's why they pay me the big bucks. And hey, you're welcome for saving the company again, on an underpaid teacher's salary. Ah yes...there's the almost silent "fuck you" mouthed behind my back that I was waiting for. Thanks! It was the opening I needed to get you fired. Buh bye!

Birth, School, Work, Death

The concept of "work" has become so distorted from the relentless marketing push that drives modern commerce (which requires the constant ringing of cash machines to stay afloat as an economy), that many individuals maintain someone cannot be "normal" if they don't suffer through another meaningless day at an office, working at a dully repetitive job in a big company run by faceless people with money. That's what they call "life". Think about that for a moment; about how you spend most of your time. I have a vocation: a rich, passionate fulfilling one that is sometimes driven by the necessity for money, but take away the "job", and I'm still an artist and designer who writes, and I always will be, regardless of a whether or not a company pays me for my expertise. In fact, I will continue to develop my skills throughout my life, until the end of my time here on earth. It's a stance and a reality that puts jobs exactly where they belong: not the whole story of who we are. I couldn't fit my entire life into a 9-5 cubicle. Could you?

Instead of being driven in a panicked fashion from one place of employment to another, stop to think about what you would do, and who you would be without a corporation to define you. Is there anything of real value left? If not, why is that? Trust me, when you ponder those questions closely, you'd be surprised how much more respect drives your choices and decisions, in business and in life. Being able to rely on one's instincts (no matter how stressful or difficult life sometimes is) comes from a sense of self-worth that is the real American Dream, not the pre-packaged version sold to you by someone looking to profit from your hands, your mind, and your hard-fought for (and difficultly won) successes. I make work every day, whether or not someone pays me, because that's who I am, and that's what I do, which kind of obliterates old-fashioned concepts like vacations and desk jobs. Think about it, the next time you face an important life decision. Enjoy your time off, laborer.

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