Work
A four letter word.

(The following "rant" was partly inspired by Daniel Quinn - in particular Beyond Civilization - and partly by real life events. I'm sure other things have contributed as well (I am a sum of my being...or something) but those are the most recent ingredients into the mix that is me. [what the hell am I talking about?])

Who likes their job?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, probably none of you. Early in Beyond Civilization Quinn states that people of our culture are easy to recognize. Here's the test: If you live in an area where the food is under lock and key, you belong to our culture.
And having the food stored away like that is cornerstone to our society, because if it were readily available, who would work?

Yes, this is a broad generalization, and yes, if food were free for all, of course people would still work, but I've been thinking more and more lately that I would most likely not be one of them. Maybe this is because I'm a lazy bastard. Or maybe it's because working for other people is not something I really enjoy doing. I think most people don't. In fact, that concept is really kinda counter intuitive. Working for other people is slavery. The fact that you're given money and may recieve some pleasure from doing a job well done are simply happy coincidences - side effects. The bottom line is that you are still doing work for someone else.

[note: I often feel like I'm not explaining myself clearly enough. That I'm failing at getting my point across. It's a frustrating feeling. I long for telepathy]

A few personal examples may highlight what I'm trying to get at.

Saturday night my 8pm movie was From Dusk til Dawn (great movie, btw. Even edited.) It was a 3 reel movie. The first two reels were fine. As I was running the 2nd reel, I began to cue up the 3rd, only to discover that the tape did not contain the movie at all.Instead, the tape had a recording of the program Showtime at the Apollo.
Well, this was just bad. Angry, I ejected reel 3 to see who had signed off on the tape okaying it for airing.
PW. Uh-oh.
I made several panicked phone calls to the Powers That Be (and got answering machines on all accounts. It was Saturday night, after all, and the upper management people have lives).
Doing some quick figuring, I realized I'd have about 30 minutes to fill. I mean, something had to go on the air. Making a judgement call (after all, I'd not heard back from the Officials) I decided to run an old episode of Cheers. The commercials that would have run during the movie would instead run in the local breaks of that episode, and then normal programming would resume at 10pm.
Right before I was going to my backup plan, (literally. I was in the last break of reel 2, getting ready to start the Cheers) the phone rang, it was the Programming Director. She informed me that Cheers couldn't run and to get a copy of either Roseanne or Fresh Prince of Bel-Air instead. Somehow, I managed to run into the tape library, locate an ep. of Roseanne, and get it cued up in the last 45 seconds of that break. (I still don't know how that happened. Time is a mysterious bitch)
Having gotten that on the air, the PD and I talked about what had happened. I told her that it was me who had signed off on the tape and she was surprised (I've got a reputation around there as being one of the better employees. My old email wasn't "bestswitcher" for nothing. [wink]) and kinda upset that it had to happen to me. (because she knew that since I was the one who was responsible, I'd be taking the heat for it)



A few other things that took place over the weekend:
Friday night the promotion department gave us 104 promos to dub. There was an employee there Friday night who had 8 hours to do them. He dubbed 24.
Saturday there were some missing spots (long, boring story). I wound up being the one who contacted the Traffic Manager and discovering a solution to the problem, so that the station did not lose any money on those particular commercials. (Followed by the movie screw up, which may have upset the balance [doh])
Sunday I worked 11 hours, and dubbed and loaded 80 promos. I also discovered a problem with the satellite dishes, and brought it to the attention of my supervisor (who came down and got it fixed before any sat. feeds were missed).
Those 24 promos that the other guy did on Friday night? All done incorrectly. This was discovered by me on Monday when I went to air one of them. I should say Monday after 3pm. They had been running wrong all day long, and the previous operator either did not notice, or did not care.
Monday I did recieve a written warning (one of I believe two that I've recieved in my 7 years of being there), because of the From Dusk til Dawn incident. (Or, as I like to think of it, From Dusk til)
Today - There were more promos that were incorrect. These were because promotions had given us the wrong ones. I also caught a commercial that had been loaded into the server missing the final half second of audio, and helped my coworker figure out a way to air a tape that would not run in any of her other machines. I also discovered two different timing discrepancies that Traffic had failed to catch.

None of which will be acknowledged.

And of course, there's the time factor. We were in the middle of having a relatively peaceful day (we were hunting for Harry Potter #5), and it has to go and be interrupted because work demands that I have to be there at 3pm. And that I have to stay there for 8 hours.
Of course, the rest of us are doing it too. Which makes it so much better. Misery loves company, right?
Why are we working, though?

Because it's what Mother Culture tells us to. "Society must go on, no matter how miserable it makes the masses."
This is drilled into us from birth - or at least from school age. Because school, no matter what they say, is really about preparing you for mind-numbing work. And work, no matter what they say, is really about keeping "civilization" going.

In the past few days, I've come close to just saying, "Fuck it." and walking off the job. I won't, of course, because I have the girls to think about. I need to insure that they eat something, and having a job (that I don't particularly enjoy most of the time) is the best way (isn't it? [/rhetorical]) to get food.

Now is the time when most people would say, "If you're so unhappy with your job, you should find a new line of work."

Because, hey, trading one prison for another is the best solution. Right?
If it didn't work last year, let's do MORE of it this year.

I'm sounding really bitter right now, and I apologize for my tone. After all, today at work was not all bad. Nope, not all bad at all. [heart]
Oh yeah! While she was there, I was cueing up my next program. When I was setting the levels with the bars and tone, she said, "Hey! That's the picture from your blog!"
Man, I love my daughter.