Thursday Thirteen (13) for May 11, 2006

13 Things that I Don’t Miss About Working for Big Corporation

1. Too many useless meetings – Meetings are an alternative to work. But it’s okay if food or snack is provided.
2. Pre-Meeting Meetings – Let’s discuss what we’re going to discuss. Aka: Let’s get our story straight.
3. Post-Meeting Meetings – Let’s discuss what we discussed. Basically, I want us to make sure we got out of the meeting what we wanted. Otherwise, we’ll have to call another meeting.
4. Mandatory Management Training – Another form of meeting, except this one had sign-in sheets and better food.
5. Non-Persons. When people were fired or quit, we would quickly forget about them. They were practically family when they were with the company, but now they are a non-person. Very Orwellian.
6. Office Spouses – Male/Female working relationships that mimic a marriage. When you have to remind your office spouse that he’s got an important meeting tomorrow and that he should wear the nicer tie. I would always remind male employees about Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other events that they might get in trouble for forgetting.
7. Getting approval signatures. I hated getting signatures of high-ranking officials in the company. My trick was to talk nice to the administrative assistant and make sure they got the signature. Here’s a funny story: I used to have to get approval for expenditures over $1,000 from a high-ranking, very old executive in the company. He should have retired, but it wasn’t the policy of the company to force retirement. There was a nurse working at the company that would give him daily shots of something that made him feel better. I asked her to let me know when she was going to give the shot, and I’d get the signature right after. He was always in a better mood and would sign without much hassle. He worked until 2 weeks before his death.
8. Corporate dress. Dressing nice or corporate casual, it was always a problem for me. Since I’m a creative individual, my clothes are different, and not very corporate.
9. Travel expenses. The company I worked at didn’t have credit cards or expense accounts. You were expected to pay for things out of your own pocket or credit card, and submit the expenses at the end of the week for reimbursement. So, basically, I was loaning a multi-million dollar company MY money.
10. Dilbert (the cartoon) was too close to home to be funny.
11. Gossip. Who’s doing what, who’s seeing who, who’s getting what. Makes you feel like you’re always under the watchful eyes of people that don’t have anything better to do.
12. Too many Vice Presidents. Really, at some point, doesn’t it diminish the power a VP has when there are so many? My old company had so many that they all couldn’t fit all of their expensive cars in the executive lot, so they would park in the visitor’s lot. I actually had visitors who couldn’t park because all the VP’s were actually in the office for a meeting.
13. Not getting credit for finishing a project. Instead, your superior would get the slap on the back for the thing that you did. All he (or she) did was put a fancy cover sheet on it.

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