inluminent

Over the past 18 months, I’ve amassed a large pile of pointless memos from our ‘corporate office’ (which is to say, this is something the owners of a small company didn’t have the balls to say themselves to their employees). Some of them are just down right hilarious like:

1. The memo from our VP of Operations telling us we were forbidden from forwarding chain emails or jokes, when not less than 10 minutes before that same VP of Ops forwarded me a joke email.

2. The memo from our owner stating that no one was to speak to the media except for him, which arrived on my desk not 30 minutes before a reporter called me (just because there’s an 800 number coming directly into my office that’s listed on the web site) asking for some background information on our company, which I couldn’t give them based on the memo I’d just read. The funny thing is the owner had the nerve to chew me out for not answering their questions when his own signature was on the memo saying ‘no one is to talk to the media but me.’ Too funny… turns out someone had forged his signature.

3. The memo that reminded us all that we’d signed an Intellectual Property agreement and that that meant that we couldn’t discuss anything going on inside the company with anyone outside the company and that there would be extreme consequences for doing so. My immediate response was “excuse me asshole, I’m a salesperson. I have to be able to talk about the company, don’t I?” My second thought was that the IP agreement had nothing to do with confidentiality, but then again, when they don’t read the agreements themselves, why should they know which is which? My boss told me to ignore the memo.

4. This one’s not a memo, but it’s truly priceless. You have to understand that my immediate supervisor (a VP of the company) puts his heart and soul into his job. He really tries hard to do the right thing all the time. The company doesn’t have a plan (to wipe its ass with) at all, and he’s been pushing for one from the owners for about 2 years now. He’s gotten no where. When he brought this up to one of the owners yet again, her response was too telling: “Relax man, it’s just a job.” That’s the worst thing an owner of a company can tell an employee. Period.

“It’s just a job?”

     What does that tell you?

Told me it was time to find a new job… so I did.