Before I start my rant of gross oversimplificaiton I would like to say that I like most of the people that I work with, some of them are interesting people. Mostly the ones that I’ve worked with at the Arlington office. It seems like those people were the brave ones who, when given the opportunity to escape the dank grey prison of the Washington office (WOC) jumped ship and swam for shore. They have more spirit than the drones they left behind at the WOC.
But that grand experiment has come to an end, the development team have all been moved back to the WOC. It’s not like we were african tribesman stolen and placed in the hold of a ship. But It just really sucks to work here. The internet filtering and computer rights problems aren’t as bad as I feared, but they still block Gmail, myspace, and Yahoo Fantasy Sports. Not to mention FTP, so I’ll probably have to upload this tonight sometime. The commute kind of eats it too, 3.80 each way on the metro and either 3.75 to park or $1 each way on the bus. But I do get time to read or sleep on the way in and I’m not putting any miles on my car. Also Ellen works a few Metro stops to the east so it might be easy to get together for lunch once a week. So there are some advantages to this setup, I’m just going to really have to budget and bring my lunch to keep my finances under control.
But the weirdest part of moving is finding out that it’s all true… What you ask? Dilbert, Office Space, The Office… those aren’t jokes. I’ve always thought of them as a twisted and exagerated reflection of real life. But nope… they’re documentaries. It’s kind of frightening to know that those people actually exist. Here’s an example.
When our team moved into the cubefarm Tom and I went about our decorating. Just making the grey walls of the cube bareable by putting up a Tiki style banner and some party decorations, nothing too fancy in my eyes. But you kept seening all the little office gophers talking in the background about “those tiki guys” and we get 10 people coming by every day and making some kind of tiki bar comment… and I haven’t even put up that sign yet. From the looks we got you might think we were sacrificing a live chicken to help us program Java.
“Jobu come, make computer not afraid”
Looking around I sort of know why, nobody else has decorated anything, they’ve all been here for years and the most they have is a little picture here and there. It’s like they feel that if they show the slightest bit of individuality the agents from the Matrix will show up and replace them with another cog in the wheel. I thought the cube next to me was abandoned because theres this sort of Milton Waddoms thing going on over there… Just cardboard boxes filled with papers stacked up… but nope, there’s a guy that works there.
It’s pretty obvious that I’m not like these people, but that’s cool. I work great as the outsider and can learn to get along with anyone. But I won’t become one of them.
Later!