Globex Corporation Newsletter

Growing up, I remember complaining to my parents about things that had gone wrong in my life. "It's not fair," I would cry. Their answer was always the same:

"Life isn't fair."

Mark Twain once wrote that he was amazed at how much smarter his father became the older Mark Twain got.

I get it now. Life isn't fair. I don't know how I missed it all of these years. I figured that if I acted fairly towards the people around me, acted fairly toward the universe, that sooner or later it would all have to even out. Sooner or later the people around me, the universe would have to start treating me fairly. I was such a sucker.

I tried to treat people fairly. It seems the more I've tried to treat people fairly, with a few exceptions, they take it as a sign of weakness and just try to fuck me over. I worked hard, worked well, but the TV industry hasn't been very fair to me, no matter how good I was at my job, management would always fail to notice. The people I worked with always knew how valuable I was, the people I worked for, you know, the ones that handed out the promotions and gave the raises, they never noticed.

So I went to DirecTV in 1999 figuring it would be the last job in TV I would ever have. I'd work hard, learn my job, treat those around me fairly. I'd ride that job as far as it would go. I always say that it's my job to do a good job, it's my supervisor's job to notice. So I did a good job, learned my job well, helped others who were having trouble. What did it get me?

MY MANAGER JIMMY KUSYK ACCUSED ME OF THREATENING TO KILL HIM!!!!! Read that again. I'll wait. Read it out loud. Scream it, like my brain did when I wrote it, like my brain does every time I think about it. I'd never given that weasel a second thought. He received a threat on his life. He didn't even know me, but when it came to accusing people, to write a fucking police report, Jimmy Kusyk named me as a suspect. Life isn't fair.

Needless to say, that really put a wet blanket on my attitude at DirecTV. I still did a good job, though. I figured if I did my job well, even if I was an accused domestic terrorist (that's the California statute it fell under) they would have to notice.

My supervisor, Kevin Sommer, received a promotion. They created a new position to promote him to. He once told me that he got his promotion because people like me were doing a good job under his supervision and making him look good. When the company laid off a huge number of people in 2001, the department he supervised, the people who did a good job under him and got him a promotion, was cut by ONE HALF. Did he have any say in who stayed or who went. I don't fucking care, I worked hard and got SOMEONE ELSE a promtion. It didn't do me any good, I was out on the pavement with one half of my department. Life isn't fair.

I had decided not to work in TV anymore. I tried other things. I have a flair for graphics. I looked for entry level jobs, things that didn't require experience. I tried for jobs in completely unrelated fields, that I had a flair for. After 13 years in television, I couldn't prove to anyone that I could do anything else. After a couple of years I looked for work back in TV, and nobody could understand why I'd been out of TV so long. Life isn't fair.

I finally got a job with a company that had so fucked up the interview process on my previous attempt to gain employment that I was really leery of trying again. But I did because I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent the next month. I tried and the process was fucked up again, not so badly as the previous time, but bad enough that when they offered a job, I almost didn't take it.

I heard the other day that a guy I work with, who's come into work drunk on more than one occasion, had to be moved to a different shift because he nearly had (or did have, reports are sketchy) a physical altercation with another employee, is in line to get better days off. He has the same crappy days off that I do now (which are, in the TV operations world at least, pretty good) but he's going to get Fridays and Saturdays off. After coming in to work drunk. After a physical (or nearly physical) altercation with another employee. After just not showing up to work or not coming in even though he has no time off left. Oh yeah, I also heard he doesn't like me. Never done anything to him, haven't said more that 20 words to him (nor he to me), never gave him any reason not to like me. Life isn't fair.

And that's just work shit since 1999. I could go into policy changes at USSB that screwed me out of promotions, or the time in my first job when I actually sort of got a promotion, but 3 months later they eliminated the job. Life isn't fair.

I'm not even going to get into my personal life. And believe me, if you think the world of work hasn't been fair to me, you should hear about me personal life.

And I could get into my health. Thousands of dollars of medical expenses have been incurred by me recently. How much has my insurance picked up? Thirty dollars. Thanks motherfuckers. I've paid more than that in premiums. I'd be better off without insurance. Think about that. I'd be financially better off without health insurance. The prime deciding factor in taking my current job, and I'd be financially better off without it. Life isn't fair.

Life isn't fair, and I could bitch about it. I do bitch about it. A lot. Doesn't do any good though. I know that. Nothing is going to change just because I want it to. Regardless of how unfair life has been and continues to be to me, I'm still glad to have a life. I'm still glad to be here. I wake up every day thinking, hoping things will be better for me. Amazingly enough, sometime they are. Most days, however, life throws me another curve that I have to deal with.

I always have in the past. I'll have to continue to, I guess.

BOJ