Really Gonna Miss It

Now that you feel you finally wrung me dry and have safely turned me out for good

I’ll miss watching yet another simpering new middle manager make the same dumb mistakes

What a pity I won’t see you bravely face more issues and challenges, going forward

I won’t get to teach more younger workers the same sad lessons once again

How will I get over not being in endless, stupefying meetings, leading nowhere

I will miss explaining technical complexities as if to children with ADD

I won’t easily replace long hours spent discussing sports with my co-workers

I won’t get that warm glow of slipping away 15 minutes early when you’re not looking

What can I ever substitute for those all-important overdue project marathons producing nothing

Geez, I will miss being ignored by flitting little suckups live and in color every day

No more totally different got-to-have skill to cram for on my own free time

I won’t have to forget the latest obsolete technologies every other year

It’ll be hard not seeing new greedy MBAs and good engineers utterly fail at management

I won’t easily forget our own juvenile tantrums and thick walls of sullen silence

I really enjoyed being told of my good work by those who had no idea what we did

No more self-important losers will be acting bored while doing my fictional Performance Review

No longer marginalized for simple technical skills, I feel so liberated and so very free

Professionals are safer now that I do not point out their wasteful foolishness

No more mandatory resume acronyms which you can’t even spell much less know how to use

An end to wasted MSProject entries twisted to mask our aimless lack of progress

I will miss swilling donuts and lining up for your leftover takeout lunches

I no longer even pretend to give a damn about your phony and feeble outside interests

I’m done swallowing my gut responses to your predigested personal opinions

You can keep overpaying your smarmy consultants for doing nothing, and it won’t bother me

I am not a bit-part actor in the elaborate charade that is your fantasy Project Plan

No more do I even pretend a humble kowtow to your invisible new clothes

Where will I find the satisfaction I once felt, toiling for days upon frustrating minutiae

I really feel I can’t do without those lively updates on your silly golf games

I won’t be marginalized for questioning our institutionalized floundering lack of direction

No more must I politely tiptoe by your flimsy lies and forgotten promises

No longer will I watch natural leaders be debased by ass-kissing kick-downers sucking-up

How will I get by, bereft of your brave and wise Strategy Moving Forward?

I will not overhear boasts about lavish vacations, new cars and trophy homes

No more must I calculate how much less my raise gives than inflation takes

I won’t be silenced by the armor of your parroted & phony nods to Political Correctness

I can stop pretending adolescent salesman are actually worth their fat commissions

But…where will I now find the satisfaction I once took watching you squirm in failure?

No more futile searches for rationality in your latest Current Direction

I must try to get by without the wisdom you imparted so at comedically-solemn Monthly Meetings

Never again must I bite my tongue while swallowing your scripted nonsense

I won’t be squeezing back into the cube farm with less space than in my own giant SUV

I’ll miss our chuckles over your tortured explanations to others of the work we do

No more feigning interest in your kids or your expensive home remodeling

Damn, I’ll miss that endless speculation over layoffs and resignations

Who then, will I smile and nod to while thinking they should shove it up their ass

Nobody will say to me so dismissively “I’m sorry that you feel that way”

No more accepting benefit reductions as your perqs and salaries grow

Your strictly business decisions will no longer affect me personally, ever again

I can stop wasting time scripting safe pleasantries to exchange with airheads

How will I run a computer without the dogma of your overpaid System Nazi

Where will I learn of gambling losses, bad credit, ex-wives and sick kids

No more to wonder how rosy forecasts faded so quickly into big layoffs

Gonna miss dressing up, acting normal and keeping quiet for our customers

I’ll miss my turn talking nonsense once a week in a kindergarten circle jerk   

Must find a substitute for constantly overhearing multiple conversations at once

Won’t have to tolerate rude interruptions by self-absorbed clowns ever again

Done ignoring my need for recognition for work that no one ever saw or understood

Fighting back my tears for dear lost colleagues and your paternalistic management style

Professional Low-Level Corporate Pretenders

We socialized throughout long meetings and then told everyone how late we always worked

We fictionalized our progress on computer, using expensive project management tools

We concentrated upon hidden agendas for pursuing our own personal advancement

We acted as if we worked like dogs while loafing about as much as we could get away with

We scheduled all our work tasks down to a nonsensical n^th degree

We created tasks to simply figure out just where it was we thought we stood

We laid serious plans which we were never permitted to admit were actually fairy tales

We carefully placed blame on factors that were beyond our control

We pretended to find great worth in our so-called shared corporate values

In the meantime, we all worked strictly towards private and personal goals

We maintained fantasy records of all our activities in scrupulous detail

We raced into every next new project taking no time to learn from past results

We were models of political correctness during all of our endless meetings

We were each unequally driven by lust and rage and greed

We were decreed to be professionals in an effort to control our behavior

We were laid off like illegal domestic labor by an invisible and far-off numbers guy

We kept ourselves looking busy doing scheduled tasks without any real goals

We watched the big boys grow ever richer, no matter the results

We were amused at management’s description of our work to the outsiders

We vowed that on our next job, things would somehow be quite different

We checked off little tasks and did not need to see the bigger picture

We were treated like the foolish children of always-absent parents

We idled comfortably online and complained bitterly at every opportunity

We came in late, took long lunches and went home early every chance we got

We spent time networking through vicious gossip and kept up with our hobbies online

We swore loudly and treated fellow employees without their due respect

We ragged upon and second-guessed even the smallest management decision

We gossiped and backstabbed, teased and hoarsely laughed way too loud

We invisibly dragged our feet when we did not get exactly what we wanted

We sabotaged their ornate project plans with a surprisingly subtle grace

We took pleasure in other’s failures at the expense of our teams progress

We evolved from angry young men to bitter old fools within short lives of empty work

We gorged on fat-laden free pastries and sucked up lots of carbonated caffeine

We controlled our precious information by doling it in tiny spoonfuls

We gave up and pouted and then took to passive-aggressive backbiting and innuendo

We were quite full of macho bravado except in the presence of real men

We held to their core hours and kept a professional looking, quite tiny, workspace

We arrived in vehicles larger than the veal pen cubicles in which we were fattened

We studied sports and movies with far greater diligence than any work-related skills

We knew better than to participate in their matching 401K savings plan scam

We planned our time off with far more care and detail than we used on our work

We proudly rested a simplified bible among our various technical references

We missed many hours of work due to our spoiled and ignorant children

We listened politely, being those who were never intended to grasp the bigger picture

We pretended feedback was important and that our doors were always open

We decided things in a vacuum, relying solely upon our own infallible gut instincts

We spun events both good and bad and trumpeted of new opportunities and great challenges

We never had problems but we always kept a few open issues on the table

We spoke of opportunities for synergy even as we outsourced our best veteran workers

We strove to be sure it always looked like we had a lot on our plates

We spoke emptily of the local community at the behest of distant management

We took the pulse of the entire company via the noses of smarmy little suck-ups

We used up so many sick days that they made them part of our vacation time

We lost our will to speak after years of our so-called feedback going silently unheeded

We made sure the lines were always open but...we were always so very busy

We were always late and in a hurry and so, once again we did the quick and dirty, just for now

We lived under the gun of concocted deadlines that we missed with great consistency

We sucked up in public and backbit among each other in the office shadows

We blindly managed every project using identical unproven and unquestioned techniques

We admired their salaries but despised their smiling, self-serving falseness

We all pretended that we were going to go on working together just like this, happily ever after