During the orientation lunch, I went in search of my new cubicle, fearing the worst, but knowing I had only one month left. All of IT occupies the second floor and lo, I scored a corner with a two hundred seventy-degree view. Coupled with the short commute and my need for about one more year of learning, I've decided to sign up, not as an employee, but as "an Associate, our most valued asset."

The confluence of events that began with Amy arriving at The Dump five years ago has led me to a company I don't have a lot of respect for, but who pays me heavily while I learn new things. To this, add convenience, a way to avoid that which makes up ninety percent of the rat race: commuting. It appears that the best way to continue learning from Geoffrey is to make less money and sign up with UOC, the Ugly Oil Company, as a dreaded employee. This won't take long. I can finish in another year while staying close to home and enjoying more than what I enjoyed in the last year. This will be good.

The next day

OK, who was the imposter who wrote that? Some fearful, loathsome idiot momentarily encased himself in my body. Along with the security of a J-O-B I would strap on the fat belly distributed with the "Associates Employee Manual" and shave a receding hairline into my head. Some mismanager would write a memo to some other mismanager who would reword it for another mismanager who would come screaming into my cubicle asking for the impossible to happen yesterday. I would be disciplined and lose my three percent cut of my department's two percent cut of the division's one percent cut of the corporate bonus pool, which -- I'm sorry -- was zero this year due to losses sustained by governmental unrest in Venezuela. Oh, poor baby. Need time off? You can't go on that tropical yacht race next week -- we're upgrading from version 9.45 to 9.45a which will require 300 hours of downtime and seventeen of you "techies" working around the clock for ten days.

Fuck off.