So yeah…

We’re about 2 months out from finding out that the place my wife and I have been employed for 12 and 13 years respectively has been sold, and is closing up shop and headed to Overland Park, Kansas.

What’s changed? Well…to be brutally honest, not a whole helluva lot.

We’re still lumbering through production cycles that should be a cakewalk, only to nearly self-destruct at the end of the month…you know, like we normally do.

Despite the promises of “it’ll get better” or “we’re going to overstaff so it’s not so taxing”, our work environment remains like a headless chicken after ingesting a large chuck of South Carolina’s leading export, Methamphamines. That is to say, hectic to a near comical degree…you know, like it normally is.

We continue to spend money on stupid shit that’ll be uninstalled in 60 days, like server upgrades and keycard entry systems, and have stopped spending money on little things like food, drinks, office supplies, and other essentials…you know, like we normally do.

People are leaving earlier then they anticipated, even after being told they’d receive at least 30 days notice, but of course not receiving it. Because as we all know, in our office communication is a concept so foreign to us it’s akin to nuclear physics manuals written in ancient Egyptian…you know, like it normally is.

I don’t know that I would call my current state so much “surprised” by these developments, as much as I’m “not surprised” by these developments.

Every day I stare at customer folders containing hundreds of dollars worth of custom content that appear as though they were devoured by Bigfoot, shitted out during a fit of intestinal distress, run over by a monster truck, re-consumed by albino wolf rats, shitted back out again with great vengeance and furious anger, set on fire, and then stomped out with steel toed work boots outfitted with meat tenderizers on the soles.

If there was ever one symptom of the piss-poor state of our company, then it’d be those customer folders.

I told a coworker that those folders are exactly like the things that drove the Roman Empire into the ground almost 2,000 years ago.

Now stay with me here…I can quantify that statement, but to do so I’m going to get deep.

Just the way you like it…RAWR!

So anyway, those folders are “infrastructure”…which is to say they’re like the roads and aquaducts of ancient Roman society. When Rome was in it’s glory, great care was made to maintain those roads and aquaducts. Those were the things that made it possible for Rome to prosper as it did.

But once the Roman government and citizenry became more interested in subjugating one another, installing a new leader every 5 years, or watching those unlucky fucking Christians get chucked to the lions in the coliseum, the upkeep of those vital infrastructures fell to the wayside.

Suddenly, water didn’t flow as freely though the bathhouses, or it was corrupted by disease from a decaying animal 20 miles upstream. The roads became rutted and bumpy, causing havoc for merchants and travelers both to and from Rome.

Those failing infrastructures were the slowly tolling death-knell of the Roman Empire…and because it happened in degrees, over an extended period of time, once it was seen as a problem it was far too costly or impractical to repair.

Those customer folders are EXACTLY the same thing.

They are the pipelines that allow the water and commerce to enter our Empire. And as soon as they fell into disrepair and neglect, and no one chose to take the time to fix them, our course was set.

We were all too busy doing the work contained in the folders, or reacting to the customers that the folders represented instead of predicting their needs and anticipating our actions, that we became negligent in maintaining our vital infrastructure…just as the Roman’s had before us.

I’m totally serious about this…you want to know the health of any company, or any office in America today? All you have to do is check out their practices, and their infrastructures. If they’re falling apart or shabby then it’s just like rot inside a tomato.

It will eat it’s way through the organization if not handled promptly.

It was all there, right in front of Management the whole time…and no one cared enough to take five fucking minutes to go, “Damn…these folders are important and they’re being held together by staples, white-out, packing tape, and stickers stuck on top of other stickers. Perhaps we should address this problem. Keeping those folders in good order might help us in our jobs and therefore increase our productivity.”

But no, they had to keep basing the future of our company on the business model and practices of our competitor (which in case you don’t realize it, is an incredibly bad idea), spending $15,000 on 7 flat-screen TV’s, buying 3 leather couches, repainting the offices, installing a popcorn machine and soda fountain, painting the bathrooms 2 different colors within a 4 month period, and basically just spending money on anything and everything EXCEPT what was most important…securing new customers and allowing the rest of the employees a chance to breathe between Production cycles.

I went on an interview a couple of weeks ago, and during the process the following conversation took place:

Interviewer: Now I feel as though I must tell you that there will be some overtime required with this position should we chose to offer it to you. Will that be a problem for you?

Cinlach: I don’t think so. How much overtime are we talking here? Can I get an example of what scenarios I might be likely to experience as an employee here?

Interviewer: Well, at least once a quarter every member of my team is asked to work an extra hour a night for a period usually not over one week, but it sometimes does go into a week and a half. Would that be something that might cause you problems?

Cinlach: Well, considering I’ve been working nine hour days, and then two to three Saturday’s a month for the past 9 months non-stop, I can’t imagine as though that’d be too much of a hardship for me to bear.

Interviewer: Good grief! How much overtime have you had in the last 12 months?

Cinlach: Well, I’m not going to give out a dollar amount but let’s just say that it’s around 15 to 20% of my annual salary.

Interviewer: So then I guess just one or two weeks a quarter would seem like a vacation by comparison.

Cinlach: It would indeed sir, it would indeed.

So while this is a bit of a rambler as far as blog posts go, I guess the ultimate message is that things are, in the immortal words of David Byrne, “Same as they ever were, same as they ever were”.

By the way, my hip is fucked up again…hoorah.

The first thing my physical therapist asked when I walked into his office last week was, “Have you been under any stress recently Mr. Cinlach?”

I looked him right in the eye and laughed like a man gone insane.

“You could say that” was all I managed to get out between fits of chuckling and wiping away tears of laughter.