Death to the Bundy
By MARLA CABANBAN
DISCUSSED: Happiness and Satisfaction in Non-Demanding Jobs, Making that Leap into the Life of a Freelancer
Begin
I gave up a decent, steady stream of income derived from working at a desk job. If my computations served me right, the job that mostly left me sitting on my butt, staring at my computer, and leaving whenever I wanted to, paid the most out of all the occupations I filled in. It was exactly what I asked for in item number 3 when I drafted my 2010 birthday wish list: “3. Find a racket that’s really easy and brainless to do and would pay big bucks.”
One of my cocky ruminations brought me to the conclusion that I would find happiness and satisfaction in a job that didn’t demand much out of me and would pay me well. I felt like I had enough of being at the mercy of Bundy clocks and if I was going to be confined in an office, I might as well do something that will pass the time painlessly.
"I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it." - Ferris Bueller
It was this sort of confident pronouncement that became one of the cornerstones of my early 20’s. I placed so much weight into my experiences and began holding them up as gospel truths. With whatever discomfort and displeasure I found at the hand of my employers, I took note of it all, and soon after, I began scheming for my exit strategies into the next promised land. This idea of my promised land was always pictured to be a place where all my annoyances didn’t exist.
Look Boss, I Can’t Need More Money When I Don’t Want to be Rich
Finding Meaning in the Pursuit of Happiness
By MIKA SANTOS
DISCUSSED: Athletes Trading Stocks, Athletes Quitting
“You know why I like hiring athletes? Because THEY DON’T QUIT.” These were the words my first boss would repeatedly tell me when he first hired me. And there I was, at my first week of work, flashing a semi-genuine smile, all the while thinking, “OH CRAP.”
Now, if you were some billionaire corporate tycoon, would you hire someone like me and teach me the ropes of making it big in your business just as you did? Apparently, because I was such a hardworking achiever of an athlete, that’s all I needed. The CEO of one of the country’s leading commodity trading firms chose me. Of the 2,000-something able Ateneo graduates, he had to choose me. Out of the entire market of unemployed graduates beginning their crawl up the proverbial ladder, I was chosen because of my capacity to work hard and sprint up that ladder. Like an athlete.
And of course all I could do was say yes.
The Gentle Art of Making Petiks
By ALICE SARMIENTO
The term petiks was derived from “pipitik-pitik”. Directly translated, this means to snap one’s fingers, but in the more familiar territory of slacking off, it can be better understood as the “thumb twiddle”, a.k.a. that thing you do when you sit back and wait for something to happen. Which is highly unlikely in the rank-and-file culture of the corporate world: that wonderful environment where you can actually convince yourself that the dude in the next cubicle is a likely bet–despite his being gayer than a handbag full of rainbows.
At an office, the art of thumb twiddling, or petiks has been raised to new heights with the advent of the information age. Petiks has found a friend in twitter, tumblr, friendster, and of course, facebook. This problem has been solved by your friendly neighborhood IT person, who has dutifully gone on to block all the addresses that have made petiks possible–except on their own networks which still give them free reign over their cabbage patches in Farmville.
My office had me confused about the difference between petiks and work. In my definition, work was anything I did sitting at my desk for 8 hours a day. Work didn’t have to be a pain in the ass; on average it took about an hour and a half to generate and sift through sales reports and merchandising calendars, which left me with copious amounts of time throughout the workweek to twiddle my thumbs. But really, where did all that time go?
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EXCEL ART!
Me, to my boss: How do you do that thing on excel where you select a whole area and then fill only certain cells with color?
My boss: (blablabla some gibberish I can no longer recall)45 minutes later, and TADA!
How much color can I throw at my eyeballs? Let Excel count the ways.
Excel is useful for organizing data and designing really garish Welcome mats, among other things.
The Economic and Psychosocial Merits of Working Seven Minutes Away From Home (And Why We Measure Distance in Units of Time)
By BOBBIE STA. MARIA
Faulty title, minutes do not measure distance. But we get what I mean: How far is the airport from your house? One hour. How far is Cebu from Manila? One hour. Distance is only as relevant as the time it takes to get us there. I hope that appeases our intellectual snobs.
With that out of the way…
There’s this phrase that some people live by. And by some people, I mean the lazy half-wits from the northern side of Manila who I call male friends. It goes, “sexy, pretty, Quezon City.” It describes their ideal girl, to state the obvious.
It is my destined task to disagree with the first two, but I fully subscribe to the third, seeing as it makes for a lot of why I love my work. Not everyone will agree with lawyering for the poor as a sound career decision (it is, Mother), but nobody can argue with Quezon City.
The much overlooked economic viability of working for my QC-based NGO is explained below:
The Early Stages of Late Puberty
By REDRUM
DISCUSSED: puberty part 2, that thing called a “career,” learning by doing, periods
Whenever I look at myself in the mirror before I head off to work, I see a young woman with a promising future ahead –carefully combed hair, crisp blouse, ironed-out slacks, hardly-used leather bag, pearl earrings, optimism. Giving my full corporate battle regalia a last look before heading out, I take a deep breath and tell myself,
“What the fuck.”
It’s almost like an inside joke that never gets old, only I’m doing both the joking and the laughing. About two dozen job interviews and four half-assed jobs later — all within 2 years upon graduating — I still feel like an alien in my own best-foot-forward skin. I always told myself never to settle for less or take on a job that required slacks or a too-sanitized environment of politeness. But here I am, secretly snacking on humble pie while I work an honest 8 to 5 marketing/copywriting job in an industry I know absolutely nothing about. I have nothing against jobs like these, but always felt like jobs like these had something against me, and that the corporate world would spit me out the moment I walk into a job interview.
If career paths had life spans, I’ll probably be right at the onset of puberty, alternately basking in the chaotic glory of identity-searching and screaming “fuck you!” at things I’m supposed to understand at 23 but don’t quite get yet. Career-wise, however, my lack of extreme go-getterness can be owed to the fact that as a kid, I never aimed for anything more realistically ambitious than joining the Tibetan monastery.
When I grow up, all I want to be is…
Here’s Your Coffee Motherfucker!
By SOPHIA FISH
To Whom It May Concern (you know who you are, you soulless bastard):
Please, please, please accept this letter as resignation of my position as fashion assistant, effective as soon as motherfucking possible. I am offering you two weeks’ notice that will hopefully, by some way of miracle, be enough time for you to find the next masochistic, idiot to take my place. Good luck finding one who’ll put up with your stupid motivational posters (WORTH: Just because you’re necessary, doesn’t make you important) and ridiculous requests (No, you can’t call me Yaya in photo shoots. And no, I won’t go an ice cream diet just so you can look thinner next to me).
When the Workplace is Full of Teacup Humans
By NICE BUENAVENTURA
In case True Blood has not reached where you live (under a rock), teacup human means small human or child. In season one, it was said that children’s blood tastes best, followed by virgins’. I doubt that. If children’s blood had a taste, it would be like sparkling water to the fizz intolerant – deceptively sweet, but biting to the throat.
A vampire sheriff bidding two teacup humans farewell
This is why, if you simply want to try it out, I do not recommend teaching.
Re: TOXIC Manong Guard @ Employee’s Entrance
By MARGUERITE ALCAZAREN DE LEON
DISCUSSED: Unnecessary Security Measures, Not-Actually-Very-Questionable Clothing Choices, Life Compromises
Sent: 7/20/2010 8:19 AM
To: ALL
Re: TOXIC Manong Guard @ Employee’s Entrance
___________________________________________________________________________
Dear All –
Today marks the 365th day since I began employment as copywriter for this institution’s Corporate Communications Department. I confess that this is quite a feat for me, as this is the longest I have ever gone without seeing my job go down in flames, since graduating in 2007.
My default response to unpleasant occupations is to run away. The fact that I have not yet bolted means that my current job is actually quite tolerable. And this is in spite of the fact that my previous stints have been freelance, whereas this one is a stuffy, big-time business-type thing. Yes, it has been a considerable challenge adapting to corporate culture—the daily commute, the required “classes” for new hires (such as “Cultural Sensitivity Training”), the co-workers who listen to Taylor Swift without irony—but I have managed to do so, and I have more or less gotten the hang of it. I really have.
What Do You Do With “What Do You Do?”?
By MELANIE LEE
DISCUSSED: The Existential Angst that Comes About From Trying To Tell People What You Do
I wonder what these gals would say about their jobs.
The worst party I’ve ever been to happened just after I graduated from university. I found myself sitting in a circle of mostly strangers and we had to go round introducing ourselves and talking about “what we did”. How such an inane activity resulted is anybody’s guess, but there probably wasn’t enough booze to make me forget how a certain Bob happened to mention that he was “studying numbers and reports all day, but it’s a MNC so it’s a GREAT stepping stone [insert dazzling smile]”.
The sad thing is that ever since then meeting new people followed a dynamic similar to this lame party game (except, thankfully, never again with such a large group). And while I’ve always stored a set of impressive-sounding answers at the back of my head to give of the impression of being remotely capable, the cat somehow gets out of the bag.
Awkward Only Looks Good On Paulie Bleeker
By CARINA SANTOS
DISCUSSED: A life dictated by too many John Cusack movies and my suckage at intimacy, among other things.
I am a horrible flirt.
I cannot act coy, or bat my eyelashes, or bite my lip, or sustain eye contact with (marginally, and sometimes not even) attractive people. It makes me uneasy and anxious and, sometimes, it triggers some obscure gag reflex, although I couldn’t really explain to you how and/or why. It also makes me feel slightly stupid, when I am in the middle of doing any of the above, and I end up kind of inwardly laughing at myself and ruining whatever moment it was that had consequently failed to materialize. I suppose I’m just not good at it, like how some people are just not good at reading, or at casting spells, or at dying.
Most intimate encounters where it seems like I am beginning to share a special part of myself with someone I consider to be Pretty Special just end up being big awkward-fests, where I somehow steer the conversation into a minefield of jokes, most of which are delivered by me. Most of which are also, assuredly, not very funny. My tactic is and always has been to break every sort of tension with comedy, even though I’m not particularly good at it. I am, at least, better at making lame jokes than opening up about myself and, also, feelings.
About opening up: I’ve actually been keeping a blog since June 2002, a, thus far, eight-year stint that has made me some sort of expert at oversharing, constantly blasting my readers into The Wonderful World of TMI. And yet.
