Diatribe IV: Improv Comedy

I know what this looks like. This looks like I’m some loser who is no good at improvisational comedy and hence wish to bash it simply because I resent people who are better at it than I am. I assure you that this is not the case. That is, I assure you that a) there are indeed a good many people better at it than I am and yet b) this is not the reason I am writing this article. Truth is, I’m not too bad at it, I’d probably give myself a solid B as far as improvisational comedy skills go; I have better luck improvising in conversation than with some staged interaction. But I really take off when I’m working with people I know really well, because we can feel free to riff and experiment and know that we can be funny, instead of aiming by design for the LCD.

My problem with improv comedy is somewhat complicated. I have nothing against the skill of improvisation, having fun while doing it, and giving audience members a good time. What I am against is its insane cult status in Chicago (and indeed in other places). To get anywhere in the Windy City you have to work your way up through improvisation. All anyone ever does are improvised comedy shows. Sketch and stand-up have to claw their way to get publicity past this monster.

Let me tell you this right now: there are a few people for whom improv is their absolute best comedy skill. Ryan Stiles comes to mind. He’s so good at spontaneous joke creation he’s probably funnier off the top of his head than in some laboriously written script. And this is as it should be. But the number of people for whom improv is their best shot at being funny is so much smaller than you would expect the numbers to indicate.

What I see in 80% of the people signed up for improv classes is this: they have asked themselves “how can I be funnier? How can I be a more comic guy or gal?” Everything indicates that you ought to take improvisational comedy classes, or join a troupe. I will admit that improv can unlock some latent humorous ability, especially since it will give you the confidence to just riff out of thin air. But improv is not the only path to being a comedian.

I also find it amusing that all improv really does is teach you to use your creativity. Basically, I think creativity + confidence = improv. Once you have the confidence to use your full abilities at a whim, you essentially become as funny as you can possibly be spontaneously. But certainly not the funniest you can be.

But one of the problems with improvisational comedy is that there is an innate fear of floundering. Since you have no prepared material, there is always a looming possibility that you will suck, and suck badly. So many improv “techniques” teach you to aim for certain things to help the scene be at least “okay.” The problem with these techniques is that they inevitably shunt the comedy in a certain direction. While many of these techniques are intended to be guidelines and not hard-and-fast rules, they are treated as such by many coaches and create a stultified atmosphere where getting a few giggles is better than aiming for the big laugh and failing. I find it ironic that improvised comedy is designed to be less adventurous than scripted comedy by default. If anything, you would expect the opposite.

This obnoxious corralling of humor is also done because half the time you don’t know who you are going to be improvising with. As such, you don’t want to be too crazy because the other person might not be able to handle it. So you have to affirm their expectations rather than deny them so as to not leave them floundering. This is a great beginner’s technique. But in many scenes I have done, a flat-out denial has led to a much funnier and more satisfying scene, even if I was thrown out of my groove for a few seconds. If you are working with people you know really well, and you understand their sense of humor, their denial can be just as helpful as an affirmation in setting a tone for the scene. Even though I haven’t done improv since high school, our comedy sportz group would win every single match we went to, even at other people’s high schools, because the whole group was very tight knit. We were extremely comfortable on stage with each other, and had no problem giving up control of the scene to one another when someone got a good idea. I honestly think that the group dynamics are so much more important than any “technique” at creating a hilarious scene.

However, the skill of improv itself is extremely useful as a supplement to almost everything you do in daily life, but I’ll try to keep it in the realm of acting and comedy. My friend Dan, who has shared a number of ideas regarding this subject, is an actor first and a server/bartender second, and he has cited both professions as examples where improv can come in extremely handy. Without going into too much detail, he can note audience reactions during a play and alter the delivery of certain lines to help move their mood in one direction or another. Subtle but effective. He has also said that getting customers to laugh at the restaurant where he works = good tips. This I cannot deny. Those are only a few examples. But one idea that is especially espoused by the local laughing factory (comedy organization, not insane asylum), Second City, is writing your sketch comedy by “using improv.”

As if this is some sort of special technique. I am unaware of any way to write comedy except by making something up as you go and then testing along the way (and at the end) to see if anything is funny enough to leave in. Granted, we don’t do full improvised scenes because we (me, Mike, and Dan, the writers for our sketch group) think it’s a waste of time. We have full control over the premise, rather than a list of stupid ideas that won’t pan out because they were given by asinine audience members. But writing sketch gives you the chance to refine and refine and refine, sometimes to the point of absurdity, until there is not a wasted line, and every laugh is tightly woven into the fabric of the sketch. I’m not claiming that we’ve ever completely finished a sketch to anywhere near that extent, as there literally always small tweaks to make, especially after seeing how an audience reacts to it. But the point is that there is so much more that goes into sketch because you can build ideas and absurdities that could not have occurred spontaneously (or occur with such a rarity that pure improv would be an insanely inefficient way to produce such sketches).

But really a lot of this bile has to do with the comedy establishment in this city. People are nuts about improv here. Dan thinks it has more to do with the mania of the people performing it than the audience, and he might be right, especially when you consider that Second City, gateway to Saturday Night Live and beyond, pretty much controls the gateway to the usual channels of comedy. And they teach improv classes. Whoopee. And their final sketch portfolio? It must be written in the style of SNL.

Argh. Look, SNL used to be damn funny about 30 years ago, hell even 10 years ago they were consistently decent. But apparently they’re resistant to trying out other goddamn ideas, maybe because they have a factory-like recruiting branch for writers. I don’t know. There is one sketch comedy group that is like the goddamn Beatles of comedy, and not simply because the members are British. Monty Python, as far as I’m concerned, is the model for creative, extremely varied, clever, interesting, and above all fucking hilarious comedy. There’s a reason why I still laugh out loud at 70% of their material even after seeing it about a hundred times. And there have been plenty of imitators, and I say of course! Who wouldn’t want to imitate the greatest comedy group in history? We base many of our comic ideas off of the absurdist and linguistic techniques of Monty Python, but we don’t parrot them (ha ha). They are simply a model for the funniest humor we can create, and we don’t hesitate to use what we’ve learned from them. Including a startling variety of British accents.

And now, for a bit of snobbery. Improv comedy is rarely truly funny. Except when, as I said, the aforementioned few improv geniuses go at it. Much of what makes it funny is simply the fact that it is spontaneous. The audience laughs because the actor was hardly expecting the punch line any more than the audience was. They can feel the creativity bouncing around. It’s an exciting atmosphere, absolutely. And there’s no reason that the audience can’t go and have a good time. But I do think that people who don’t know anything about improv are far too easily impressed by it. They’re amazed by the fact that someone just made something up. It makes it even funnier. But people improvise in their daily lives and never realize it. Improv sketches just take it to its logical conclusion.

What I’m trying to say is that I may go to an improv show, and I may get a few very good laughs. I may chuckle throughout. But what’s more likely to happen is that I will be more impressed with the skill of a particular participant at creating a good joke than the joke itself. I rarely remember the jokes at an improv show, regardless of how funny they were. Sketch comedy, when properly written, sticks with you because it generally has more narrative arc, and ought to have a much bigger set-up, punchier punchline, memorable characters, and jokes strung together to create tension and relief. Sketch is the result of distilling interactive comedy to a purer form, whereas improv is the process of creating the comedy itself.

So to sum it all up, I am flabbergasted that audiences seems to love improv as a comic form so much. I have always had bigger laughs with scripted humor, whether stand-up or sketch. But I am damn sure improv is much more fun to do than watch. And as long as people have fun and get laughs with each other, people are willing to pay to cop a contact buzz off a show which is ultimately more enjoyable for the actors. Hey, market demand is market demand. I cannot criticize the free market. But I do think the overemphasis on improv is creating a generation of markedly less funny humorists because they confuse quantity of laughs for quality of laughs, and getting the most generally acceptable comedy as better than carving out a serious niche for yourself (Eddie Izzard, anyone?) . As we say around here at Mango Gesture Inc, “if you can’t make it funny, at least make it interesting.” Name a movie with Will Farrell that’s at least interesting. I rest my case.

Diatribe III: The Grand Old Phoenix

I have a problem with the Republican party. I know you want to punch me in the face for saying something so blatantly obvious, but this problem is more central than my usual gripes. Although I take exception to their looting of our precious money and honor and abuse of both our courageous soldiers and Iraqi civilians, I wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with it if they actually campaigned on a platform that said, “We will start useless wars. We will take your money and give it to our corporate cronies. We will rule America de facto through fear and misinformation.” Of course, that would hardly get them elected, now would it?

Let me back up a bit.

The Republicans are supposed to be conservative. I can respect conservatism when it is actually applied without subterfuge. I understand people’s natural reluctance to change if they believe what’s already happening is working fine. And it’s only sensible to look before you leap.

Why does the current Republican party receive votes from these mostly sensible people? Please note I’m not talking about rich people, religious conservatives or any number of people who will vote Republican because they don’t want no sissy liberal running their country. I’m talking about swing voters who tend to swing conservatively because they are conservative.

They vote Republican because the GOP labels itself as conservative. It’s not conservative. It’s not even really that far to the right. They’re kind of in their own little world. But they make people think they’re conservative because that’s all they’ve got. Consider the swing to the far right we had as a result of these last two elections. Conservative to me sounds like dead center at this point.

What’s conservative about starting useless wars? A conservative is slow to act, and takes a long time judging a major step, weighing the angles. A conservative does not rush off halfway across the world without fully considering the consequences, but that’s what our supposedly “conservative” administration did.

What’s conservative about giving money to corporations? If government can do no good, then surely government is doing no good giving taxpayer money to corporations. A truly conservative government would cut taxes and government spending, try to pay down debts and practice excellent fiscal responsibility. Overspending is not the hallmark of a conservative. Our “conservatives,” however, cut taxes to show everyone how against government spending they are and then invest the rest back into the military-industrial complex. It’s an amusing bait-and-switch technique; the little man gets a nice little refund check, and they quietly continue slashing programs and giving the leftovers to their cronies.

For the jingoistic patriots they claim to be, their response to Katrina, for example, was abysmal. See, if they had eliminated FEMA in an orgy of program elimination, no one could blame the government for not responding. Of course, they couldn’t do that because they would be the biggest assholes of all time. But rather than eliminating government programs they staff them with their incompetent buddies who helped them spend their way into the White House. Me, I would expect conservatives to hire competent staff. To me, I would hope that a conservative would want any necessary job done right. Of course, with the GOP putting our good old boy W into office, we can be sure that they aren’t that kind of conservative. You know. The kind I can respect.

In short, I don’t know what these Neocons are/were. They set up a perfect campaign, gallivanting around like they were conservatives, but frankly they’ve betrayed their conservative constituents as much as anybody. Their wonderful tactic of running diversionary issues to mobilize their loudest bases (Terri Schiavo anyone?) to take people’s minds off their constant raping of this country’s resources is becoming old quickly. The Iraq war is even more unpopular than the Vietnam War was. You can be sure that even some of the most lock-step Republicans privately knew that they had been betrayed by their own. Sure, they still voted along with everyone else, because the GOP is scared to death of showing weakness and division. But I’ll be you dollars to donuts it exists.

Let me make it clear to you. I firmly believe that the Neocons, riding Reagenesque politics to the end, have burnt the GOP down. The logical conclusion of their policy was not an permanent iron grip on politics in this country because stocking up on incompetent staff and giving money away to corporations does not create stability. Quite the opposite. They managed to overestimate the stupidity of the American people. But more importantly, they underestimated the righteous anger of the American people.

We the people take pride in having a democracy built from the roots up. Yes, it’s not perfect. Yes, reform is needed. But we are damn sure that the President answers to each and every one of us. And nothing pisses off Americans more than the leader that they put into office betraying them. It’s like a national slap in the face. Nixon may have been a political asshole, but he didn’t legalize torture or send our brave men and women in uniform off to die for his own convenience. He didn’t flub recovery from one of America’s biggest natural disasters. So in short, we impeached Nixon. We aren’t going to impeach Bush because we didn’t do it early enough. As much as I’d like to see W sent to jail by the very system he abused so heartily, perhaps we have decided that we’d rather have him skink off into oblivion. He wouldn’t understand why he was being impeached, anyway. The politics we’re hoping to build have no place for people like him anymore.

So, given that the GOP has burnt to the ground, you would expect them to scurry about reinventing themselves, distancing themselves from Bush and saying, er, uh, yeah he betrayed all of us, how did that happen? We’re sorry about that, er….of course, as honorable as that course of action would be, it might cost them the election. And they certainly wouldn’t want that.

So, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, or perhaps more like a cobbled together Reagan statue made of ashes and saliva, the GOP has stumbled to its feet and has decided to get McCain, Bush the 3rd, in on the action. To my utter astonishment, the Republicans continue to insist on prolonging this ridiculous war. Now, part of me thinks this is just a temper tantrum thrown by an empire when it realizes that imperialism has ended forever. Every nation has gone through these growing pains. Of course, we should have realized this 30 years ago, but I guess we’re just fucking stupid.

But still, NOBODY likes this war except people who are so “patriotic” they think it’s wrong to question the government, the military-industrial complex, and a bunch of assholes. What percentage of America do you really think that is? Of course, you probably expect me to say some cynical number like 80%, but I actually think it can’t be any higher than Bush’s approval rating which appears to be about 27%, which I think is the lowest in history. So, if the GOP wanted to have any chance of winning, why in the name of Jesus Mary and Joseph would they not also be saying, “we need to pull out, uh, things didn’t go as we planned.” The backlash of admitting they were wrong would still be less than the votes they would lose by supporting this war. On the other hand, Bush obviously planned to hand the responsibility of pulling out to his successor. Perhaps the GOP just wants to loot the country for another 4 years and then get the hell out of dodge. I can’t say. But I just don’t see how the GOP can win by supporting the war. Obviously, they’ll play the fear card to no end. Say that the war is necessary to keep Americans safe. Only problem is, more and more people know that’s bullshit. In a certain sense, if we suffered another terrorist attack while we were in Iraq (though I would never want that to happen) their argument would evaporate utterly. The fear card is losing sway. That and Obama likes to use facts. Facts are useful things. I think you’ll find the GOP has little practice with them.

In a roundabout way, I was hoping for a complete rebirth of the Republican party, forfeiting power for a while but forging themselves into a new party that I could respect as opponents, or even be able see their side of the argument. This might have happened with Ron Paul. The problem is that Ron Paul would have been supported by only a small number of academically-minded conservative/libertarians who actually believe in taking conservativism to its logical end. Most people who vote conservative don’t even know what they’re voting for. Consider that Ron Paul would probably legalize a bunch of drugs, gut medicare utterly and cut back on military spending, he looks like a goddamn alien compared to the sort of politics we’ve been running for the last 200 years.

But I’d like to see that. Old Republicanism is dead I tell you. (It’s like a mantra.) Libertarianism is like Thomas Jefferson coming back from the dead to preach the virtues of the yeoman farmer. I’d like to see what America would actually do with a big-ticket libertarian platform. Given a choice of true conservatism and the warm embrace of government programs, which way do you think they would turn? It’s a fascinating thought. These people vote conservative until it gets too real for them, and go running back to mommy when it gets too intense.

I’m actually a left-libertarian, philosophically speaking. It’s a tenuous position because I believe that government can do plenty of good with programs, but have no right legislating individuals’ behavior. The Constitution guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So as long as you do not interfere with others’ rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you should pretty much be able to do whatever the hell you want. The government steps in by legislating against crime, and perhaps even negligence (when your pursuit of happiness interferes with others’ because of your failure to provide for them). But that’s it. The government cannot legislate a moral code past that of common sense. The Christian Wrong has been gunning for that for years and years. A libertarian social policy would shut them the hell up for good.

The main problem with libertarianism is that it isn’t realistic. People are too stupid and greedy to be given complete control of their own behavior. Libertarianism is only for people who are willing to take full responsibility for their lives, and I can assure you that that number is definitely in the minority. I think the government making marijuana illegal is stupid, for example. All studies have shown it to be less dangerous than alcohol, and that it can have significant medical applications. Also, I know I can handle the responsibility of using it properly. But so many people are so goddamn stupid that they’ll smoke their whole lives away if given the opportunity. Anti-drug legislation, despite its offensively moral groundings, has the practical application of keeping drugs away from people who can’t handle them. I cannot deny this point of view. As much as I’d like cannabis to be legal, it would be mostly for my own personal reasons.

To return to the topic at hand, the grand reincarnation of the GOP looks to be delayed indefinitely. I don’t see how anyone can tenaciously hold onto such an abysmally failed policy, but I’m sure they are doomed to obscurity if they don’t do something to reinvent themselves, or at least pretend to reinvent themselves. They only other option is patiently wait, wait, wait for the pendulum to swing back their way.

Do you think they have the patience?

Diatribe II: The Academic

Note: This contains some melodrama. It happens when you’re writing at 4:00 AM.

It starts as a dull throb in your head. You can feel it; you know it’s there. The problem you try to resolve by ignoring it. It works, but only for so long.

Failure.

A four-letter word. As early as I can remember, this was a simple concept dictated by the letter I received on the top of a piece of paper. If I got the good letters, I was accomplishing. Even achieving. The bad letters meant I wasn’t. Simple as that. Childish, in fact. But even at the age of 21, this was still the case.

I think maybe a part of me knew there was no way that this was right. Part of me knew that these symbols etched up there in red ink at the top of my term papers were worth about as much as the ink they were written in. But at the same time I so desperately wanted this to be the case. It was only sheer exhaustion with the entire process that caused me to discard academia, even if only temporarily. I got my B.A., essentially a confirmation that I’ve earned enough of the good letters to qualify for it. Magna cum laude simply meant these letters were skewed somewhat towards the top. Ultimately, my degree is worth only as much as an employer is willing to honor the venerable idea that my grades are worth something in terms of employment. Considering that I went, like so many of my contemporaries, to a liberal arts college, I will actually go so far as to claim that high grades limit my employability? Why?

Because it firmly plants in your head the unshakable belief that your ideas and opinions matter. And no matter what other people say to you, you will never lose that basic tenet of your life. As such, a job or “career” that lacks an environment that includes an open forum for you to discuss your ideas and even to make use of them (as you ostensibly do writing a paper) is always going to be a poor fit. The exceptional malaise I get from office jobs stems mostly from this fact, and partially from the related fact that I believe I’m worth more than they’re paying me, which is actually irrelevant because even if that’s true (it is) I’m not doing the job I’m worth so they won’t pay me for that job, whatever the hell it is.

To be blunt, this is a liability I’m willing to accept, however much it pains me to do so. What it comes down to is that a degree is useless for getting a job that I never wanted to get in the first place, so in a certain sense it’s a simple dodging of the issue. It’s quite probable that I don’t want over 95% of existing jobs.

Because I am really not motivated by money. The academic is sustained by ideas and not cash. This is not meant to sound noble or special. This is simply a fact. I know so many people just like me, people whose devotion first is to their ideas and secondarily to their bank account. Were this the other way around, surely I would have thought first about my financial well-being in college, nabbed a degree that might actually have helped earn me some bank, and even now I would be climbing up the corporate ladder at some business firm or something, securing a steady future for myself. Some days I wish that that were my primary concern. Life would just be a whole lot simpler.

But as I said, this is not in my nature. “To thine own self be true.” Genuine advice given to me before leaving for Chicago. So perhaps I am fighting a losing battle against myself. I ran away from academia because I saw that it was morass of illusions but only now do I realize that functionally academia exists because there are so many people like me, people who are sustained by the currency of ideas and not money. This is a collective lie that is so important to so many people that it has become reality.

There was a time, I’ve been assured by several people a generation ahead of me, when a college degree necessarily led to gainful employment and a reasonable sum of money even from the get-go. This singular fact was an important part of getting academics into the real world because it supported the idea that a college degree was applicable in the real world, that what everyone told you was true: that if you studied hard and did well you would be assured a secure future. These jobs were almost a cathartic release for these people, who’d been hitting the books for so long they could hardly be relied to adapt to the cruel conditions outside their alma maters.

But, like everything else, education suffers from inflation, and what used to be a mark of higher education is now required in jobs that frankly do not require it. I have seen more “administrative assistant” jobs that require a B.A. or higher than I can count. This is stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

There is no job of that caliber where your degree is not going to waste, no matter what you majored in. And as for the idea that college hones your ability or learn or adaptability? Please. We all knew people who graduated that were no more mature or truly educated than they were four years ago. Still, these people ask for these absurd requirements because they know they can get them. With the economy going south, why not get the desperate academic with a useless liberal arts degree for the same price as the high school dropout?

I’ll tell you why. Because they are never going to be satisfied pushing papers around! A high school dropout would probably be simply glad to have steady work, and would not sit around all day fuming and scheming and dreaming about better jobs that he can’t seem to find, or even identify. There are tens of thousands of people like me, who have to force themselves daily to give their “all” in any job simply because they consider it beneath them, the irony of it being that it doesn’t even require close to all of your true effort, which is part of what makes it so hard; academics thrive on challenge. And a job that doesn’t deliver challenge and reward you for meeting those challenges head-on is not going to deliver the intellectual thrill you’ve become accustomed to all your life.

This is not just my problem in this day and age. So many others sit around wondering what went wrong. Where did they take a misstep? What could they have done differently to avoid this suffocating state of affairs? My time is more valuable to me than anyone has been willing to pay me for it so far; and yet many people make so much more money than even I concede that I need to have a perfectly great life. I can’t even conceive of what I would do with over 45 grand a year. But where is the job that will pay me that that that doesn’t trade in my aspirations to have my ideas matter?

Of course, there is one place. Back where it all began. Academia. Grab my Ph.D. in whatever-the-fuck and head right back into the belly of the beast. Shut the door on the real world, or at least leave it open only a crack; enough to comment idly on its passing while never exposing myself to the harsh capitalism that pecks away at my sense of self on a daily basis.

But I can never shake the feeling that this would be running away. It sure sounds like it to me. For the sake of clarification, the “real world” is truly as arbitrary as the academic one, but as it is the one that most people subscribe to it is the one that we all must deal with at one point or another.

Because, ultimately, by staying in the real world, I am not turning my back on academia. The battle I am fighting is to make this degree have meaning in the real world, to prove that ideas are not so far removed from the world of hard currency that I can’t justify this degree out here. I’m fighting to validate the illusion that I have been subscribing to for my entire life up to this point, because if I can do it; if I can make it happen, then the illusion becomes real. It was all worth it.

I often fantasize about turning back to academia eventually. All of my friends also sort of assume we’ll drift back there in the autumn years after grabbing a Ph.D somewhere along the line, but only after flexing our academic muscles in the real world and bringing back something to show for it. As far as I’m concerned, if you go through college and immediately set your sights on being a professor, you’ve already given up on the idea that your degree can be applied in the real world. For some people, like philosophy majors this an understandable (and regrettable) state of affairs.

Or perhaps you’re just a born professor. Sometimes I think I am, and I’m fending it off with forced tenacity. Considering that practically all of my mentors have been teachers, I probably internalized that along with everything I learned from them. And of course, I always say that I only want to teach at the college level. But part of the reason this is true is how horrible the public education system has gotten in this country. Teachers are underpaid and overworked, and the government responds to the crisis by issuing more standardized tests. Ugh.

For a country that touts education as the road to a better future, we sure could stand to cut away the hypocrisy and focus on the next generation’s education, instead of this quarter’s profits. I have been extremely fortunate to receive a ridiculously high-quality education, and even if the internal struggle I am having is typical, I would not trade my education for anything else in the world.

“Ideas are my currency and challenges my sustenance. I thrive on the exchange of information, not commodities. I have an acute sense of my own capabilities and the unshakable belief that my opinions matter. Who am I?”

The academic.

Diatribe I: You Got Temp’d!

Note: Diatribes are a mega-rant, of considerable length and venom. I meant to post this first one on Sunday, but I didn’t finish it in time. In the future, you can look for these on the weekends.

Some days I feel like I have total control over my life. That everything is falling into place. That my destiny is shining brightly on the horizon.

And some days, I just have to shake my head, shrug, and wonder just what the fuck is going on.

Thursday was one of those days. Or at least, it was after I got home from work. I got a message from my temp agency saying that they were just calling to let me know that my assignment had been terminated and they’re putting me back on the rotation, and to call for additional feedback.

Um…uh…what? First of all, I have stuff that I left at work, which I am now certain I am never going to see again. I should probably drop by to pick it up, except I don’t want to until I understand why they let me go with no warning on a Thursday to my satisfaction. They didn’t say anything at work to me that day. It was a totally ordinary day as far as I could tell. And all of a sudden, I’m never seeing any of these people again.

Granted, I didn’t love them or anything. But I have been working with them for four-plus months and I would consider it common courtesy to allow for some sort of farewell. The fact that I wasn’t even allowed to finish the week strikes me as suspicious. And somewhat unprofessional to be frank.

There were a number of highly legitimate reasons to let me go. They now know for a fact they will not be hiring full time for this position so they don’t want to string me along when they know I’m looking for a job that pays more than next to nothing. They apparently felt that they were robbing me a bit since I wanted something better than what they were giving me. Well, yeah. But it’s not like I wasn’t aware of that. And now I get to be unemployed instead? Goody goody gumdrops! Another favor I don’t need. Also, the agency can put me to much better use somewhere else. Even they know I was underutilized. Despite those perfectly good reasons, which I agree with, there was no good reason to not let me finish the week. There are three bad reasons I can think of, though. One, they just figured, fuck it, why pay another 120 bucks to the agency when I was going to leave anyway. Second, they hated me so much they couldn’t stand to look at me for even one more day, which is so laughable I want to laugh at it (although I have some leftover paranoia from my old job about employers secretly hating you but never telling you why). The third reason would be the agency already lined someone up who needed to start on Friday, or something. Why they would give a bigger courtesy to a new person as opposed to the established person who’s been working there for months, I don’t know, but hey. They rarely bother to treat you like anything but a resource. Speaking of which….

If it turns out they (either the agency or my employers) pulled a bitch move because I called in sick I am going to flip out. I am going to totally lose it. If I am accused of delinquency due to me missing work 3 times in 5 months, I am going to fucking have it out with them on the phone. I take attendance and punctuality seriously and I’m not going to have them nickel-and-dime me on this bullshit. If I stay home, I don’t get paid. Period. You think I want to lose money? What a bunch of assholes.

Hopefully, though, there is a reasonable and sensible explanation on why they wouldn’t even let me come back and pick up my stuff. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

The business world is a convenient compartmentalization for so many people. It allows them to be assholes under the protective umbrella of “that’s just business.” I got terminated without so much as a “Thank you?” That’s just business, right? “Who you are as a person is irrelevant because I can cower behind my position at a company and write it off on an Excel spreadsheet as savings.” But there’s a pernicious double standard at work here. Because so many people who spend their whole lives at work (and there are so many, I know) have no real social life except for work, not that it’s their fault because they’re forced to work 12 hours a day for no extra money to stay “competitive.” So socially they try to have “work friends” and the like.

What this means is that you can’t actually be merely 100% professional and succeed at a company. You also have to be able to put up with/blend into the work society. If you insist on just sitting there and doing your job, you may get reasonable reports but people are going to accuse you of not being personable when all you want to do is get your money and go home to your real life. This is not such an issue for a temp. In fact, it’s a relief to most full-timers that they don’t have to even pretend to care about a temp at all. I remember the accounts payable guy made some hurtful remark about how I was “just a temp” when I tried to respond to one of his strange jokes with some sense of humor.

I wanted to yell at him, “Do you even remember what the fuck it’s like to be my age? I have no goddamn idea what I’m doing here. You think I want to be here? Fuck you, man!” Of course I just sort of smiled and did what he told me. I know, I’m a master of restraint.

By the same token, I think the woman who was my quote-unquote supervisor thought I was a really boring person. Uh, maybe it’s because I’m doing a really boring job? I’m not here to regale you with witty anecdotes, which believe me I have an arsenal of. I’m here to do whatever the hell it is you tell me to do, until I go home. I have a real life that doesn’t involve answering your goddamn phone. I fail to see how you’ve earned anything from me, other than precisely what you’re paying me to do, which is not to crack jokes.

At first, I figured I’m just worse at compartmentalization than most people. But perhaps it’s actually that I’m too good at it. My recent jobs have been so boring that I have to completely and utterly seal them off from the rest of my life so they don’t infect it with the dead-end corporate miasma. Perhaps this has made me a less likable person as far as work is concerned. I am still very easy going. But no one can accuse me of not taking work seriously. Unless they want a broken jaw.

Boy, am I angry.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that this double standard is infuriating for someone like me, because I see that work includes the facade of making meaningful connections with people via the fake social nonsense that surrounds work, yet they can axe you without a shred of guilt because “it’s just business.” I think I can say without fear of contradiction, that this is a sub-optimal situation.

To be honest, though, this is not how it has to be. And I will tell you this much: average or poor managers rely on this convenient set-up to skirt around issues. They act all friendly but bring the hammer down as if it’s their god-given right. It is so phony I can hardly stand it. These people are cowards, and are frankly unfit to lead people. On the flip side, a good manager will make meaningful connections but it will be clear that it is in the context of work. A good manager will be personally invested in seeing you succeed. So many poor managers act like disciplinarians, which is unequivocally the wrong attitude to take. A real manager builds consensus and instills the desire to succeed in you, not so that you can make him happy, but so that you can make yourself happy and see the results of your hard work in a context that instills them with meaning.

I’ve dealt with plenty of incompetent managers who don’t seem to understand that it’s not the employee against the manager. They act like they are supposed to give you the lash when you do bad and candy when you do well. They are nothing more than task masters. It’s supposed to be the manager and employee against the goals. This is not rocket science. This is a basic principle of human interaction. And once again, since I done been temp’d, they fail once again to treat me like a human being because it’s too much work. It’s only too much work because they’re bad at it.

I pray one day I will find a job where people have the integrity to be genuine, and not use compartmentalization as a convenient way to avoid having to take actual responsibility for their actions. Here’s hoping.