Power Outage

Last week, there was a power outage at work. Everybody was working, when suddenly the power went off and everything we were working on got lost. Nobody knew how long the power outage would last, so we all just hung around and waited because in this modern age you really can’t do anything without your computer. People began to wonder if management might let everyone go home early. It seemed reasonable, considering it was already Friday afternoon and no one was certain when the power would come back on. Of course, most Shitshow veterans knew that would never happen, but it was fun to talk about nonetheless.

After about an hour of waiting, the power suddenly came back on. A universal sigh of disappointment swept the floor. All the little groups of people chit-chatting about the possibility of going home early were broken up. We all went back to doing what we were doing before the power went out, many of us still daydreaming of what we would have done had we gotten out early. Most of us had to completely start over what we were working on because the power outage had erased any progress we had made that morning before having a chance to save our work. Suffice to say, it sucks to lose your work before saving. But what sucks even more is losing your work and have someone kick you in the nuts, which is exactly what the Shitshow did.

Shortly after the power came back on, we started receiving emails from management about time charging. The first email came from our Flunktional manager stating that management is asking employees to make up the lost time, or take vacation for the lost hour of work (Riiiiight…)The second email came from Corporate Management and was a lot more reasonable - employees were directed to charge to the ‘Indirect Budget’ rather than making up the time or taking vacation. Finally, some sanity!!! (Wait…wait….) Then the third and final email came from our Functional Management again. It told us to “ignore the corporate email” and that employees are still expected to make up the lost time or take vacation because “Indirect Budget is low this year”.

As if asking us to take vacation for a power outage isn’t ridiculous enough, claiming that this year’s ‘Indirect Budget’ is low is just insulting. First of all, it’s January. How could this year’s Indirect Budget already be low? Second of all, everyone knows that the only reason the ‘Indirect Budget’ would be low is because management made cuts to it so that they can get a bigger bonus for keeping costs down (see Bonuses for Sabotage) And they did this AFTER Corporate Management told us we could charge to the ‘Indirect Budget’!

Because my own personal management is greedier than the corporate fat cats, I throw rocks.