Plop, plop, fizz, fizz......

Oh what a relief it is to have a place to vent my life frustrations so as not to scare off my friends. I mean nobody likes to hear you whine, really so this is a great way to get it out without making my friends block my phone number. So, onto my first rant.

Work. Who was the idiot who thought up this idea? I'd like to hang him by his testicles from the highest tree. I hate work, not just my work, any work. I'm not one of those "I find work soooo rewarding" types. I'm a "throw the alarm clock against the wall" type and having a really sucky job with a really sucky company doesn't help.

I work at "The Gravel Pits", obviously not it's real name but even though I hate my job, I need to keep it so hence the name. The Gravel Pits is a well known company that treats it's employees like crap...more than most even. I've only been there a few years but I've been paying attention and it's disgusting to say the least. People fired for being in their 50's due to company cut backs, only to be replaced within 3 months by 20 something temps or snot nosed art appreciation grads only too happy to accept $26k to start. People who are hurt on the job that seek treatment that costs the pits money (we are self insured) or time off for recouping, only to be let go the minute they return or sometimes they don't even get to come back. People who put in 15 years of hard work only to be discarded like a used rubber. I use this metaphor as they do indeed feel fucked. I hope it was good for them.Then there are the famous annual evaluations that lead up to merit raises. Even though a survey of 48,012 employees, managers and CEO's across the country show that only 13% of employees and managers and only 6% of CEO's think these things are worth anything and 88% feel they negatively impact their opinion of HR (www.peopleiq.com), our pit still puts us through this bunk and uses it against us. I actually cried when I got my last one and it's hard to make me cry. Last time I cried was on a Tuesday in November in 2004. This past year I had a co-workers job dumped on me as she was part of the annual lay-offs, so my workload doubled and yet I was screwed out of a bonus or a decent raise..in fact most were.

The GP has 3 different kinds of gravel for sale and one type sells really well so those guys get the raises and bonuses while the rest of us get bunk even though we have nothing to do with the sale of the gravel. They parade the good gravel employees in front of us to make us feel even worse. Switch jobs and work for the good gravel you say? Love to but my boss Mr. Slate would not sign off on the request and at the GP you have to have your boss approve your move within the pits.Find another job entirely you say? Well, good idea except I've been in the gravel biz for many years and this company is the closest gravel pit to my home, the rest are all far far away and I really don't want to move at this point so here I stay, the masochist that I am. I've only scratched the surface on the pits but Breaking Bonaduce will be on soon so I'm going to stop here....more later, aren't you lucky?