I don’t even remember how long it’s been since I blogged. (It's not because my newest game in the Series That Ate 2009 has been sucking down my brain. I swear!)

I’m guessing it was before my stupidworkcomputer conked out on me. It was never the same after the Great Virus Infestation of ’09* and I finally went to our pseudo-IT guy this week and demanded that something be done to fix it and he told me to pick a computer from the ones sitting around unused and swap out the boxes for myself.

Sometimes I fantasize about being the R.C.--she's never worked at a place that didn't have a full IT staff and no one has ever told her to "do it yourself" when she's had a computer problem.

It's possible that the pseudo-IT guy was irritated with me because he had to deal with the Great Virus Infestation, but if it weren't for viruses and whatnot, many IT people would lack employment.* *

Anyhow. I swapped out my box for the one Gidget used to use and I've been dancing between the two of them all week because I didn't have email access on the swapped box until today. Not that I actually mind not having constant access to my email. I only remember to look at it every couple of hours even when it's sitting open on my desktop.

My point is that now I'm stuck with Wnidwos 2007, a fate I've successfully avoided for the last two years. Sigh. I'm waving good-bye to the thoroughly tested and rock-stable Windows XP and staring with loathing at the idiocy of poorly constructed "ribbons" replacing my familiar, compact, and easy-to-use menu bars. * * *

This week it was numbers, numbers, numbers all week long. Not that it isn't always, but more than that. End of month numbers. End of year numbers. 2008 vs 2009 comparative statistics. My head is spinning from all the numbers--most of them don't make sense to me any more. Long, statistical story short - written leads are up a bit from last year, calls are down a bit from last year, making it all a wash--and the 'Nuts both in and outside the Home Café are whining about how revenue has nosedived.

I'm bewildered--we lost half a dozen or more (low-performance) locations but leads are up at our most productive locations. Unfortunately, I'm probably the only person here who makes a concerted and organized attempt to track ROI, so no one knows where the money went. In the end, I've decided to decide that it must all have something to do with the part of our business model that has nothing to do with me. An SEP is the best kind of P.

NewBoss Anais visited my quiet little corner of the Café earlier today. She wanted to talk about a bonus program. They'd like to bonus me on results that improve over last year.

I wasn't sure what to say.

I do think that before they start talking bonus money, they might reinstate the 15% pay cut they gave me last year, don't you? I mean, at this moment my salary is easily 25-40% below the market value for what I do (not including the industry and specific company knowledge I have) so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to get my paycheck back to where it was when they hired me.* * * * I'm not even expecting them to adjust for inflation.

In the end, I told her that no matter what metric they selected, I would be able to juggle the numbers to "prove" that I'd earned a bonus and that I preferred not to be put in that position.* * * * * Then I reminded her that, in my job, at least 50% of what I do is significantly affected by forces outside my control, making "success" rather hard to attain.

Also, I hate that kind of thing. The perception that I could do my job better if I only bothered to, that irritates me.

I suspect I have a weird attitude toward money.

Also, I'm pissy about CEOJason's little speech during our last all-company meeting. He congratulated everyone on getting all the necessary work done in 2009, even though he'd cut the staff by 50%. He said these results proved that the Café had been over-staffed. No one spoke up (although I badly wanted to) to point out that his simultaneous decision to eliminate twenty time-sapping, money-sucking special projects had been a significant factor in the ability of the remaining employees to get through the necessary work.

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* Did I blog that? It happened right before Christmas. Sadly this catastrophic event was triggered by my own stupidity in goofing off at the office—surfing around and reading books online on a site that turned out to be infected.
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* * But I maintain that it's not my fault that they weren't running a decent virus program on the stupid network. I ran a full system scan with their software and it swore my computer wasn't infected--the dialogue box clearly said so, as nearly as I could tell in the middle of a deluge of browser windows popping open to share bad pr0n images.
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* * * I don't care if you can minimize the stupid ribbon. Minimized, it doesn't have any functionality at all. Maximized, it eats 10%-15% of your screen space with distracting and useless graphics. I do not approve of software companies joining the conspiracy against text.
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* * * * It was okay to underpay me when they hired me because I had no clue what I was doing. It was not okay not to deliver on the pay raise I should have received after I trained myself and produced a 40% increase in leads that first year, it was not particularly okay for them to force through a 15% pay cut last year, and it's certainly not okay for them to act, today, as though my current base salary is an acceptable rate of pay for what I bring to the table.

This 'do more with less' trend, of course, is a thing that has pissed me off since it was invented by Reagan and his cadre of criminal cronies. It is not okay. I am not a labor unit and I decline to be downsized, outsourced, or reimagined as a less-valuable asset. There is a limit, beyond which I will refuse to continue doing the work of two or three people for the salary of 2/3 of a person. It's becoming a matter of principle and, for someone who values a quiet life as much as I do, it's becoming surprisingly important to me that I actually speak out against being treated this way--not by the Argonut Café in particular, but on behalf of every worker in this country who has been tricked into accepting this as the natural way of things.
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* * * * * Naturally I would never juggle the numbers that way, but the bottom line is that accepting their proposition would put me in the position, every single day, of putting the welfare of a company that would dump me in a heartbeat ahead of my own welfare.

This goes along with the discussion just above--companies show no loyalty to their staff (the Café laid off an employee of 18 years with no more emtion than they showed toward getting rid of the guy who had been here for four months) and expect increasingly ridiculous levels of loyalty and sacrifice in return.