2012

An email by our CEO shattered the lethargy of our lazy Thursday morning. It began by blaming the economic crisis and how it reduced our revenue. Due to this unfortunate turn of events, business processes have to be streamlined and ‘re-engineering’ be made. To facilitate this necessary but regrettable state of affairs, over ninety employees (commodities) across Asia have to be let go, but the company will do everything to help them to find employment. (Lies, lies and damned lies.) This is only the first round. There will be a second wave. Maybe even a third.

Everybody was demoralized by the announcement. Clearly this was not the news one would want to hear before the festive season comes into full swing. Miss Micky told me the gulag did exactly the same thing last year. Right after the annual company dinner, with its lucky draws. Pretty much like fattening the cows for slaughter. The mood in the gulag was one of disbelief and shock, a similar air of despondency and shock that persists after an air raid and the survivors looking dazed, shocked that their friends and families are dead while they have been inexplicably spared. Nobody felt like working. People were walking around and discussing this calamity in hushed whispers.

On my way to the loo I met the Feisty Bag Lady and we started to talk about the Calamity. She told me that in her two dozen years in this gulag she had never seen such a bad year. She went on, saying that the gulag, despite making redundant over 90 slaves across Asia, still had a lot of money. It is now up to those dead weights to ask for as such compensation as possible. It is only fair, I suppose, considering that the corporate management are so well paid they earn more in a month than what some of us make in a year. She quoted the example of one management guy who left us last year. He received a hefty severance package, returned to Australia, paid off his entire home mortgage with that kitty, with enough left to buy himself a new car, before rejoining the gulag in his own country. (Why am I not surprised?)

The Feisty Bag Lady also lamented on the deplorable state that life (in my esteemed opinion, existence) here is becoming. She has a relative who has been out of work since he was retrenched several years ago. She also narrated the case of someone she knows, a highly successful ‘somebody’ who became the object of his wife’s contempt after he outlived his usefulness to the gulag he so faithfully served. There was also one old guy who worked for a government (regime) arm and was induced to leave by some high-handed methods. He would be given nothing to do when he reported to work every day. This travesty went on until he decided it was enough and quitted the stupid slave house. If the organization fired him they would need to pay him compensation. Better he left, so that the money that would have gone to compensate him could end up lining the pockets of those swine in corporate management.

We both agreed that our existence is exacerbated by the presence of a totalitarian and merciless regime that profits from the blood, tears, sweat and soul of the complacent and bovine populace. The Dubai crisis may be the first of the many financial disasters since the collapse of the American markets. The recovery of the world economy, assuming such a thing is possible, will certainly be delayed and even curtailed. When you have a regime composed of easy credit, an obsession with short-term gains, and a willingness to use prevarication to achieve your means, shit is bound to hit the fan. It is just a question of when.

Back to home base. The Feisty Bag Lady asserted that it is going to be next to impossible to find full time employment these days. Companies are outsourcing because they do not wish to pay benefits that would have be necessary for employed staff. They are preferring contract and temporary employees for the same reason. They can get rid of you anytime they like. In addition, the massive influx of foreigners, many of whom are cheap labor and talentless, into this shithole will not only depress wages, but will deprive locals of jobs in what is already an ever shrinking job market. She and I are of the same mind that the regime’s claims that we are not filling enough positions in job sectors that are not cheap, dirty and dangerous are absolutely bollocks. So are their assertions that they need to give themselves huge salaries in order to maintain their own integrity. Madoff anyone?

We felt sorry for the people who would be leaving us, especially our finance director. A quiet unassuming man, devotes his life to the organization and look where it got him? Being overlooked for promotion is bad enough, to be removed from the position he has occupied capably for five years is a kick in the teeth. There is no point in selling your life for the company. Why should anyone do that when to the company you are just a commodity that can be discarded as it pleases? Since we were kids we had been told by our supposedly elders and betters that we should work hard, be productive and a useful person (Incidentally many of these ‘supposedly elders and betters’ are unemployed, having being left on the streets after devoting the best years of their industrious lives to a pipe-dream.)

My advice to anyone reading this is this: Nobody cares about us. The system does not care. The regime is never accountable to the people. The tripartite system (the regime, religion and the media) are but instruments to subjugate the masses for the personal gratification of a few select individuals. To deny this and to claim instead that a ‘benign authoritarian’ state is the best and only way is a sign of magical thinking. Speak softly but carry a big stick, says the regime, and the stupefied masses ejaculate all over themselves with adoration for this most profound piece. I offer a better solution: THROW AWAY THE STICK.

The only people we should care about are ourselves and those we like and whom in turn care about us. Anton LaVey, that most distinguished figure and founder of the Church of Satan said that the Satanist should not waste his time on psychic vampires. I agree with him totally. The Feisty Bag Lady said that she is going back to her law academy to hook up with her old course mates to see if there is anything for her. I wish her the best of luck. For all our sympathy for our expelled colleagues, we could be sympathizing ourselves in actuality.

It was really a very interesting conversation. After that horrible war of words in that horrible Saturday afternoon with equally horribly stupid people, to talk to one who is intelligent, is for once, a relief and if she were thirty years younger and looked like Natalie Portman – a most articulate specimen I assure you – it would have been an orgasmic experience as well. She was also positive, or tried to convey some positivity in spite of the occasion. I suppose that comes with age. Short of sudden violent death or illness, I still have about 45 to 50 years to go. And in this shithole, it is like five centuries in the Hells.

The only thing I felt ambivalent about when she said jokingly that it would not hurt to pray a bit to hasten the Old Dog Thief’s death. I replied I am an atheist, but she told me to take it with a pinch of salt. Maybe we will have another conversation again, this time on the wickedness of religion and the superiority of atheism.