Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Feb 01 2002

That was the crappiest Wei-ya party I believe I ha…

That was the crappiest Wei-ya party I believe I have ever witnessed. Since our venue was basically a tent stretched between the building front and the Bridge To Nowhere, rain leaked in and kept us and the floor wet. The electric cables for the sound and lights were immersed in a couple of inches of the wet stuff, and the wind blew right through the flimsy material. The entire staff was crammed inside, some people dressed up, some not. There was a little kitchen area set up in the back for the caterers to prepare the food.

Basically the whole evening consisted of idiotic speeches and even more idiotic shows, punctuated by prizes being picked from a box full of namecards. At one point the Big Boss got up on stage and basically said that we were only getting half of our bonuses this year, since “the economy is bad” and “the move was expensive”, etc. Now, I’ve seen our earnings reports and budgets for the last couple of fiscal years, and we’re earning more now than we ever have. We have lots of new business and plenty of old clients with big accounts. We’re not hurting. I can believe that the move was paid with by our bonuses, because it would be just like the company to treat us like shit like that, but the stuff about the economy, etc., is complete bullshit.

So I sat and drank several Boddingtons and lots of red wine as I watched my New Year’s bonus being given to other people in the form of the various prizes. 10,000 dollars here, 15,000 there, and that was it. One of the shows was a dominatrix/S&M show, which rather surprised me, or would have if I hadn’t have drank so much alcohol. Later on, after we all went back into the office, one of the big bosses, not The Big Boss, approached me and asked me if I were having a good time.

I can’t remember my exact words, but my reply went something like “No, I’m not having a very good time. I just can’t bring myself to appreciate my new year’s bonus being cut in half. I’ve seen our budgets and I know we have the money to pay full bonuses if we want to. But that’s ok. I’ll just go buy more lottery tickets.”

Saying this to one of the senior management types was no doubt a mistake, but I wasn’t sober and I certainly wasn’t thinking. I took out some of my frustration on the punching bag, slamming it into the wall behind it until I could sense that the guys playing pool next to me were getting scared. I figured I might as well stop before I broke something, so I went out and stand around in the middle of traffic for another half an hour before catching a taxi driven by a formula-1 wannabe who happened to be absorbed in a gripping TV drama at the time. He managed to take me home by looking at the road during commercials, though, and guessing the rest of the time, I assume. I briefly considered going out to a pub or something, but I figured that that would just depress me even more. What you need, I told myself as we careened through the streets at impressive speeds, is a good, long, cathartic blogging session. And so here I am.

Hopefully I’ll get over the fact that I’ve just been robbed of a huge sum of money and get on with more important things. What’s done is done, I guess. No use in worrying about it now. It’s just that after the move I was just beginning to feel a little good about my job and the company, and now any confidence I had has been destroyed. There’s really no point in being loyal to a company that treats their employees in this fashion.

In the meantime, the book, the book, the book. I’ve promised myself (again) that I will definitely have it done by the end of the Chinese New Year Holidays, which gives me this weekend plus 11 days. I’ll just have to do what I can in that time and hope it’s enough.

posted by Poagao at 4:29 pm  

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