All The Things We Want For Christmas.
(OK, not all of them. Just a few.)

Been a while since I've ranted about the nice folks that work here at TheFirm. There's been a whole new crop of annoyance to deal with lately, as the first two rounds of downsizing have went through and people have become complacent again. Oops, sorry ... forgot that Mr. Dimon's preferable euphemism is "right-sizing". Anyhow, courtesy of Girlfriend, LawnBoy, and other residents of TheFirm ... I bring you the lists we sent to Santa:

1.) LawnBoy wants a new person on the other side of his cubicle wall. This woman that currently is the bane of his existence is the same one that I ranted to some of you about ... the one that wore lederhosen for "Cultural Awareness Day". Mind you, she's 6'3", and maybe 300 lbs. She's HUGE. And scary. She's so not the kind of blonde you want to see in lederhosen! From a rant from LawnBoy ...

She set up her fucking Christmas village today at her desk. Then she left a tray of deviled eggs sit on the wall between us ALL DAY. Then she ordered lo mein for lunch and ate that shit at her desk. Then I noticed that she wore her "I love America" T-SHIRT to work today. Oh wait, I said "work today" which she HASN'T FUCKING DONE ANY OF ALL DAY.

Basically, it's been a running theme of unprofessionalism and it makes me sick. and I've had enough and now I'm going home. I HATE it that people like her work here. They are the anchor (literally, in this case) around the neck of every dedicated, hard-working person that works here.

I'll see ya tomorrow. I've had enough.

2.) I want my old TheFirm back. Yeah, some of the changes as a result of the merger are really positive (for instance, all exempt employees will now get a full four weeks' worth of vacation instead of the three weeks I get now, and when I move into an AVP slot in a few weeks my pay will increase by about $15K a year). But some of the changes suck major ass. I would really like to thank Mr. Dimon for completely upending most of the worthy intangible "fringe benefits" about this place. All of the changes made thus far are truly minor, but in Miss America speak, "it's the totality of all the elements" that really honks me off. For instance, we no longer have "casual Fridays". We can't even buy them (by donating money to the cause du jour). We also will not be having a holiday party this year, even though the WSJ just ran a big piece on how holiday parties do wonders for employee morale and end up aiding retention and increasing profit in the long run. Christ on a cracker, I couldn't even buy the f-ing highlighters I wanted, because they now micro-manage our supply orders to the point of requiring me to purchase crappy generic highlighters! There's not much I ask for in this world except for my Zazzle highlighters, pop-up Post-It notes in a color other than yellow, dry erase markers for my presentations in a color other than black, and a Sanford Uniball Gel Impact pen or three. Other than that, I can survive on crappy paper and cheap-o notebooks. They have twenty styles of leather-bound padfolios to choose from ... but can I get the stuff I actually CARE about anymore? HELL NO.

3.) Intentionally left blank.

4.) Girlfriend wants their HR partners to get off their asses and hire me already. There are two AVP positions in their department that are open, and a VP hiring one of them is quite interested in having me take one of her open positions. And by "quite interested", I mean "already burned up the phone line to the SVP over the division to find out what's the hold-up with posting the job out on the intranet."

There may be more later. I'll see who pisses me off in the next few hours, and if some of The Usual Suspects show up to occupy my day.