Corporate Coggery 101: Accounts Receivable
I declare myself to be agnostic because I have seen hell in the form of accounts receivable. Being raised catholic, I decided there is no way possible the God I was told exists actually does. How can an all knowing and loving being stand by and watch any of his creations be confined to cubicles while crunching an endless river of numbers? My only conclusion is that there is a God, but he is quite the asshole. He laughed when 9/11 happened, he was baked when he created the gay man who fucked a monkey that introduced AIDS to the world and, out of drunken boredom, he struck down Terry Schiavo just to see what would happen. I know all of this because I worked as a temporary contractor in accounts receivable.
Work begins with the commute. The standard transmission car you drive isn’t cut out for the starts and stops of city traffic. Any small pothole you hit makes your CD player jump so even Jack Johnson can’t calm the nerves beginning to fray with the inevitable 9 hour long despair awaiting. You pull up, pay the asshole parking attendant 1/3 of an hour’s pay to park. “Have a nice day,” you say. Nothing. Your mood sours before you even get to work and your first semi passive aggressive phrase slips past your lips, “Yeah, I hate my life too,” you say as you drive away to find a parking spot. The four minute walk to the building is tarnished by the cold wind blowing in your face. Finally you are inside, a skeleton known as a security official greets you with a “good morning!” You reciprocate the pleasant exchange, yet think to yourself, “FUCK YOU! There’s nothing ‘good’ about this morning.” You catch an elevator with 3 other people, one of which gets off exactly one floor above the lobby instead of taking the stairs. You sigh, hoping it’s loud enough for the person to hear, but they continue on un-phased… besides… they’re not working in accounts receivable. Finally the elevator stops at your floor, as you exit the stranger you shared it with says, “have a nice day,” to which you don’t respond. The place your personality used to be is exchanged with a cold, empty void incapable of generating any thoughts that aren’t depraved and hateful. You walk to your desk. Luckily the manager of the department isn’t there yet, so not only is your 15 minute tardiness not noticed, but an early exit is possible. That is the only satisfaction you will be able to extract from the day before you sit down and begin mindless processing of repetitive, numerical bullshit.
The background you put up to make yourself laugh doesn’t even catch your attention anymore, so to replace it, you put up one that matches your everyday thoughts.
Just like any good cog, you have a routine. You first open up email in hopes that there might be something funny from former coworkers (from the job you got laid off from that you actually liked), friends, or to see if there’s anything important. That barely takes up any of your time. Next you open up a few internet explorers. The first window is designated for iGoogle, the next for random browsing, the third window you pull up the login screen for the accounting web based application, but you don’t log in. You email a few friends to let them know how much you hate your job, hate your life, and how close you were to driving into oncoming traffic on the way to work. They reply with “OMG”’s and “LOL”’s, but they don’t know how serious you are about ending the pain. So you laugh, talk to them a little longer, and right as the conversations start getting good, your loud mouth cunt of a manager finally steps in and sits down in her cube. The fun is over. You glance at your clock and notice it’s 8:17. So everyone is under the impression you arrived between 7:45 and 8:00. You managed to sneak in late and knock 30 minutes off the clock, but even then, you realize you’ve only been in hell for 2 minutes. You slowly choke down what would have been a sob, but the last of your ability be anyway emotionally attached to the world is being consumed from the soul rotting abyss that has become your life.
After a solid 30 minutes of working on stuff you put off yesterday for today, you make a few passes to the different printers you send information to. Along the way to the one you start thinking how hard you would have to throw a chair in order to break the large pane glass window enough so you could jump out. Once printouts have been collected it’s back to the desk to sort them. Deduction identification pages, followed by customer back up, followed by the actual invoice. There, one’s done. Next up you have about 150 more of these things to sort. You’re reminded of the time you had a seizure and wrecked your friend’s car. “Why?” you whisper out loud. “Why did I put my seat belt on?” In between reading the news on iGoogle and finishing the retarded sorting tasks, you send out a few more emails: “Exactly how much bleach would I have to mix with how much ammonia to kill myself in my sleep?” The day melts away, as do the rest of your childhood dreams of having a good life, and coworkers bring you endless amounts of the same work you’ve been doing for them since you started.
Lunch rolls around, you choke down and pretend to like the lean cuisine meal you packed for yourself. If these things are supposed to be so healthy, why is there so much fucking salt in them? Fuck it. The most relaxing hour of the day vanishes as quickly as it appeared. Back to finishing other peoples’ dirty work for them.
Your immediate supervisor approaches you:
“Hey (your name), I have a special assignment for you!”
You grimace knowing “special” means “stupid” and you follow through with it.
“’Special’ like I’ll use my brain to complete this task ‘special’? or ‘special’ like he rides the short bus, maybe we can put him on the wrestling team ‘special?”
She laughs. Good thing she doesn’t know any retarded people or else that may have come off as offensive… the way it was intended to be.
As predicted, the “special” assignment was retarded and you complete it within a matter of an hour even though it only really took you 15 minutes to do it. The loud ass cunt department manager is going off about losing weight. The bitch is fucking skinny enough, what she needs is a workout program to fix her ugly mug. Along with that, the woman that does need to lose weight is making dozens of passes to the candy jar while blasting the latest and shittiest music from her ipod. You go to bite down on your fingernail but it’s already down to the nub. “Why did I quit smoking?” you think to yourself.
The day is coming to a close, the stacks of bullshit work you finished have been replaced with higher stacks of even shittier bullshit. You stuff your bag with the last of things you’re taking home with you. The loud ass, narcissistic, cunt, fucker, surely divorced, rotten ovary having, bitch of a manager says “have a good night.” YOU SNAP! You pull a handgun out from you bag, casually walk over to her desk and ask “can you hold something for me?” She looks up at you. You strain and reach to position the barrel of the gun directly on the back of your head. You pull the trigger and in an incredible spectacle only comparable to a watermellon at a Gallagher show, your dome explodes and your face lands on the woman’s lap.
Work begins with the commute. The standard transmission car you drive isn’t cut out for the starts and stops of city traffic. Any small pothole you hit makes your CD player jump so even Jack Johnson can’t calm the nerves beginning to fray with the inevitable 9 hour long despair awaiting. You pull up, pay the asshole parking attendant 1/3 of an hour’s pay to park. “Have a nice day,” you say. Nothing. Your mood sours before you even get to work and your first semi passive aggressive phrase slips past your lips, “Yeah, I hate my life too,” you say as you drive away to find a parking spot. The four minute walk to the building is tarnished by the cold wind blowing in your face. Finally you are inside, a skeleton known as a security official greets you with a “good morning!” You reciprocate the pleasant exchange, yet think to yourself, “FUCK YOU! There’s nothing ‘good’ about this morning.” You catch an elevator with 3 other people, one of which gets off exactly one floor above the lobby instead of taking the stairs. You sigh, hoping it’s loud enough for the person to hear, but they continue on un-phased… besides… they’re not working in accounts receivable. Finally the elevator stops at your floor, as you exit the stranger you shared it with says, “have a nice day,” to which you don’t respond. The place your personality used to be is exchanged with a cold, empty void incapable of generating any thoughts that aren’t depraved and hateful. You walk to your desk. Luckily the manager of the department isn’t there yet, so not only is your 15 minute tardiness not noticed, but an early exit is possible. That is the only satisfaction you will be able to extract from the day before you sit down and begin mindless processing of repetitive, numerical bullshit.The background you put up to make yourself laugh doesn’t even catch your attention anymore, so to replace it, you put up one that matches your everyday thoughts.
Just like any good cog, you have a routine. You first open up email in hopes that there might be something funny from former coworkers (from the job you got laid off from that you actually liked), friends, or to see if there’s anything important. That barely takes up any of your time. Next you open up a few internet explorers. The first window is designated for iGoogle, the next for random browsing, the third window you pull up the login screen for the accounting web based application, but you don’t log in. You email a few friends to let them know how much you hate your job, hate your life, and how close you were to driving into oncoming traffic on the way to work. They reply with “OMG”’s and “LOL”’s, but they don’t know how serious you are about ending the pain. So you laugh, talk to them a little longer, and right as the conversations start getting good, your loud mouth cunt of a manager finally steps in and sits down in her cube. The fun is over. You glance at your clock and notice it’s 8:17. So everyone is under the impression you arrived between 7:45 and 8:00. You managed to sneak in late and knock 30 minutes off the clock, but even then, you realize you’ve only been in hell for 2 minutes. You slowly choke down what would have been a sob, but the last of your ability be anyway emotionally attached to the world is being consumed from the soul rotting abyss that has become your life.
After a solid 30 minutes of working on stuff you put off yesterday for today, you make a few passes to the different printers you send information to. Along the way to the one you start thinking how hard you would have to throw a chair in order to break the large pane glass window enough so you could jump out. Once printouts have been collected it’s back to the desk to sort them. Deduction identification pages, followed by customer back up, followed by the actual invoice. There, one’s done. Next up you have about 150 more of these things to sort. You’re reminded of the time you had a seizure and wrecked your friend’s car. “Why?” you whisper out loud. “Why did I put my seat belt on?” In between reading the news on iGoogle and finishing the retarded sorting tasks, you send out a few more emails: “Exactly how much bleach would I have to mix with how much ammonia to kill myself in my sleep?” The day melts away, as do the rest of your childhood dreams of having a good life, and coworkers bring you endless amounts of the same work you’ve been doing for them since you started.
Lunch rolls around, you choke down and pretend to like the lean cuisine meal you packed for yourself. If these things are supposed to be so healthy, why is there so much fucking salt in them? Fuck it. The most relaxing hour of the day vanishes as quickly as it appeared. Back to finishing other peoples’ dirty work for them.Your immediate supervisor approaches you:
“Hey (your name), I have a special assignment for you!”
You grimace knowing “special” means “stupid” and you follow through with it.
“’Special’ like I’ll use my brain to complete this task ‘special’? or ‘special’ like he rides the short bus, maybe we can put him on the wrestling team ‘special?”
She laughs. Good thing she doesn’t know any retarded people or else that may have come off as offensive… the way it was intended to be.
As predicted, the “special” assignment was retarded and you complete it within a matter of an hour even though it only really took you 15 minutes to do it. The loud ass cunt department manager is going off about losing weight. The bitch is fucking skinny enough, what she needs is a workout program to fix her ugly mug. Along with that, the woman that does need to lose weight is making dozens of passes to the candy jar while blasting the latest and shittiest music from her ipod. You go to bite down on your fingernail but it’s already down to the nub. “Why did I quit smoking?” you think to yourself.
The day is coming to a close, the stacks of bullshit work you finished have been replaced with higher stacks of even shittier bullshit. You stuff your bag with the last of things you’re taking home with you. The loud ass, narcissistic, cunt, fucker, surely divorced, rotten ovary having, bitch of a manager says “have a good night.” YOU SNAP! You pull a handgun out from you bag, casually walk over to her desk and ask “can you hold something for me?” She looks up at you. You strain and reach to position the barrel of the gun directly on the back of your head. You pull the trigger and in an incredible spectacle only comparable to a watermellon at a Gallagher show, your dome explodes and your face lands on the woman’s lap.
That’s what working in accounts receivable is like.
Fuck that shit.
~Jack .45~
