Company Cards & the bullshit that is academia.

[Da6s]

I'm leaving in 30 minutes (which is now, well, now) to meet up with my hoity toity executive students. Again. Fourth time this week, which is awesome for me, but there's something they do which annoys the batshit out of me.

Fucking company cards.

I really shouldn't complain. They buy round after round after round all the while merrily laughing about chocking it off as business networking. They buy 400 dollars worth of sushi without even blinking an eye. They have no fear of reprimand over excess expenses, because hell, their companies are paying for their MBA, why would they be spanked for spending even more company money?

I don't get it. How can they get away with that? They aren't CEO's (yet). It's like they have no care or concern as long as it's someone else's money. The borg will fund their fun, no questions asked. How the fuck can they be this wasteful when jobs are supposedly so sparse? How can they get by without being audited? I can't imagine shareholders being ok with this, especially since i know damn well this money isn't from some big reserve that exists just for executive bonuses Someone please explain this to me, because i really don't get it.

Maybe i'm just 22 and naive about the world, but fuck.



Which brings me to another thing. Some of them easily pull 6 figures, but the moment it becomes an opportune time to spend some of their own money on something "fun" related a vacuum is created from the sheer force of their assholes slamming shut.

Spend without fear, until it's time to pitch in your own funds.


Here's another topic, similar bullshit. Fuck academia. I've been denied a raise for 2.5 fucking years at this point. And i've asked and pointed out reasons why I need and deserve one (minimum wage has gone up almost 2 dollars since my last raise) to no avail. I'm continuously told the education institution i work for has had a hiring freeze for a year and a half now, and no one is receiving raises. Even though professors and deans have. To hell with staff. And then all of a sudden the students in my program are in town, academia cums itself, and lo and behold, the state's money is miraculously funding flights cross country, hotel bills, and paying them excess of 5k to teach individual 3 hour sessions, or even to help teach sessions. Not even teaching. I shit you not, we flew in some guy from arkansas in May for 3 days. We paid him 5k a day. The only thing this fucker did was sit in a chair at a computer BESIDE me, and entered data into a spreadsheet that was written on a paper while i organized said papers. 2 hours into this simulation, jackass gets up and leaves to go back to the hotel for something, and I sat there for 3 fucking hours entering the data into the spreadsheet AND filing the fucking papers. For my same rate.

That's right. Some fucker got free airfare, hotel, food, and 15,000.00 dollars state money to enter data into a fucking spreadsheet for 2 hours, a task i had to do (and had done every simulation prior to this one), and i still get denied a fucking raise of ANY kind. Nevermind that im a fucking gofer bitch that does ANYTHING and EVERYTHING needed, and my entire pay from this part time job for the 2008 calendar year was barely over what they paid this fucking douche bag to do for 3 fucking days. Which i had to do.

God i fucking hate academia. It's bullshit.


Fuck it. I'm going to go get shitty on company cards, and then i'm just going to go back to being pissed off and broke. Fuck Rent. That musical sucks.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Looks like you've learned a hard lesson - Contrary to popular belief, honest hard work is not rewarded. It's exploited. You want to get ahead in life you have to learn to lie cheat and steal - this is how capitalism actually works. Of course no one will tell you this because the first thing you learn on the path to capitalist success is that the less people who know about this, the better off you will be.

You are constantly playing a gambling game, balancing the odds against the price of getting caught. The more you bank the less dangerous being caught becomes up to a point where you have so much coin that murdering someone in the street in broad daylight is unlikely to land you in jail for more than a couple of days at worst.

Good luck, have fun and remember that every cent you make comes directly out some starving fucker's ricebowl.

[Triple Zero]

What P3NT said.

Also realize that those fuckers might have just gotten lucky and do not realize what game they're playing, just like you did not before. But now you do. So use that to your advantage.

[Brotep]

^^, ^ well said


@OP: sooner or later some dumbass is gonna post Chuang Tzu in this thread, so it might as well be me


There was the one about the tree that was so huge and gnarled that nobody wanted to chop it down for wood.  I can't find that one, so here's a different one (no idea about quality of translation):

Prince Yüan of Sung dreamed one night that a man with dishevelled hair peeped through a side door and said, 'I have come from the waters of Tsai-lu. I am a marine messenger attached to the staff of the River God. A fisherman, named Yü Ch'ieh, has caught me.'

When the prince awaked, he referred his dream to the soothsayers, who said, 'This is a divine tortoise'.

'Is there any fisherman', asked the prince, 'whose name is Yü Ch'ieh?'

Being told there was, the prince gave orders for his appearance at court; and the next day Yü Ch'ieh had an audience.

'Fisherman', said the prince, 'what have you caught?'

'I have netted a white tortoise', replied the fisherman, 'five feet in semi-circumference'.

'Bring your tortoise', said the prince. But when it came, the prince could not make up his mind whether to kill it or keep it alive. Thus in doubt, he had recourse to divination, and received the following response:

"Slay the tortoise for purposes of divination and good fortune will result."

So the tortoise was despatched. After which, out of seventy-two omens taken, not a single one proved false.

'A divine tortoise', said Confucius, 'can appear to prince Yüan in a dream, yet it cannot escape the net of Yü Ch'ieh. Its wisdom can yield seventy-two faultless omens, yet it cannot escape the misery of being cut to pieces.  Truly wisdom has its limits; spirituality, that which it cannot reach.
--found on some stupid advertising site, apparently the old ass Giles translation (ch. 26)