welcome back to kindergarten

Paranoia has now swept through the office. The owner of the place is, in a word, unstable...and the rumor mill is ripe with whispers of mass firings and lay-offs.

She has developed this little 'point' system, by which she determines how much work everyone has accomplished for the day...which would be be fine, except that her 'points' don't truly reflect how much work, has been done.

Along with making everybody in the office 'point-crazy', she has implemented a few other rules. One of which being mandatory attendance at her daily 'point' meetings. This is where all the employees sit around for 20 minutes everyday as she reviews everyone's point totals from the day before. We then have to clap for the highest point earners. Yes, that's right, we all have to clap. As a result, several people are now voluntarily skipping their lunch to continue working. Not that they want applause, but because they're worried this lack of points will be used as ammunition to get rid of them.

Another new rule, that our wonderful boss has put into effect, is a 'no more food at your desk' policy. The new rule limits food to special occasions such as birthdays, when usually a cake or something will be brought in. On these days, we now must all meet in the lunch room at 10am, sing happy birthday to the birthday person, (yes, we all have to sing) and then we will are given five minutes to eat some cake before we must be seated back at our desk.

All of this has given me the feeling of being back in kindergarten. Our boss used to be a teacher, and her sense of business management is to run her company like she ran her elementary classroom.

So everybody is waiting for the worst, and the more neurotic employees are about ready to have a heart attack...which would actually reduce the need to get rid of anybody, so this might not be too bad a thing.

Which just confirms my belief that self-employment is really the way to go..