(you are Mine said she)

For your reading enjoyment, the story of my career at the bank, and why I’m no longer there.

So this afternoon I get into work at 3:30pm, and check my emails. A bunch of fluff messages about scheduling, and a notice that someone I worked with had been killed in a car accident. Not cool. At this point, the day is not beginning on the best note. Shortly after I sign onto the phones, “D”, one of the managers, comes to my desk and tells me that I’m gonna get coached on my emails and a call from this month. No biggy, since I already had the scores and had seen them, this was just the “lets both go into a conference room and blow smoke up each other’s asses” sort of thing that they’re required to do once each quarter. The coach tells me what I did wrong, I agree. No argument, since you never win anyway. Simple as that.

I go back out onto the floor at about 4:15pm. I take a couple of calls like a good worker, then I get pulled off to work on another system to answer some emails. The other system was just set up a different way this afternoon, so I get to see how it works, help set it up on my computer, and then start replying to customer emails. This brings us up to 5:30pm.

At 5:30pm. I’m on break. I generally sit at my desk, and I send a couple of emails to Eddie usually, and surf Metafilter or something. “D” comes over to my desk again and tells me that “S”, one of the department presidents, wants to have a chat with me. Whatever. I go over to S’s cube, and we start walking down the hall, doing that typical small talk that both of us know is nothing but bullshit, but doing it anyway because he’s not going to dole out some punishment for something right in the main hallway when everyone is leaving to go home. We make our way down to the HR office, and he tells me to have a seat in B’s office. “Do you have a website?” S asks. I tell him that yes, I have several. “Is chicky.net one of them?” Again, I reply with a simple “yes”. “And do you, on occasion, post pieces of customer emails?”

“I have posted things that we think are funny.” I tell him. “I never mention the customer name, nor have I posted the bank name, or any account information. There’s no way for readers to figure out which bank I work for based on what I’ve posted in the past.”

S slides a printout across the table. It’s got a post from 3 days ago printed on it. Ok, so I posted customer names once. “I seriously doubt that either Tom Brady, or any of the former New Kids on the Block are going to be surfing for webcams anytime soon.”

“You’ve been in the customer privacy info-sessions before, correct?” S asks.

“Yes.”

“And you’re familiar with the bank’s code of ethics, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Based on that knowledge, unfortunately, I’m going to have to end our relationship as employer and employee.” Um, way to go, could you have made it sound any more fucking stupid that that? “We’ve also got to discuss what to do with these,” he says, sliding a stapled stack of paper with my “work” category journal entries printed out. Four entries are hi-lited with yellow marker. “These four need to be removed. Since the other entries are more of opinion rather than account information, you could probably leave those up.” I agree to remove them because, well, I know they’re not totally gone. I sit down at B’s computer and delete the four entries as she watches, and S goes to my cube to clean my desk out. B explains that my benefits will be active until the end of the month, and i’ll get paid for then entire night even though I’m leaving early. She tells me that she understand that after 3 years in the same position that I’m probably burnt out, and that with my technical skills I was most likely getting bored with my job because I wasn’t being challenged. Funny, that’s exactly what my 9th grade science teacher said when I refused to pay attention in class or do homework at any time other than during his lessons. I wasn’t be challenged, and so I was bored with him. Soon after, S comes back, asks if I have my security badge on me, and says he’ll walk me to the front (you know, so I don’t make a scene or hang around). On the way to the front, he tells me because I was so honest and willing to remove the “offending entries”, that they’re going to pay me for the rest of the week. Gee, thanks, I guess.

And the moral of the story is, don’t post that you know how much Jordan Knight gets as direct deposit, or what Tom Brady got as a little bonus for winning the Super Bowl, especially if no one has been canned for such a thing before. You’ll be used as the example that is shown to new employees who just start training (I’m sure I’ll have reached celebrity status in my manager’s privacy policy info-sessions next year). I know for a fact they’re going to be keeping their eyes on me, and as of this time are still hitting my website from various stations in different answer centers.

On this day..

• >>>What a long day. - 2005
• >>>Eeep! - 2001
• >>> - 2001
• >>> - 2001
• >>>Yes, I'm still here. - 2001