Part One (1): The Door With No Handle

Monday. Monday is that swift kick in the nuts reminding you of the money you don't have, and the fact you have to slave away at a job you hate in order for you to pay for the grossely overpriced large quantities of booze put on your credit card at some bar over the weekend. It's the start of another 40-60 hours of yes, sir, no, sir, three-bags full, sirs that you administer out of your gritted teeth to some asinine fool in a suit and tie. You, standing there with the same apparel, appear to want to emulate this simpleton due to corporate restrictions of what you can or cannot wear. Business casual is never that. Nothing is casual in business. I make the same 45 minute drive from Maryland into DC down the beltway. I get to work and park in my assigned spot and walk to the same damn elevator. Corporate elevators are interesting, it is the closest proximity you can be to someone for an extended period of time while desparately trying not to make eye contact as to avoid an asinine conversation. Everyone in the elevator, however, does the full body scan of the others in order to distinguish who amonst the group seems to be the dominant individual. Dominance in the business world is determined by monetary wealth, or the appearance of it, and nothing else. Fuck what you've learned about being a good person, or being in shape. I examine the fat balding guy next to me: pin-stripe suit, textured shirt with french cuffs, what appears to be expensive cufflinks resting on a Rolex, clean-ass shoes that probably didn't touch anything but the floormat of some BMW, Benz, or Maserati this morning, blackberry in hand. The blackberry, of course, is to inform all that see it that electronic mail correspondence is so important to this man and those that are sending it to him that he must be able to reply at any point in time. This man was one of the dominant individuals in the elevator. Too bad his ass would be dinner if humans determined dominance like animals did. Shit, his ass would probably still be dinner if he rolled into the wrong part of Southeast DC in that aforementioned car. Isn't all of Southeast DC "the wrong part"? Anyway, you step off the elevator on your designated floor. Same coffee, same "hello"s to the people you pass in the hallways. Same path to the same cubicle to sit in the same chair and fill out the same reports. Cattle have more choice of direction than we do. Our moments of grandeur and accomplishment arrive with the completion of a document that has no meaning or importance to our daily lives. Close of business, Action-items, return on investment, CC, AR, Legal, interoffice communications; this is the language of the corporate stooge. This is the communicae of individuals that were bright enough to go to college and expand their minds, yet were not passionate enough about that expansion to allow themselves to be hammered back down into order-following drones. This is the life of those on the proverbial ladder. A ladder that leads right into a door with no handle.