Rant #1,954: The End of the World As We Know It

There are times where I write these daily Rants ahead of time, so sometimes, you might see a Rant today that was written several days ago.

I do that sometimes at the spur of a moment, when something is fresh in my mind and I need to get it all down electronically.

Such is the following Rant, which is being written Friday night and which is being presented as new today, Monday morning.

Not only is the subject something that I felt the need to write about, but I did not want to get anything wrong, and I wanted to remember everything, so I figured that I would put it all down on the blog when I had a chance this past weekend, and the time was right on Friday night.

Today, or Friday, was probably the most heinous, abhorrent, disgraceful and disgusting day that I have ever spent at work, and I am talking about my entire working career, not just my 21-plus years at my current place.

I got to work early, as I always do, and after doing the crossword and some other stuff in my car as the rain fell on my window, the door to my place of business opened, and I was greeted by one of our management team, the male portion of the equation, a person who is so devoted to his job that he actually lives at work (yes, he has a room there).

I went to my desk, did what I always do--I have a few things to do each day before I dive into the day's main work--and then, as I pretty much always do, I take a bathroom break, which usually lasts a minute or two.

I did what I had to do in the bathroom, and as I walked back to my desk, the person who opened the door for me intercepted me, and asked me, without any prompting or explanation, the following question:

"When you were in the bathroom, did you stand up or sit down?"

Well, I must have done a double take, but I did answer him: "I stood up," I said, wondering where this was going.

"We have been having problems with the toilets in both the men's and women's bathroom. The system is 70 years old, and it is impacting the entire system, both the men's and the women's bathrooms."

He pretty much said that there was some type of blockage, and pretty much implied that if possible, try not to do any damage--if you know what I mean--while in the bathroom, because the cleaning woman had to clean up an overflowing toilet just a day earlier.

Later that morning, I again went to the bathroom, and again stood up, and after flushing the toilet, and having trouble doing so, I heard some gurgling and I said, in kind of a funny way, "It wasn't me. I didn't even do anything much."

Ha ha.

So the entire day, I was making sure I never had the urge to do "any damage" in the bathroom, and I have to say that it wasn't an easy job to do.

But that was mild compared to what happened later on that morning.

One of my co-workers--one of two artists that we have at the company--did not show up for work today, and did not call in or give any indication that he wasn't coming in.

He had also taken off on Wednesday, but did work a full day on Thursday.

I was busy, so really, his absence only entered my mind because in our current work configuration, I am in an office with my managing editor and I sit by the door of the room, opposite to the person in question.

Anyway, right before lunch and my visit to the bank on payday, another co-worker came into my room and said something to the effect of, "Someone on Facebook put up an R.I.P. XXX is dead."

I immediately said, "Huh?"

I had to get to the bank, but as I left, I asked the other artist what was going on, and he said he didn't know anything about it, either.

I went and did what I had to do, and when I came back, I went on the person in question's Facebook page, and lo and behold, the person who put up the R.I.P.--evidently a neighbor of the person in question--was being lambasted by numerous people to remove the post, because many of the person in question's family learned of this through Facebook, which is not the place to post a death notice without the family knowing about it.

I started to eat my lunch, and another co-worker told me that what we heard was true, the person in question had, in fact, passed away.

I asked this person for more details, but the person was so distraught, that I was told, "It is actually a short story, but I would rather not talk about it now," and we left it at that.

I had heard something about the person in question having some problems sleeping, and he was prescribed sleeping pills.

And that is all I know about it.

Lunch ended at 1:30 p.m., and we all came back from lunch and went back to work.

And the clock ticked ... 2 p.m ... 2:30 p.m. ... 3 p.m. ...

Not a word was said by anyone about the passing of our co-worker, a guy probably in his 40s or early 50s who had been employed as an artist at my place of work for at least a decade.

I figured that by 5 p.m. or even 5:15 p.m., management would say something, but it was simply "business as usual" at my place the rest of the day.

Of course, you could hear a pin drop for the entirety of the afternoon,

I cannot understand management--either the male or the female member of this team--and I simply cannot believe that they did not say one single word about this to their employees.

Look, we are only like a dozen people there now. Would it have taken any amount of energy to gather us up, and just say a few words, to this effect:

"Unfortunately, what you heard is true. XXX did pass away, and we pretty much know what you know about what happened. If we find out anything else, we will keep you informed, and if there is a wake or a place to make a donation, we will let you know that, too, if and when we find out."

This would have taken maybe a few minutes to do, and would have shown the employees of this down-and--going-out firm that management is human and that they cared.

But no, they did not do that. They said nothing,

Their behavior was crass, the whole situation was poorly handled, and I really could not believe that they said absolutely nothing about this during the workday.

Earlier this year, we lost another employee, a former employee, who died in a car accident not far away from where I live. I could almost understand their silence on that one, because he hadn't been employed by us for some time.

But this one, involving a current employee ... to say nothing, not to give us some words of comfort, well, to me, that was just the lowest of the low.

This death appears to be a clear omen that this workplace is going into the garbage pail, and doing so pretty quickly. I have reported to you how I, myself, have been treated by management at this place, and today's non-action was certainly not an isolated incident, no, not by any stretch of the imagination.

But to treat death like it was happenstance is beyond my comprehension.

I am better than this place, and I deserve something better than this place.

As you know, I have tried, tried, and tried again to get out of this place, but to absolutely no avail.

Management's behavior today was inhuman, and I know that others feel exactly the same way that I do.

And yes, I know that some of you will say to me, "Take this Rant down. You are opening yourself up to trouble."

No, I don't think so, for various reasons I won't get into now, but the Rant stays, because it is 100 percent the truth, from top to bottom.

If anyone wants to refute anything I said here, they can't, because this is what happened today, to the letter.

May the person in question rest in peace.

(P.S.: Since I wrote this Rant, my faith in humanity--or lack thereof--was restored a bit, but just a bit.

On Sunday, at slightly before noon, I received an email from my employer, alerting me to the visiting times at the funeral home.

I have to say that I rarely go into my email on the weekend, so it was just pure luck that I found out about this as I did, but it was a welcome relief from the callousness that I felt permeated my place of business on Friday.

However, my employers are not off the hook. As I said earlier, they should have said something, rather than say nothing and leave us with this bad feeling leading into the weekend.

They saved themselves a bit with the email, but just a little bit.

There is no saving this place, and there is no excuse for their behavior.)