Meaningless Work
As many of you now know this friday will be my last day with PwC so I
wanted to say good bye and thank you for everything. My decision to
leave was not a snap decision as it may have seemed but a well thought
out process. It started one night in the audit room as I was helplessly
attempting to focus on some inane, completely irrelevant task so I could
leave when the green card carrying cleaning lady came into my cage to
empty my garbage when my decision was made. I realized that I was
actually jealous of her job. I would have gladly emptied the garbage
cans in the whole building over any of the nonsense I was doing on my
computer. See, at the end of her shift she has made a difference, she
has added value,
be it minimal, of removing the refuse from the employees cubes. At the
end of the day she sees the empty garbage cans and knows that she
accomplished something. When trying to apply this mindset to my own work
I found it to be impossible. At the end of my shift, I will have
documented a control, that was only created for the sake of having a
control, and my work willget picked apart by anal retentive managers, but ultimately find a home
in a cabinet somewhere, only to see the light of day again when it is
thrown out in 7 years when it is deemed to be irrelevant. I have added
zero value to the client, zero value to my own company, and it has made
me routinely daydream about ways to off myself. I find it very hard to
be motivated when I know the end result of my work has no impact on
anything but simply must be completed because PwC audit guide says it
must be completed.
What
makes this entire process worse is the fact that those around you insistthat this work is crucial to the world’s existence and it is essential
that you never use abbreviations, that your sheets must be as colorful
as possible, and all lines must be drawn with a ruler or else it is
clear that PwC will come apart from its hinges. I must have missed out
on the brainwashing session that PwC provided all senior associate and
managersthat taught them how to turn obsessive compulsive up a notch.
Anyway…that was how I came to decide that public accounting was not
really for me. A couple other pieces of adivce for my coworkers and the
company as I part:I would greatly encourage some kind of weight loss challenge to be
implemented firm wide. The herd of water buffalo you call your work
force is embarassing and a bit gross. When I call a co worker over from
2 cubes down and they are legitmately out of breath when they get to my
cube it may be time to knock off 10 or 80 pounds. The company seems to
encouragethis obesity; each busy season we get a giant package full of pixie
sticks, chocolate and assorted sweets. As much as I would enjoy type 2
diabetes, I think I’ll pass.Do not ever, ever, ever put one male on a team with all females unless
you want him to quit and or commit a hate crime. This is inhumane. One
can only endure so many conversations about greys anatomy, weddings, and
handbags before they wish for a cancerous tumor in their armpit.I think the joke is old already, enough with the sarbanes oxley. It was
fun while it lasted but there is no way anbody can honestly think that
this bullshit is necessary. Oh you want me to pull a sample of the HR
file to make sure everyones birthday and hire date is accurate? Yea ill
jump right on that, and trust me I’ll definitely let you know if there
is an exception and not just make up answers that result in me doing
less work.You can easily cut some costs and get rid of the HR department. I’m
pretty sure you can train a monkey to send out the available list and a
timesheet reminder every two weeks.
Submitted By: Lindsey M
@crazyemails
I get the impression this guy is the sane one, and the company he worked for was the fountain of crazy.
Yeah, I had a similar revelation when I was about 22. I realized that I am just not an office person. It sucks when you get to work and you’ve already looked at the clock to see what time it is within the first 5 minutes.
Been a blue-collar guy ever since, and I couldn’t be happier for it. For me there’s nothing like being able to look at what you’ve done for the day and feel a sense of having done a good job.
Ugh, that sounded corny as hell…
Dude, I feel you. The pay is usually better in the white collar world, but in production jobs you can see what you made with your own two hands, and know that you actually produced something other than paperwork.
I didn’t say anything….
“Fuckin’ A, man. Fuckin’ A.”
of course he is!
What, isn’t this a repost?
It’s from the voting page.
Only thing that comes to mind is the movie “Office Space”
I too had an Office Space flashback. Sad thing is, I’d say this isn’t really an email from a Crazy Person but rather from someone fairly sane.
I love this, I can relate to this guy. And as the poster above mentioned, this guy is the sane one.
I really really think he needs to find another job. The place he works for does sound crazy, but he also sounds completely burnt out by it.
I feel for him.
Yeah this guy isnt crazy at all… he just hates his shitty job. Im sure alot of can can relate. The email is typed out specifically and sarcastically blunt as a s Swan Song. A last hurrah at everything he’s wanted to say for years… but has held back. THIS IS NOT AN EMAIL FROM A CRAZY PERSON.
I’m pretty sure the crazy in “emails from CRAZY people” is to be taken with humor, not literally..
Oh. So Emails From Crazy People arent from crazy people. Got it. Fail.
Yep. That’s the last “crazy” email for me.
You will be missed. NOT.
So, when you all go to a gas station, do you piss, moan whine and cry when the gas station sells things other than gas? Just wondering how deep your psychosis about this goes.
If you don’t like what gets posted here, GO CREATE YOUR OWN FUCKING SITE AND DO IT YOURSELF. Otherwise, just shut the fuck up. Your whining is tiresome.
hahaha…. Ugh, I love it.
Having a bad day? Jeez, lighten the hell up, pal.
Actually, I was having a pretty good day, but it was briefly interrupted by the douchebags who insist on being the content police here…. I felt much better after I spewed hatred towards both of them.
100% agree with the Sarbanes Oxley crap. I have yet to hear anything that this actually done, big companies still go bankrupt out of no where, and the companies that were already doing it right, now have to fill out mountains of paperwork, hire auditors to review said paperwork, and then because they have to find something or else it would not be considered an audit… the employees have to review the paperwork again and fix their grammar, cross a “T” or some other lame excuse that makes everyone feel the process “works”.
I think I used to work for that company. That’s when I decided to drop my formal career and get a real job bar tending. Less benefits but easier on my wrists since I wasn’t trying to slit them everyday.
I agree with the others… crazy was the company, not the man…
See, Office Space wasn’t that far from reality.
That was the beauty of Office Space — it was instantly relatable for anyone who’s worked in a cube farm, or really any other kind of insane white-collar job.
I sympathize…I’m just waiting to hear someone say he should be thankful to have the job or “suck it up or quit”
That kind of mentality is running way to rampant in the world nowdays…
I really wish I could write a letter similar to this to my employers. I really want to smack them and ask them what they are thinking sometimes.
This guy only get marginally crazy at the end. Frankly this guy would only be crazy if he had stayed.
You’re all missing it. The company DROVE him crazy. He’ll be fine in two weeks.
Everyone’s thinking it, everyone’s feeling it. So he’s crazy for putting it in an e-mail?
This could have been me 18 months ago. He isn’t crazy. In fact, his startling self-awareness and his ability to act on it are signs of remarkable clarity and sanity. Me? I was crazy. I was so bullied and bored I was muttering like a psych patient. They had to fire me. Twelve months of healing and I’m whole again.
This man is my hero. Now THIS is how you write a quit letter!
PwC should probably be replaced with ** as it’s just too obvious it’s meant to be PriceWaterhouseCoopers
And for those of us too slow to figure this out (or simply not interested in figuring it out), thanks so much for the info that you think should be removed. Is this irony?
Huh? Making sense FAIL.
Ability to understand FAIL.
They’re saying that if you disagree with naming the company’s initials, you shouldn’t make it worse by actually listing the company’s name in your post.
Couldn’t have said it better myself (apparently, I didn’t say it better myself).
Next time, I will type slower and LARGER so you can understand. I will also try to keep all words under five letters.
Crazy? Maybe. Jackass? Yes.
How is it the companies fault that people he works with are obese? And why does he have to comment on some man going insane because he’s with a group of women who talk about stuff that he has no interest in? While his job may be useless and shitty, he’s still an inconsiderate sexist jackass.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed that? Why the hostility to the other people who have to truck through the same crud he does? And for the record, as a woman I couldn’t care less about Grey’s, someone else’s ridiculous wedding, or handbags. Way to generalize. I suspect that as a man he had poor hygiene and spent 90% of his work day reading about sports anyway, isn’t that what all men do?
Sounds like someone’s a chubby lady…?
Maybe it’s the woman who used to sit in the cubicle next to him?
What? Are you fucking serious? You don’t need to be “a chubby lady” to be annoyed by someone’s juvenile and idiotic behavior. Just a grown-up.
Sounds like someone’s a chubby lady or an office manager… ?
Corporate America sucks balls. Stop kidding yourselves. Most of us can relate to him perfectly fine.
I’m not kidding myself. I work in an office doing the same thing, day in day out. It freaking sucks. Badly. Doesn’t mean I’m going to be a jerk to my coworkers who do the same thing.
For the record… I’m not fat. Far from it actually, though if I was it would only matter to the vapid teenagers (or those with a teenage mentality) lurking around here. Just a tomboy.
He’s not saying all women are at all like that, he’s talking about his female coworkers. His generalization is likely not far from the truth, considering if you choose a mundane and pointless job, you’re probably interested in mundane and pointless shit.
Houlihan: Thank you and exactly.
Yeah, this guy took a couple cracks that were probably not necessary, but really? Who hasn’t been there?? He’s not denigrating all women, he’s denigrating the women who sit around at work and talk about tv shows, weddings and shopping, and don’t pretend, you females in the audience, that you don’t know these women. I have a friend who is terribly sweet, a nice person, but I’ve starting avoiding her because I really don’t care about “crappy reality show du jour” or who’s doing however well or poorly on American Idol.
Anyway, point is, this is funny, get off your PC soapbox and crack a smile already.
(And P.S. I am also female.)
Thank you, you are 100% correct. This person might not like his job, but why does he have to be a total douchenozzle upon his exit?
Oh man, I know that feeling. (Happy now working for myself)
But since leaving the Hell of Day-Job-In-An-Office I’ve actually been dropping weight like mad.
No soda and chips from a handy machine. (I can actually make a fresh lunch and eat it in the time I WANT to take to eat it… )
No “It’s friday, when we’re so swamped we want you to eat at your desks, so we’re catering in lunch… straight too your desk.” YES this was a weekly event, sometimes more than once a week depending on the season.
lost 40# without even trying.
IMHO “Green Card Carrying” isn’t a put down, but rather a comment about, “Americans usually won’t even consider taking such a lowly regarded job, but she’s got more accomplished than I have…”
Much like the response of my family about “You have a college degree, why are you taking THAT job.”
I agree. His co-workers are in the same position he is. Instead of recognizing that, however, he decided to take a parting shot at them based on their weights and on the stupidity of the only politically correct chatter they’re allowed to have in such a stifling work environment – as if paper-pushing is conducive to sterling intellectual conversation.
What a douchebag.
I believe you have my stapler.
WIN!
“I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it Bob.”
Price Waterhouse Cooper… I agree the company drove him crazy… I used to work for larger public accounting firms and I totally see where this guy is coming from. If he is crazy then I am crazy.
Z – you need to work in public accounting to understand.
We use this firm at work as well and this is how it is…they’re straight out of college, they work 80+ hour weeks, eat tons of crap and have no idea what they’re doing sometimes.
That is the most truthfully honest letter!
This is all true. I have a good friend who works there. Got the job right out of college. While it’s probably a good starting point, I can’t imagine staying in that position longer than a year or two… he gets sent to some other city every week, living out of hotel rooms and eating out all the time, with 10-12 hour work days while there. Could be fun for a minute as a 23-yr-old, but makes it hard to build a life where you actually live. The only time I ever see him anymore is when he’s in town doing a recruiting event at the local university business school. I can’t believe he’s still doing it 5 years later….
Hilarious as this is, I think the guy just ruined his chances of getting a recommendation from his former boss when he tries to apply elsewhere.
that won’t be a problem, this person has several bosses of equal power, by several I mean a dozen or two – i am sure he can find plenty ppl to recommend him, I work for this company so I know, you get to work 80 hour weeks w/t overtime or bonuses or increases and you get paid $50K IT IS FUCKING HORRIBLE, most people just break down mentally and physically and leave in 2 years, if you stay any longer you become an obese neurotic alcoholic, no exaggeration btw this is a cpa firm
I was actually amused until I reached apart about the female colleagues. What a stuck up, sexist loser. Good riddance for the company.
(I realize the hypocrisy/irony of my remark, so let it go, please)
What I love is that fact that this dude thinks anyone CARES what he thinks. He held a position of apparently no authority and quit his job, yet feels the need to insult everyone before he leaves. I’ve had those shitty jobs before (we all have), but just because it’s not to his liking doesn’t mean he has to be a whiny, unconstructive, insulting douchebag about it.
I can just imagine working on the same team as this asshole would be excruciating; like working with a whinier, even more unfunny Jerry Seinfeld. He thinks he’s being funny and is trying WAY too hard to be so, but he’s really just an ass who nobody listened to anyway, so why would they start now?
Seriously, he’s crazy for thinking he’s the center of the universe and that his dirtbag opinions even count.
this IS a crazy email, because the jackass cries like a little bitch in his letter. I love sarcasm, pardon, and even a little cynicism (actually I love the last one). However, this douchbag took a giant leap form “goodbye letter” to “Not only am I better than this job, but better than any one that wants to work here.”
I have had enough crappy jobs, blue and white collar, and guess what fucktard? They all have assholes, all with there own agendas. Welcome to being an adult. Wait till you have the wonderful responsibility of feeding and housing children. My bet is this enlightened being went straight back to living with his parents after quiting. “Because he has standard”, living in his parents basements, unemployed.
Thanks, this was the point I was going to make. Everyone has had a job they were unhappy in, that’s not hard to relate to, but whose ego is so huge that when they leave they presume to lecture all the people who are clearly better at coping than he is?
he’s defo the sane one.
POOR BABY. Did they pay you to do a job you didn’t enjoy? Somebody call the waaaaah-mbulance. Of course you are completely within your rights to leave a nasty, insulting letter about how much everybody and everything sucks after you quit! Nobody you work with has feelings! You’re the only one who matters! Of course, everyone else you work with just LOVES their job, and they need to be knocked down a peg or two, right? Make sure everyone has just as shitty a day as you’re having, that’s my motto!
What a child.
Classy how he assumed the cleaning lady must be in the states on a green card. The job may have driven him nuts, but I’m guessing he perfected being a douchebag all on his own.
He forgot to mention the thousand petty jealousies that he’s expected to take sides in on Team Female. That is definitely a sexist thing to say… yet you all know it’s true.
IT’S A FUCKING JOKE. J*O*K*E . Look it up. You’re the douchebag.
been there. SOX is a massive pain. Guy doesn’t seem all that crazy, but just the same, good luck finding a job out there.
Hey, Sarbanes-Oxley is important, guy!
Or at least that’s what my textbook says…
Is he implying that books might lie? My world is coming unglued…
Welcome to the real world. Sucks ass, don’t it?
So, there are some good points here, but this guy is a spoiled little bitch. Does he realize just how much more he gets paid to do nothing than the “green card holding” housekeeper? If anything, they should be switching wages, as her job is much more difficult and necessary than his. He is right that he accomplishes little, but wrong that her contribution is minor. Imagine asking this P.O.S. to empty his OWN goddam trashcan at the end of the day. Maybe if he did, he’d feel a little more productive, and spend less time heartlessly “envying” those less FORTUNATE than himself.
This man sounds eminently sane to me.
Seems sane but bitter. The craziness comes in where (a) he thinks anyone cares about his rant, (b) he thinks anyone will listen the sliughtest bit after insulting them, (c) he doesn’t blame himself for his failure to leave much earlier.
He has gone insane. Sure, after just a couple days of not being in that environment, he’ll quickly start to recover, while his co-workers see the light of day only because they’re heads are so far up their rumps that they are now actually coming out their necks again.
But definitely he is insane. After working with a herd of female water buffalo for more than a week any man would be. This is proven fact. Research ethics would never permit any experiment with any resemblance to that situation, but there are very conclusive case studies.
the girls are not the problem here, the job is – public accounting at its best
what makes this guy crazy? i think he works for a bunch of ocd morons, if you ask me. the monkey bit was pretty good
Well…it is funny to look back in and snicker at the folks who get bent out of shape because of the stabs the letter writer took…
I can totally empathize with this guy. He’s not crazy at all. He makes a lot of good points, and I’ve worked in a similar situation and felt the same way before. Well, I never thought about “offing” myself, but you get the point.
This guy’s a fucking douche. From his email he’s saying he has problems with fat people, women and immigrants. What a winner. “The green card carrying cleaning lady”- like her having a green card makes her inferior to him and thus highlights the shittiness of his situation even more. What a wanker.
I agree with his disdain for the job. I worked the same job as him at another accounting firm and he summed up the exact reason I didn’t take a full time offer with them.
For those that think he’s being a whiny bitch: he is, but don’t sit there and act like you haven’t sat in your tiny little cubicle doing the most meaningless work known to man and complained about it. You’re just jealous that he got out and was able to get everything he was thinking off of his chest before he left. I wish I would’ve done it at my former job which was in the finance field.
For those that are getting their panties in a bunch about his female comments: shut the fuck up. Seriously, females do talk about the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I’m female and I HATE being put on teams with other females. You are all annoying. Get over it. And stop crying about sexism. It’s not sexism when it’s the truth.
For those that think he is sane and the company drove him to this: I completely agree. It’s called burn out. It happens in almost every field that deals with customer service, paperwork, and know-it-all bosses that don’t know shit. He probably feels a thousand times better just from writing this and getting it off his chest.
Finally, for those that are upset he implied that it’s the company’s fault for the “water buffalo” occupying the cubicles around him: it IS the company’s fault. If you think about it, when you’re in a job where you have a cubicle and are already working 10-12 hours a day doing pointless paperwork, you will sit at your cubicle and eat the whole day to help pass the time and relieve yourself of the depressed feelings that you get from simply walking in the door every morning. Not to mention the fact that most jobs in the finance field entail 10-12 hour work days WITHOUT a lunch hour. Not the company’s fault? Really? When I left, I dropped a good 12 lbs. in 2 weeks because I wasn’t just sitting around eating all the time.
Aahh, now, are you going to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon?
Best.Letter.Ever.Period.
1. If it was just that his job sucked, I would right this off as he outgrew the job and was a whiner. But literally, the whole thing oozes painful pitiful work environment. Awesome decision to leave.
2. Sexist Female Comments: If guys went on about football for 20 minutes during a meeting, someone would call shenanigans. Not so when it is Steve Madden shoes? Call shenanigans.
3. The insanity of the cube farm is ridiculous. I’ve seen grown adults hold up a memo to customers as they were debating the merits of using the word “finalized” over “closed”…for a month.
This guy deserves a medal, a lifetime supply of margaritas, and an island in the sun.
I’ve been in public accounting…I wish I had the balls to write this letter!
amen
I have also worked for a Big 4 accounting firm… and I totally feel his pain. And just like him I made up useless information to be able to finish the day.
The sad thing is that I know plenty of people are doing this just for the accounting designation and that sucks for them.
I’ve been the cleaning lady, actually, and the writer of this rant is more correct than he knows… There is something about doing hands-on work, where you can see the results, that is a hundred times better than meaningless office drudgery. I’ve also done house painting, grounds/maintenance work, and even scrubbing glassware and running supplies for a laboratory… and they were all a great deal better than hour after hour of squinting at a computer screen. Blue-collar jobs are highly underrated. If only I had known that before I got the useless “business” degree (and besides, I earn more doing house painting than I ever would in middle management!)
Well, I’ve also done mostly “hands-on” work myself, and can say it may leave you physically tired, but it’s a lot less harrowing than office work. I only lasted a few months in the office because the CRAZY was too much to handle. Way more back-biting and workplace bullying going on in the office than any “lowly” job I’ve done. Incidentally I’m working part time at a restaurant while finishing up my degree and working on my OWN business so I can eventually be self-employed as a personal trainer/health coach. I shine best when self-employed/self-reliant, although it does make one’s tax situation infinitely more complicated. In the mean time, the restaurant work can and does suck, because people assume you must be a total moron if you work in a service job, but I would rather know I at least did something with my day that made a difference to someone (yummy food does make a difference in someone’s day). I would rather do it than work in an office or call center.