I don’t talk about work much. At least in a negative light. And there’s a reason for that. I feel that if you’re getting paid to do a service for your company, you pretty much shut your mouth and do it, as long as you’re not getting screwed by that company. And if you are, find a better job. And thus far, I think I’ve enjoyed my job enough and the people I work with to not bitch and moan about what I do. However, when the job questions your integrity and basically spits in your face, that’s when I have a problem.

To preface this scenario, I want to tell you a little bit about my job. I am called an Order Fulfillment Specialist which basically means I take sales orders from the sales team and process them in our Oracle database. My specific job also includes another side of the business, but this is 70% of what I do on a daily basis. Our order volumes have doubled and tripled in the last four months. As you would expect, the hours have gotten longer, the lunches are being missed, and the amount of time I’ve had to sit in traffic because I’ve had to leave late have increased. And I’ve pretty much taken it with a grain of salt. But the other day, I was in a team meeting, and our mentor (basically the guy with seniority who watches over our group when the boss doesn’t have time) gave a very memorable quote. We were complaining of the fact that our order volumes have increased to a point where we couldn’t even take lunches and the fact that we weren’t even getting another head count for a couple months and he said with a straight face, “You don’t get paid to spend time with your families.” He’s a single guy so that would explain his insensitivity to that statement. But he’s also an intelligent guy. He understands how words affect other people. I basically rolled my eyes when he said it and glanced at my other co-worker who has a family and saw him do the same. He then said, “Your boss (he said his name but I’m not naming names) is one of the biggest family men, but if he needs to be here until 10PM, he’s going to be here until 10PM.”. Again, our mentor didn’t understand the stupidity of that statement and it bothered me. First of all, my boss has a stay at home wife. So if he needs to work, his wife is at home with the kids. However, I don’t. My wife and I have our schedules set around our kids so we can maximize our time with them. It pained me to hear those insensitive remarks come out of the mouth of a man I respect.

Fast forward to yesterday. In our line of business of supporting sales, the end of the quarter is usually our busiest time. We are booking orders like it’s an emergency. In a staff meeting, our boss said that during the last three days of the quarter, we must schedule to be at work until 10PM and maybe even midnight. Before I could mouth the words, “And when am I supposed to see my kids…” I heard my mentor in my head say, “You don’t get paid to spend time with your family.” It was my first Obi Wan Kenobi moment. So I kept my mouth shut and probably for good reason.

I guess since I’m young and not yet all that established, I will probably just have to continue to work like this. But if my family life, and home life continues to get disrespected, I will just find something else to do. I work for a very successful company. Carol, my wife, is in a very good position in the same company I work for. She’s in management, and she’s on the up and up. So if I have to take a hit in salary to do something in which I’ll be able to be a better dad, I’m sure she will more than make up for it.

I know this is generalizing it a bit, but I think one of our societal problems stems from lack of parenting. And I’m not totally blaming the parents because you have to make money to put food on the table. But the lack of love and parenting kids receive today, may be one of the reasons why these kids who turn into adults have problems. I wish I had the facts, but I don’t, so I’ll continue to generalize. I’ll go back to my childhood viewing of sitcoms. In Good Times James Evans was working all the time, but he had a wife, three kids and an apartment to afford. So in his situation, he just had to take it. He couldn’t tell his boss that he needed time off the spend time with his family. They would’ve been on the streets, trying to survive off JJ’s murals. But in my case, I have a degree, a nice resume and could probably find a half way decent job with some leg work. And my wife also works. But then again, we have a fat mortgage and a huge supply of bills. I’d love to work an 8-5. It would be beautiful. Just think about it. We live in a lifestyle in which bosses say, “You don’t get paid to spend time with your family,” while I understood that family was the most important thing in society. My father has on his license plate that the three most important things in life are “God, family, and baseball.” It didn’t say, “job, God, family, and baseball.” I don’t want to sound like a lazy person because I’m not. I don’t mind working hard at all. In fact, my Grandfather would probably frown upon me complaining because of the fact that I get paid a decent salary to simply book orders, while he had to actually work and do labor to make pennies compared to what I’m making.

I just want to be able to work for a corporation that understands the need for family life. These last few weeks have pissed me off. The statements I have been hearing are not only a slap to my face, but a slap to my children’s face. You’re telling them that you don’t care if they see their dad. And if it keeps getting worse, I’ll have to find something else to do. Maybe Carol can continue to grow and I can be a stay at home dad. That would be great. Hey, I’ve seen Mr. Mom a few times. Even though Michael Keaton looked like a puss, at least he got to spend time with his kids. To finish, I’ll quote the great Martin Payne (Martin Lawrence’s character from the show Martin). Martin and his crew performed a play for charity. It was so well received that he was given a chance to take his play (Homeo and Juliet) on the road, but without his friends and family who helped him put his show together. He was told that he could be a huge star, but would have to stiff the people who helped him get there. He said, “Before I sell out, I gets the hell out.” Right now, that’s exactly how I feel.

When I was working at Blockbuster, we had two guys named Brian. One was black and one was white. So without any creativity whatsoever, we nicknamed them Black Brian and White Brian. Those nicknames were awful. We needed new ones. We didn’t go out of our way to come up with new nicknames, they just came from everyday goings on at Blockbuster. White Brian became Albert’s best friend and then became Homo for reasons that need not be discussed. But Black Brian became Smurge.

Brian had just finished running what had seemed like thousands of tapes (putting them back on the shelves) and he went over to the cooler that housed soft drinks for customers and buying employees. After scouring the choices, he decided to try the new soft drink that we just received. I think it may have even been the first day we started selling the soda. It was a florescent green color and was basically Coke’s attempt to grab the generation y crowd that Pepsi had with Mountain Dew. That soda was called Surge.

Brian grabbed the soda, took it to the register and paid his $1.07. He slowly turned the cap on the top of the plastic bottle as if to smell the aroma of the new drink. He eye balled the slime green color and meticulously placed the bottle to his lips. It was as if it had to be perfect bottle to lip placement. He took a drink every so gracefully and then gave that “ahhhhh” sound and wiped his mouth with his shirt. Brian then said to no one in particular, “Damn this Smurge tastes good,” obviously not reading the label of the drink that in large letters specifically said SURGE. He enjoyed the soda so much that he finished the entire bottle in just his second gulp.

My cousin Davey was helping us run tapes that night and had been witness to Brian’s two gulp performance. I guess he was fascinated with Brian’s fascination of a soft drink. But when he heard the Smurge reference, he started to giggle and ran over to me and could barely catch his breath. I almost thought he was going to pee his pants as he said, “Black Brian said Smurge!”

I asked him what the heck he was talking about. He said, “Brian grabbed the new soda, took a drink, and said, ‘Damn this Smurge tastes good!’.” I then bowled over with laughter. Why? I don’t know. It was a simple mistake. But back then, we used to crack on each other so much, I guess I saw it as an opportunity to crack on Brian.

Brian was an interesting dude. He reminded me in one sense of Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man character. He knew how to do many intricate tasks and was the first person to tell me about the possible Y2K bug. He could build his own computer, but the simplest of tasks such as giving back proper change or reading Surge was hard for him.

Thus, the nickname of Smurge was born. Brian was never called Brian ever again, unless it was to his face. I would ask my manager who I was working with on a certain night and he would say Smurge. He wouldn’t say Brian. I think he even wrote Smurge on our schedule once. If I saw him and talked to him, I would call him Brian. But if he wasn’t there, it was almost as if his mother and father thought Smurge was the perfectly good name for their son.

I always wondered what that guy was doing nowadays. He could be working for freaking NASA, or working for McDonalds. I can see it now. As he gets off of work, he grabs himself a soda, goes into his car, takes a big drink, and says, “Damn this Smeven Up tastes good!”