 The Island
So, as you may have heard, I didn't get voted off the island. I am now being utilized, full time, by a big corporation.
The game began with around 45 people hired as 9hr a day drones, for the purpose of re-constructing a big box store. All this while the store remained open for business. Think widening the Panama Canal without taking the water out first - or stopping the shipping traffic.
Every week, there were fewer and fewer of us. Each Monday, as we entered our personnel identification numbers, there were fewer and fewer of us moping around bitching about how early it was. Some were lost to attrition, quitting because the work was too much to take - physically and emotionally.
Gradually culled, the group dropped from 45 to 40, 35, 28 and on-down to 6 people.
Each week that I wasn't fired was like some kind of some small victory or something.
Eventually, the day rolled around to the last tribal council. Management had decided who amongst the drones would be hired on as regular staff. Throughout the day, names would be called over the P.A. System. If you heard your name, you were to report upstairs to the boardroom. If you didn't hear your name, you really didn't have to bother coming in on Monday.
This added a certain piquant to the social milieu that day.
So, the universe being what she is, I was the first called.
I had hoped to glean some information from whoever was announced before me.
No such luck - off to the boardroom.
First, I had to find the boardroom. After some moderately panicked poking around, I found the bloody place and seated myself to wait for the general manager.
When he came in, I remember thinking, "gee, he looks like a general". The dude was compact, had a steel-gray crew cut, and spoke with a gravelly voice. The only thing missing was the little nub of a cigar in the corner of his mouth.
After crushing my hand in a handshake and sitting down, Mr. General Manager Guy flipped through some pages on a clipboard. The only thing I could tell was that the pages were all penned by various different people.
"Well", he eventually said, "we all seem to be impressed with you".
The first thing to come to my head was, "Really?", but what I said was something more along the lines of "I couldn't really tell, everything down there has been so chaotic, it's been hard to know what kind job I'm doing."
So, I no longer have to get up at 5:30 a.m. - I now rise at four in the morning.
At least I've cut back from 9hrs, five days a week to 8½ hrs, six days a week.
Then again, I never was a math major.
Oct 24th
2006
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