I have had some fucked up jobs in my time, but have now, most definitely, reached an all time low. I work for what's known as an "information monitoring service". You're thinking, "oh I remember job day at my grade school, I ALWAYS wanted to be an information-monitor-slash-news-writer. Who cares about being a fireman or a teacher". You have no idea what I do for a living!
I get paid $10 an hour to watch news broadcasts and synopsize the footage. I work third shift at a disgusting neon-lit pale grey office complex in an industrial "park" (ironic isn't it?) off of an "industrial parkway" off the interstate loop. Translation: I commute to and amidst hideous urban sprawl. And from 10PM to 6:30AM, I'm viewing digital records of news broadcasts and noting any mention of clients who we happen to work with. Then a client like Pfizer will call up and ask to see how many times their new drug Tomaxapil was mentioned in conjunction with seizures last week, or Burger King will request to see footage of every time their logo was shown during stories about fattening foods. Of note: Chevy automobiles are often involved in crimes, and shootings often take place in front of McDonalds.
Our productivity is up, and that's good they tell me, but that means I have to watch 6 hours of this shit during an eight hour shift. That's a breakneck pace of screening, reversing, typing, and zoning out in a dopelike stupor. The room is about 12 rows of 10 seats with people at computers wearing headphones. No phones or food on their desk, just computers, air conditioner hum, and the eerily unnerving click-a-tack as millions of fingers drum out corporate gristle. As a nationwide company, I work at their main production office, which is in Kentucky. It's cheaper labor (and incidentally, fatter and uglier labor) than anywhere else in the world. I spent the last year in beautiful sundrenched Australia with tans, pecs, and Speedos. Now I am surrounded by 300 pound women with beehives and sweatpantsed men in NASCAR caps carrying bags of Carl's Jr. and buying mini-chocolate donuts out of the vending machine. I have come up with some great pastimes though—calling my boyfriend in Sydney for free from the employee break room at 3AM, napping in the downstairs hallway for an hour stretch, eating percocets and drinking whiskey before work, or jacking off in the bathroom stalls up to 3 times a night. Fuck. I hate progress and I hate my job.
WILFRED BRANDT
A few days after we received this article, we got an email from Wilfred telling us that he had been fired from his shitty job. Apparently, he sent this to us from his work email account and was caught out when the boss carried out random email inspections. The funniest part is that all the supervisors, who he refers to as fat and ugly, got to read the entire thing.
