Mon, 06 Jan 2003 19:41:23 GMT

I have been waiting for this e-mail all day long. I haven’t done any of the work I’m supposed to. Every thirty seconds I load up the window showing Hotmail and I hit the reload button, trying to find the e-mail among offers for herbal Viagra, animal porn, and pyramid schemes where I could allegedly make piles and piles of money while sitting around in my underwear. Hotmail is best described as ShitMail, they sell your address to any two-bit huckster with a dime to hit against the other. But our company email is subject to logging and being read, and I know the bastards have done it on more than one occasion. Just six weeks ago Lance Rivers got a terrible performance evaluation, and you’d have to show me some detailed forensic evidence to convince me that his e-mail where he described CEO John Broom as a “disease-ridden fucktard” didn’t factor into it. I look at his cubicle across from mine and realize that he left the picture of him at the office Christmas party behind when he cleaned out his desk. So I use Hotmail, so they can’t read what I’m e-mailing and can’t see that I’m trying to get a new job and out of this godforsaken place.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the OxenTech, besides the IBM-style blue color that dominates its walls and the giant silver Ox that gleams on the Boston skyline. The company is stable, has been for fifteen years – which is an eternity in the tech industry, even more so post-bubble. It’s just that every day I sit in this cubicle, going the same route from the subway train down the street past the homeless and street punks is another day where my soul dies a little bit more. My job is not challenging, it’s something I could do with my eyes closed and my tongue cut off. The stuff I make, building our internal website, won’t ever be used by anyone besides corporate drones like myself. I work hard on this code, but I get nothing out of it. Six years ago, when I was in college, it seemed like the world would be my oyster. The internet was booming, programmers like me where getting signing bonuses and stock options rivaling the Mark McGwires of the world. The geeks were finally getting their due. I could point to the growing Dow and the surging NASDAQ and finally show my mom and dad that I wasn’t just “fooling around” with computers but was involved in an industry that was the twenty-first century equivalent of the transatlantic railroad.

Then I graduated, and the Dow dropped and the companies closed and I counted my lucky stars for getting work at OxenTech. Now I’m waiting on an e-mail that’s my ticket out of here.

It isn’t hard to look busy. Everyone just stares silently into their monitors, clicking the mouse a couple times each minute and stretching their arms every once in a while. The company doesn’t worry about leisure surfing because they’ve cut off access to every site that isn’t on their approved list. They do it in the name of “productivity” but it doesn’t do much more than breed resentment among the worker bees. The only way I can get to my e-mail is that I work on the intranet team and snagged an admin password for myself.

Reload. More porn, more junk. I read the news and roll my eyes at the insane state of the world and further resolve to ignore the din of war and the politicians who don’t give a shit about any of us. I click back to my work, tap a few uninspired bits of data, then reload my email.

SUBJECT: RE: Web Development Position

It’s here. My heart skips a beat, and I try to be sly and look left and right to make sure there aren’t any unwanted eyes behind me prying into my “work”. I convince myself that it’s just paranoia and I click the message in order to read it, simultaneously gearing myself up for the worst while secretly wishing for the golden ticket to get me out of here. I scan the message and my face lightens up when I realize that it’s not a form letter, but actually composed by their hiring manager.

“We would like to schedule an interview with you here at Quint at your earliest convenience”

Under my desk I pump my fist. I nod at my team leader as she passes in front of me, swiftly closing the email with a click and making plans to call up Quint on my lunch hour.

The Engine