Sick, Morbid Fascination

Lemme guess, it did got you hooked on reading. Well, people are really all sick inside the head, but only a few either accept it or act on it. Well, this won't be an entry about something that will make you scrunch your prude little nose while wetting your knickers in anticipation. Sorry honey, it's not sex. First of all, I would like to surprise you all with an unexpected announcement. I know, I know, from all you have heard me say all these years and all this time, this is the LAST thing you'd ever expect me to announce, really, but the time has come and here it is. No, I am not getting married! It's not that. Besides *slaps you all in the back of your head* be rational, it would be awefully soon to discuss such matters, not to mention all the things that have to be settled first. No, I'm talking here, as usual, about my job, and the fact that I just realized that I do love my job. Yes, I know, shocking. But it's true. I love the industry I work in, and though it might be because I work in it, just like I loved the banking industry when I worked at the bank, truth is that my heart has moved so deeply to the mobile communications (even more than landline or Internet) that the slightest article on the subject engage me immensely. I love making my way around the services, I love knowing all I know about the Roaming business, the details that remain hidden to the customer. I love the process of calculating fees and plans and different packs to merchandise the services, make them atractive to the clients while foaming up some income. I love the process of forecasting, I love gathering up the variables, break my head thining on the ways to mathematically build up a model that can do the job my gut does, and accurately determinate how things will go if this or that happens. I love stepping ahead of the risk and minimize it. I love the thrill of finance, watching the number, rushing to push the envelop, smack things here and there and then the orgasmic feeling of making it in time, rendering the foretold figures to the table, sit back, smug yet gathered, an eyebrow raised and looking at the bosses in the eye speaking volumes with attitude simply about just how good our team pulled it out, and what a hot commodity we are.

I love that sweat, that rush, the weeks spent without sleeping, with formulas rolling around my head, with my notebooks filled with formulas, ideas to try out... instead of a potential scene for a story. It makes my heart rush and pump and makes me feel more than alive... it makes me feel like a fierce, brutal, blood thirsty beast that owns the world. Makes me feel strong and conqueror.

It's hard to explain, particularly for those who think that "work" is only to "make money", not to fulfill a part of your life, but... well, being good in your job is kind of like... being good in sex: it makes you proud and then some. It's not only about securing your position and becoming the sweetheart of the industry, the one piece everybody wishes to have, but it makes you feel awesome because you are pushing yourself and being better and better, developing and finding new depths you can conquer, new fields to occupy with each task you fulfill. I can't even begin to describe the utter pleasure of finding the key to something. Or, for instance, when you are making a reseach job, when you dig here and there and scrap up little pieces of information and the put it together, connect the dots and form an image nobody has seen before, and for a moment, you are the only one (maybe) in posession of that knowledge and gates of light open and flow on you. The moment of Revelation. It's pure bliss.

I'm working on these briefs I gara do, which always had me bitching because "I'm not an engineer, so what the fuck could my opinion matter?", and I found out... I like it. I like to understand, not to be lost when I read the cryptic acronyms MSC, BSC, RBSC, SS7 and go beyond the meaning of the letters to know what the fuck are they talking about and understand, really understand and seize the situation, and make a smart, interpretation of it. I feel mighty, because now it's harder to fool me, and here people love to fool others with their "trade hammered" acronyms and expressions, hiding the fact that they made a poor job, or that they are gobsmackingly ignorant.

The work I do is very, very interesting, but the people I make it for are not interested in it. I have come to realize they are interested only in the "tabloid" news you can bring. If the voice service works fine, they don't want to read about it. They want to read about the bad, and they want the gruesome story of it. The worse the numbers the better. It almost seems to me like they let things go really bad, so that they can rub their hands together and feast on the inmensity of the problem. How bad and how big can it become? It's almost as if fixing it would kill the amusement. People here in Costa Rica love the disaster. They gather to watch car crashes and comment on the events, stare at people dying under a car, watch the victims of murder or aggravated robbery twist and shriek in pain, and the more blood and bodyparts are scattered the better.

If a big scandal is revealed, they latch into it and soon know all the details, sharing them over popcorn. And so, there's nothing better than a company with issues. What could you gossip around and get interested in with a company that works like clockwork? See how good they are doing? No, the disaster, the horrid feeling of being on the edge, stare down the cliff and imagine what it would be like once it hits bottom and the pieces fly in the air like a thick meat and bone shower... just to have a story to tell with a bottle of Flor de Caňa.

"Dude, I was there. I saw them do this and this and this and that... and it reached a point when things got like that."
"How could they let it happen?"
"Man," a smirk as the bottle reached to the lips and pours blonde beer down the throat "it gets better..."

They don't think they are there to solve things and put them in the right path. No. They act as if they were in the VIP theather box, not behind the wheel. They have the power, and they abuse of it, but they don't use it to get thing well. They don't care. They are too lazy.

"Well, they are important people. They have so much to read..."

Then they should make time, or organize things effectively. But they don't. They want briefs of everything, and briefs that look massive and yet they don't have to read. It makes me wonder, why did they ever learned to read? They are certainly making no use of that skill.

A department sent over a status briefing, which one of the Kahuna's labeled, out of the blue, as an "improvement" of the service it was reporting. Mr. B wouldn't read it, because he's so busy, so I was given the pleasant task of tackling the job. I would say I read the brief, save that there was nothing to read. Graphs and tables and some scarcely dusted text which said: "the prior was a table of this thing." I believe I told Kari, I could do that much in Arabic myself. It usually upsets me when people don't take my job or their own jobs seriously. If it were up to me, I'd fire every single person who doesn't work because they love what they do, but because they want the money. Really, if all they care is the money, which don't they whore themselves out? Go stand on a corner. At least with that they might get some pleasure.

Now, as I realize I love what I do, I found out, that even if I have to send my brief to the Empty Skull Kahuna's, I learn from it, and that's the way I should do my job: for myself, for my pleasure, for my sole delight. I enjoy it, why should then their apathy fuck it up?

I love my job.