So long, comrades (1/2)

Below you'll find e-mail sent to ALL  via UNIX routers. 

ALL not as in "the whole world" but as "Company employees listed in ALL mailing list as of February 4, 1998". As you will see from this go-away letter, it was e-mailed to people not close to the author who was employed with the company for few months. I take the liberty of sharing this historical letter with ALL as in "my readers". I also took the liberty of inserting some line breaks to make reading experience less painful.
 

I looked up the author in Linkedin and since he is apparently not listing the company he left on his terms on 1998 after few months and since there are dozens of people with this name, I kept his signature, so it's up to him to claim this old text as his or completely dissociate himself from it. 

Fourteen years ago. 

If you, the reader, agreed with it back then, what have you done to change your life? If you haven't agreed back then, have you had similar thoughts at one or other point of your professional life? 

Subject: Comrade SendTo: All From: CN=[censored censored]/OU=Ops/O=[censored] PostedDate: 02/04/98 03:25:25 AM  RouteServers: CN=Davinci/O=[censored] RouteTimes: 02/04/98 03:25:25 AM-02/04/98 03:25:28 AM DeliveredDate: 02/04/98 03:26:14 AM Categories: $Revisions: 

When one leaves, there is this irresistible urge to leave a message behind. I always think that the best way to walk out is in silence. I do not possess that much style. Comrade, Good morning. I thought I would beat you to work today, but you are here already. I hear you typing away on the other side of this flimsy partition wall. From the speed of your keystrokes you sound pretty sure of yourself: you know what to say and how to say it. From the power with which you hit the keyboard, it seems that you want your colleagues to notice both your presence and your self-assurance. You do good work; we all do good work. The big boss said it himself, “You have all been working very hard. You have done a great job and I know that you are willing to go the necessary extra mile”.
I am surprised of how successful we are.

In fact, when I look around I see the same faces that I used to see in college: the faces of people who would get A’s only because of the professors’ acquiescence, faces who were incapable of elementary work and who called cramming all weekend long studying. Now, stuck with the same faces, we, today’s office workers, are cramming all the time and we revel in being office workers with two degrees of seniority in the same way that we used to be proud of telling a freshman that we were juniors. How can it be that we, mediocre students inept at remembering simple mathematical formulas because unable to master the learning method, are now doing quality work? Bill, the average student, is now our bi-spectacled boss and he tells us how to do the job. He is the one who sets the standard for quality and who tells us that we have done a good job. When he does, we rejoice. Over the years, our two gaping eyes have turned confident as we have restricted our area of inquiry from advanced mathematical concepts to spreadsheets, from what we knew little about to the little that we know about. That problem that we know how to solve, we think we know how to solve it. Unfortunately, behind these confident eyes there is the same thinking power that was behind those gaping eyes during the week of final examinations. Then, the awareness of the magnitude of that power would send us in a panic. 

I am going to the kitchenette to get a cup of coffee and then I, too, will start working. The little personal rituals - coffee as soon as I get to the office, a quick look at the newspaper during lunch - and the standardized practices of the job give me a sense of security. It is in the regularity of these movements that I rediscover the same certainty that characterizes the world that we are part of. We know what awaits us: work, weekends, work, shopping, business trips, work, vacation, work, golf, work, Thanksgiving, work, retirement to Florida, some consulting on the side, more golf. First, we get used to and then we get comfortable with anything that is repetitive. The repetitiveness of the daily routines, which have become as faithful as the rising sun, makes life seem natural, and if it is natural, then it must be right. 

Comrade, your mannerisms get on my nerves: the gurgling sounds that you make when you drink coffee and your habit of occasionally cracking your knuckles. But then, I think that you must have a similar attitude towards my idiosyncrasies : my chronic coughing and my constant bumping of the chair into the desk And then, when I hear your too ready laughter at the big boss’ jokes and your assertiveness when you speak to a subordinate, I recognize you as a brother. In your servility and pretension I rediscover my servility and pretension. You are a good copy of me. Oh, comrade! The capitalist system has succeeded in shaping us exactly the way the communists had planned it but had failed at. It has made us into people who are just like each other, obedient to the rules of the system, and without a will to rebel or the consciousness of their condition. It did all this under the false pretenses of preserving, heightening, and recognizing our individuality. The results: on the job we can be easily replaced and we live unending similar days in identical offices, off-work we walk around dressed alike - blue jeans and sneakers - and we return from expensive weekends and exotic vacations with the same comments and observations. 


Part II which provides more personal details, e.g. the size of the company and location - along with more social critique.