emails never sent.

.

There's a 1959 movie called "Letter Never Sent" by the seminal Soviet film-director Mikhail Kalatozov

This post has nothing to do with that Soviet work other than I am appropriating its title and changing it to "e-mail Never Sent." In short, this will be a selection from the emails I never sent in 2012.

Dear ___________,

Thanks for being there to criticize my work. 

But not being there when the work was being done.

Thanks for the second-guessing and not being there during the first-guessing.

Thanks for denying my requests for help. More budget, more time, more people.

Then complaining.

Thanks for throwing a shit load of shit on my plate.

Then rebuking me for being a "one-man-team."

Thanks for forwarding emails without filtering.

It's nice to know that people I am charged to work with closely are nothing more than ducts.

Thanks for not shielding me from any of the picayune comments that are invariably made.

Thanks, by the way, for making sure I have to lay out my own money almost daily, for trips to the clients, important books and periodicals, music and making it near impossible to get reimbursed. I appreciate the help in assuring that it actually costs me money every time I work late.

While we're on the subject of money, thanks for accepting money from the client for work I do solo. No, really, solo. On top of my regular job. A handshake and a thank you would have been nice. A check for bringing in new revenue would have been fair.

Thanks also for the nasty weekly emails upbraiding me for what you call delinquent timesheets. I guess in your universe it makes sense to have someone who bills out at hundreds of dollars an hour do menial tasks.

Thanks especially for the asinine assertions that the company and the holding company are all about diversity and inclusion and then scheduling meeting during the Holiest days of the Jewish year. I love having to work those days when family is most important.

Oh, and thanks for all the meetings during lunch when no lunch is served. That's right, we're machines. We don't need feeding.

Thanks in general for all your efforts at making us feel worthless, small and "interchangeable." I love hearing about how the new economics of the business mean that salaries will be lower in the future. Though I assume yours goes up every year.

Thanks also for putting me on a two-year raise schedule. I like having less real income year after year. I'm sure the holding company heads suffer the same indignities.

For all those "thanks" and a few dozen more, there's also this:

Thanks for letting me write this blog. 

To vent my spleen whatever that is.

And speak my mind.

It helps.