from HELL to Dilbertville

Our corporate father,

which art at headquarters,

The Man be thy name.

Thy bonus come,

thy will be done,

at satellite offices, as it is at corporate.

Give us this day our daily task,

And forgive us our slackerness, as we forgive you your $400 haircut.

And lead us not into the conference room, but deliver us from busywork.

For thine is the strategic plan and the powerpoint presentation and the budgeting cycle for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.....

Each morning when I arrive at the office, before I check email, before I check voice mail, I offer up this little prayer to remind myself how lucky I am to have a job. I really shouldn't have to remind myself, since I hear on a daily basis how lucky I am to have a job, but still, like Sasquatch, I am a creature of habit, and so spend a moment in quiet reflection each morning, counting my corporate blessings. Let's see, there's my office, which really is quite fabulous, being a corner office, with many windows. And if it gets stifling hot in the summer, and drafty cold in the winter, well, at least I have an office and do not have to sit in a cubicle! And there's my desk, which I believe to be an antique, at least by the look of some of the detritus at the bottoms of the drawers. (As you can see from this photo, I'm a very busy person and can multi-task with the best of them.) I'm also thankful for the many trinkets I've accumulated over the years, which are valuable for their ability to distract me when I've had a busy morning of thinking strategically and my brain is tired.

But most of all, I'm thankful for my coworkers, most of whom I like very much and I think they like me too. I'm especially thankful for those few colleagues upon whom I've come to rely to keep me grounded, to listen to my whining without judging, to make me laugh, to be there when corporate foolishness threatens to take my sanity, to be my friends. You know who you are and without you, I wouldn't last a day in Dilbertville. Of all my corporate blessings, you are by far the greatest.

--Ina