Since You've Been Gone

Continuing the theme of celebrating our one year anniversary of leaving Las Vegas, I bring you some writing from December.  We flew back to Vegas so that we (and by "we" I mean "I") could stay a week longer in the US and Reyna could see her family.  We also needed to make sure my house, currently being rented out, was not getting torn apart by the tenants.  Since I only get two weeks of vacation a year, I worked in the home office and then had two weeks of actual vacation.  I wrote the following in the middle of the night after my first day of work. The jet lag was extreme, so I spent the entire day in a walking coma and then couldn't sleep at night.  This is what a 12 hour time difference does to a person.

I remember walking out of the home office in April the day we left to move to Vietnam thinking, "This is the last time I ever have to work in this pit of despair."  It was an excellent feeling  until I realized that if I wanted to spend more than 10 days in the US, I'd need to spend at least a little time in the home office again.  I stay in touch with a few people that still work there occasionaly, and the picture that's been painted for me since my departure has not been sunny.  It was with trepidation that I walked in for my first day back in 8 months.

The first thing I noticed was the darkness.  The office is in a converted warehouse and contains no windows.  Actually that isn't entirely true.  The warehouse part is true, but the office is actually day lit.  Problem is, someone decided it would cut down on HVAC costs if they installed a drop ceiling.  Nothing says "high-end" and "classy" like an office with no windows and a drop ceiling with suspended linear fluorescents from the mid-nineties.  It didn't look like any of the lights had been maintained since I left, about half the fluorescent tubes either out or in varying stages of flicker.  I turned to my boss, who was walking next to me and said, "you guys actually work in here?"
"Yeah. what do you mean?  What's wrong with it?"
"Clearly you've spent way too long working in a windowless office." I said
"Pfft." He shrugged and walked in front of me to our desks.

To say the office environment is oppressive would be an understatement.  There are cameras everywhere, and everybody speaks in whispers for fear someone might hear them talking about something other than work. The whole morning I felt like I couldn't do anything right.  I first got in trouble for not clocking in because I didn't want to have to stand for five minutes cycling the clock-in touch screen to the Vietnam page while 37 people waited in line behind me.  The person that called to complain about my clock-in error had already come down to my desk to say hello.  It's not like she, along with everyone else in the office, didn't know I was there.  Then I couldn't log into my email account.  When I finally did, all my emails were gone.  I later found them all in the "deleted items" folder for reasons the IT guys couldn't explain.

I couldn't get anything done because of the parade of people wanting to talk to me.  The most commonly asked question was, "Are you back for good?" I couldn't decide if this was asked in a kind of excited, yet sick anticipation that I would say yes and be doomed to misery like them; or, out of pity that I got called back into the den of unhappiness.  Everyone looked sunken-eyed and beaten.  It was so sad to see these people that I like and care about working in such inhumane conditions.

In the afternoon, the phone at my desk beeped and a person who's name I didn't recognize asked me to report to the conference room.  In the conference room I found a welcome back committee in the form of my boss and the HR director to write me up for sending the following things over company email.

1.  A "hang in there" kitty picture
2. A picture of Chuck Norris
3. A quote from The Breakfast Club ("that's the last time Bender....")*
4.The phrase "SEVENTEEN YEARS BITCH" - Just to clarify, this was in reference to a woman (who I'm buddies with) who has actually worked for the company for 17 years. I wasn't calling her a bitch, I was calling the recipient of the email a bitch, to which he laughed his ass off. 

*The quote in it's entirety: "That's the last time, Bender. That the last time you ever make me look bad in front of those kids, you hear me? I make $31,000 a year and I have a home and I'm not about to throw it all away on some punk like you. But someday when you're outta here and you've forgotten all about this place and they've forgotten all about you, and you're wrapped up in your own pathetic life, I'm gonna be there. That's right. And I'm gonna kick the living shit out of you. I'm gonna knock your dick in the dirt."  This was all extra sad since "I'm gonna knock your dick in the dirt" is one of my boss' favorite sayings.  He didn't mention it in the meeting when I was getting written up though. 

Apparently these emails, which were received with gut-busting hilarity  in Vietnam, are not allowed in the home office.  According to the paper I signed, a little good natured ribbing and fun contributes to a hostile working environment.  I explained the context of the emails while my jury also laughed.  They too thought what I'd written was highly amusing, then they wrote me up anyway.  It's possible that they chose to write me up because everyone else copied on the email thread has been either fired or resigned on their own volition.  I'm the only one left.

I then had to go apologize to the "17 year" woman, who also thought the emails were funny.  It was all very confusing.  I almost got fired on my first day home because my superiors do not allow humor.  No wonder everyone's miserable.  The corporate environment does not have time for smiling!  Shut your hole and work.  The reprimand worked, because the moment I returned to my desk I started to worry that I would actually be fired for some other even dumber reason.  I was scared and uncomfortable like everyone else for the rest of the week.  If I'm going to be fired, I'd like it to be for something I did willfully (like write publicly about this incident), not over an email I sent almost three months ago.  I'd actually forgotten about it completely  until I was shown the print-outs.  I hope someone passed a garbage can later, saw the emails in there, and was totally offended.

I never did clock in, either...

Here's a few additional details about that day. 

• When I reached my desk for the very first time it was covered with about an eighth inch of dust.  I guess my arms sitting there for four years kept it sufficiently dust-free in the past.  I spent the first twenty minutes of the day cleaning the space so that I could sit down and attempt to work.  It concerned me that my boss has been sitting next to this pile of dirt for the better part of a year.  His lungs cannot be happy about it.
• In all my time in Vietnam, I have never encountered a gigantic unflushed turd in the office bathroom.  This was a weekly occurance in the home office when I worked there full time.  Sure enough, I found an orphaned log in the toilet about the size of my arm waiting for me on day three.  It was so big I had to go tell an adult (ironically the "adult" I told is four years younger than me, but he's a parent, so he's an official grown up).  I was too intimidated to flush it.  The strangest part of that is that Vietnam is supposed to be the place with the lousy plumbing.  I feel like I've written about this before... It haunts my dreams.

Top 5 things people said to me on the first day which range from maybe they actually miss me, to these people actively hate me:

1. Are you back for good or just visiting?  I already covered this, but for the sake of this list we'll This was usually done in what I attribute to the misery loves company principle.  It wasn't asked with any real desire to hear the answer unless the answer was, "I'm back for good because working in Vietnam is even more unbearable than here."  I was sorry to disappoint them.  We have windows.
2. What's it like in Vietnam?  How do you answer this question while standing in a cube farm with walls that only come up to chest height?  How do you summarize eight months of struggle for survival and character building challenges to a person who spends 10+ hours a day in a windowless room?  How do you describe the heat to people who haven't broken a sweat in years and live where the humidity never gets over 20%?
3. Do you like it there? This is never asked with genuine curiosity, but with incredulity.  "You like it there?"  As if I've just said I like to lick sidewalks.  I admit that I took a lot of pleasure by responding "It's a hell of a lot better than here."  I think this harkens back to the "Americans believe that everyone else in the world thinks and wants the same things they do."  Living here can't possibly as fun and rewarding as sitting in a poorly lit cave and receiving a paycut every nine months can it?
4. What is wrong with the Vietnam office?  This is not generally my first choice for openers when I haven't seen someone in a long time.  I usually go with "Hey! What are you doing here?" or something that makes it at least sound like I'm happy to see that person.  Apparently I'm in the minority.  It was almost like I'd been gone for only a few days.  Like I was sent over to get things straightened out and came right back.  Dude it's been EIGHT MONTHS.
5. Are they finally closing the Vietnam office?  I wish I'd made this up.  Nothing like running into an old friend, a guy who plays in the same fantasy sports leagues as me and have that be the first thing out of his mouth.  Next time I see him I'll say, "Hey did all your friends get fired or laid off yet?  Because those guys were total morons. You weren't actually friends with them were you?"

After 5 days I felt the same sense of relief walking out of the office that I'd felt when I left after four years.  As of this moment I have no plans to return, but the reality is that it's only a matter of time.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the company of the vast majority of the people occupying that office, I just have no desire to ever set foot in that building ever again.

As I sat in the taxi riding home from Tan Son Nhat Airport, I found myself watching the traffic and thinking, "I'm home" with a smile and a sigh.