EPT![[image loading]](https://38.media.tumblr.com/2f842c8e8aeddad500f867454234f6d5/tumblr_n6arzjq4oI1tcj5zio1_500.gif)
Still awake?
I said it was niche didn't I? The company I joined is growing at an insane rate, has a reasonable structure for promoting internally, and serves alcohol at corporate events; the latter most quality is one I've found to be a good qualifier of corporate character, not just because I am a rather proficient drink but because if you don't trust your employees to have a beer at a team party for achieving a goal generally that company hardly trusts you to wipe your ass (I get liability for mega-corporations, but stay with me for the sake of hyperbole).
I was in my role with Target for just shy of three years, and the amount of sheer amount of conditioning that can occur in that period of time. As I said, I was in Fraud Prevention, but still in a contact center ergo on the phone being yelled at for shit I didn't do. To this day, I still experience auditory hallucinations wherein I hear the prompt that I am getting a call and have a quick, miniature panic attack. I actually have caught myself, wanting to launch into my old, corporate spiel when talking on the phone (which now, thank Christ, is far less frequently than I ever thought possible).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HhYtIyt.png)
An excerpt from an article on Gawker, about how properly fucked things at Target can be, not a bit of this is false. This is the standard for getting any promotion at Target Corporate.
Today at work I felt what was just shy of a twinge of nostalgia for the Bullseye, as I straddle the line daily between moderate levels of competency and outright inefficiency in my daily responsibilities. The day I feel a full blown wave of nostalgia for that company however, I fully expect to be committed because something would be distinctly wrong with my head. If you can avoid major retailers as an employer, I encourage you to do so; if you cannot, just don't buy into their bull shit.
My new company is roughly .002% of the size of Target in terms of corporate structure, and I absolutely love that fact. I also love that I can say the word, "fuck, and people don't look at me like I just did something that was completely uncommon (this ties back into the serving alcohol bit). Coming way back around to my topic sentence, just below the Gawker bit, what I found myself almost missing was the sense of corporate rigidity.
Part of what my perceived, wide swings in efficacy are largely based on is the fact that things are constantly changing and there are so many moving pieces; if the pieces aren't moving then suffice it to say that various components of a given set up seem to start/stop working at will. Different areas tinker and fiddle with my department's business and break and fix things daily. This leads to not infrequent turns of phrase and excuses that I need to make to the 60+ vendors I have testing at any given moment.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZYA5Wb6.gif)
The internal systems, have their own, lovely blue screen variations. I've done by best to refrain from not showing my nerd rage. That being said, I am not sure how Data didn't break his display in this gif, given his super human strength.
To be entirely fair, I've held myself to what is a markedly higher standard with regards to my department. My counterparts, who have been there for six months, were handling fewer projects that I currently am less that two months ago. To hear my coworker with whom I smoke intermittently, coworkers are relatively impressed at my having picked things up so quickly, but this doesn't assuage my own frustration at the amount of stupid shit that would work, were it not for the incessant tinkering of other departments with our shit. Following due, corporate process such tinkerings fuck with an amount of time that grows exponentially as I have to, read do to cover my ass, check with more senior employees regarding issues I think need to be raised.
The more beer I've drank tonight the less bite this whole thing is carrying, it was a stressful day today and I felt like a burden; making the transition from a department guru to scrub is the very definition of not fun when you're me. Things will improve, but I can't say how much I've beaten my head against a wall over simple, simple shit, that becomes unnecessarily convoluted the more departments it goes through.
I am calming down, I just needed to vent a bit. As always, thanks for the read TL.
