Ethics of Boiler Ragging

Each year my company requires its employees to participate in an on-line ethics awareness training program. They require this in case one of us commits an ethical sin, they can show the courts it was not the company’s fault since the employee was ethically trained. It protects them from getting sued because they’ve hired a bunch of email porn swapping derelicts, gift-accepting whores posing as managers and coked-up salespeople. And data pirate janitors.

I completed the ethics training this morning. It presented a combination of video and text instruction with pictures of appropriate looking individuals from all races, sexes, creeds and colors. But, surprisingly, no fat people. I guess the fat people in the company only work in the particular office I’m based out of. Multiple choice quiz questions followed each section to make sure the employee paid attention. I didn’t pay attention to most of the instruction. The excitement level caused me to doze a little. When the questions appeared, I chose the least fun or most imbecilic obvious answer, and that was enough to get by. Wait a minute, you mean I’m not supposed to make copies of my co-workers' medical records I happened to come across while breaking into the Human Resources office to find out what kind of raises others received and distribute them to everybody in the company? You got me on that one.

At one of the rare occasions I was paying attention, I heard the austere, yet comforting, but slightly impudently tainted voice of the narrator say that I “am the face of the company”. At that moment I happened to be doing some boiler ragging, which is a polite way I invented to say I was scratching my crotch. From the inside of my pants. My mom used to scold me at the dinner table when I talked about my crotch scratching exploits, so I began referring to it as boiler ragging, and she was none the wiser. She thinks boiler ragging has something to do with my job. In fact, she’s proud of my boiler ragging, and will ask me to tell strangers in the street about it. So I do. And they stay strangers.

So, I’m sitting slumped in my chair, with my hand inside my sweatpants tending the crotch itch, wearing the same crumb, sweat and stain ridden shirt I’ve worn all week, unshowered, and my hair, which I haven’t had cut in about a year and three months, is slumber-combed and in my face, and I hear this man tell me I am the face of the company (I work at home, by the way). Imagine the pride that demand instilled in me. Not to mention the trepidation. THIS is the face of the company? This slouchy, rag-donning, shaggy, smelly, boiler ragging mess is the face of our company? Is this why I haven’t gotten a raise in three years? Who is our marketing director, the Coen brothers?

Luckily, there is nothing in the ethics rules against boiler ragging, as long as it is done discreetly and not on top of other people’s desks. I wasn’t sure about this rule, having ignored most of the training, so I called the Ethics Compliance Office to make sure. The lady who answered the phone happened to be one of the strangers my mom and I met in the street once, so she was well versed in boiler ragging. I hope to see a section on proper office boiler ragging in next year’s training session.

Success Story

An excerpt from the Career Center’s bi-daily newsletter, Working for The Man and Nobody Cares If You Like It or Not, featuring an interview with a star pupil who learned to get in line, shut up and be counted.

How was the Career Center beneficial to you?

The staff at the Career Center has been an excellent resource throughout the job search process. Many of them have backgrounds in recruiting or human resources and also maintain close relationships with their best friends’ Uncle Karls. I found their advice very valuable in seeing the recruiting process from the undersea weatherman’s perspective. This helped me focus on making a good bouillabaisse in all aspects of the process and also avoid showering with hairy men or pitfalls that can cause a candidate to be overlooked, disqualified, or, at the worst, hired by a crappy company.

What advice were you given?

Besides "don’t kiss the interviewer on the first interview"?

Yes.

As a student in the process of changing careers, I initially came to the career center for the free donuts and the desperate women. I received great suggestions on how to fabricate new skills and education on my resume (do I LOOK like a Solid Gold Dancer to you? I do on my resume.) and combine them with my previous experience as a drooling drunk derelict. The format changes also made it much easier to read, which is very important when you consider the limited cognitive capacity employers may have when initially screening candidates. My resume now consists of mostly pictures of dinosaurs and teddy bears, and a Sudoku puzzle. I believe all the changes I implemented were responsible for a greatly improved response rate (0% up to ½ %). Although I had experience in one-on-one hockey games, the career fairs that the school sponsors obviously require a different wardrobe than my usual tunics made out of shag carpeting. The Career Center can tell you what to expect at these events, how to approach the recruiters, which ones are the dish rags, how to make the most elaborate dinner center piece out of the brochures, and follow-up strategies, like inviting them to clog dance orgies.

What advice would you give students about the Career Center?

The Career Center isn’t only there to coordinate interviews when you’re ready to graduate, but they can teach you how to clean port-o-potties for when their interview strategies don’t work. This includes scrubbing, disinfecting, curtailing the puke reflex, how to get the stink out of your clothes, how to lie about your job to women and more. If your attending the university to enhance your career possibilities, be sure to include the Career Center as something to do before happy hour, or maybe even after happy hour – as long as happy hour is in there somewhere. The classroom education you receive will help you qualify for new opportunities, but unless you know how to feign interest and to kiss major corporate ass, you may find it difficult to realize those opportunities. It’s a very competitive job market and you should take advantage of all the resources available to help you stand out while hiding your true identity as an undersexed drunk pawn, which is what you’ll end up being, anyway.

Does your life in the corporate world still suck, even after the change of careers?

Yup.

Do You Ski?

I stood upon the hill watching the kids zoom down the slope. A father of some of the other sledders tried to start a conversation with me. I didn’t feel like talking to him, but I thought I’d give it a go, to be a human being for a change. Who knows, maybe he’d come up with something interesting.

“My brother told me they got about ten feet of snow out in California.”

Wow, ten feet.

“He lives in the mountains near a ski resort.”

Wow, ski resort. Ten feet is good, I suppose, for a ski resort. I don’t know.

“Do you ski?”

I don’t ski. Standing on a hill watching my kids sled is about as close as I get. At that point I realized he was wearing a fancy ski jacket and was baiting me into listening to him rake on about his skiing aplomb. I didn’t have the vacancy to hear more. Luckily, my lack of skiing repartee dislodged his enthusiasm for the subject.

“So, do you work for an electrical company?”

I happened to be wearing my All Pro Electric Company, Inc jacket that was given to me by a friend. I don’t know anything about electricity. I can turn a light on by using a switch, if that counts.

“Well, what company DO you work for?”

A soulless manifestation of profit and greed. Thanks for asking. I didn’t bother to ask him who he worked for. I guessed he was baiting me again so he could tell me all about his wonderful career. He looked like a regional procurement instrumentation abstractor analyst to me. Since I already know all about that, it was futile to further the conversation.

I don’t have much to say. Other people do. I usually end up being a brick wall others can hurl their verbal shit at. Step right up and throw your shit at me. Maybe it will stick.


But not this day.