How to Succeed

This morning when I arrived at work I was dismayed to discover that I had an 8:30 team meeting to attend. 8:30 on a Monday morning? Who has meetings then? I’d spent the bus journey to work talking myself into a good morale for the week ahead, but then I found this in my diary and that was the end of that.

This meeting was chaired by a Sales Manager, who we shall call Tony, a man takes his job way too seriously. If he wasn’t such a thoroughly decent, good bloke, and he really is, I would unquestionably despise him. This is a man who subscribes to Sucess Magazine, a publication I was sublimely content never to have heard of until he decided to bring it up at every team meeting, urging subscriptions on everyone and photocopying articles composed entirely of smug platitudes to hand out to everyone.

According to the website, a veritable photogallery of square jawed 40-something males smirking under titles such as 'Corner Office' and 'How I Do It', Success Magazine is 'What Achievers Read'! (I know, it makes me want to vomit too.) I couldn't find a definition for success, but of course we all know it's lots and lots of money. Helpful advice includes:

• Slime your way up the office hierarchy (networking)
• Care for your nearest and dearest (Keep your body fit so you can work even harder)
• Keep your family sweet so they'll leave you the fuck alone
• Teach your kids important values in life (money management)
• Smugness (giving to charidee - helps avoid those waking up in the middle of the night "What am I doing with my life?" crises - you're a good guy, right?)
• Read books - Even ones that aren't about money!! They might help you with the getting rich stuff. You never know.

Featured heroes this issue include Einstein (because of course Success readers can really aspire to be like one of the greatest scientists that ever lived, though with a smarmier haircut and bigger teeth, of course) and Ray Kroc, who I know from a song by Dire Straits* and let's say, it wasn't terribly complimentary. Maybe if I read the article, I can become more like him! Because of course I want to!

It kind of hurts my soul that this magazine even exists. Can you tell? The worst thing is that I work on a floor of about 100 sales people who all lap this stuff up. I really don't want to share the same air as people who consider themselves 'goal-orientated' and read articles about 'the formula for failure and success'. People who think hobbies and interests are things you have to make time for because you're so busy making money. These are the kind of people who probably think Hugh Heifner is someone to admire.

My colleagues can be summed up in one word: consumers. They are encouraged to think that everything in the world is there for their consumption. Nature is there to ripped out of the earth and made into big ugly houses for their families; primary resources there to be converted into fast cars and yachts; animals are for eating/riding/wearing/being peered at in zoos/turned into pets to keep their bratty kids happy; women are for leering at/giving birth to your children/screwing; other countries are for (sex) tourism and blokey piss-up holidays; do I need to go on? All you need is MONEY. Then you can - indeed it's your duty to! - pay your money and buy whatever or whoever you feel like consuming. You're entitled to. After all, you've spent all year ignoring your family and making lots of lovely MONEY for the company.

Once every year we have a big event to mark the beginning of the new sales year and recognise all the highest achieving sales guys (they're all guys, even the few women) of the previous years. There's a dinner, entertainment (with scantily clad women - this evening is all about rewards, and women demeaning themselves is a reward), speeches, then a nauseating awards ceremony which always ends up with pretty much every sales person on stage, back-slapping and congratulating each other, machismo dripping all over the place like chip fat. Every man there is convinced he's an alpha male just oozing sexiness, dominance and leadership.** I drink at these things. You have to.

Last time I was repeatedly groped and propositioned by one of the drunkest guys there. He asked me if I had a boyfriend, and if I did, if he had a small penis and left me unsatisfied in bed. Maybe he thought he would be preferable to a man with a small penis and no sexual skill. My colleagues are delusional like that.

So anyway, I hate my job. And I will be here forever.

* I trust Dire Straits' opinion more than Success Magazine's.

**Also they all seem to think they're atheletes in training for the Olympics in some very manly, thrusting sport. I know, weird.