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• Wednesday, May 31, 2006 04:53 AM

  Amen! How it is at our place.

  Oh yeah, the Fortune 500 corporation that I work for changed their tune fast after the Enron indictments. They immediately created a new executive media position--Director of Corporate Compliance--and also a series of online tutorials for the people at the bottom to take on how not to be a corporate thief. Enron was directly mentioned in the first tutorial I was made to take and sign off on, in which a hapless mail clerk named Steve helps a paper company get a supply contract by taking home a free box of office products and in so doing, nearly brings down the whole place due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the post-Enron climate. Luckily, a virtuous coworker reports Steve: he is caught, fired, and the company loses untold 50 cent pieces straightening out the legal consequences of Steve's greed and corruption. All 800 of the employees in our department had to take these stupid tutorials and sign a statement that we had taken them and understood them, but management was not required to take them and neither were the employees at our corporate office in Boston. Currently we (the dangerous ones) average about $15/hr, but they're looking for ways around that at the moment...

  Okay, whatever. At least they're trying, huh? But I really got cranked when we then had to also watch a set of tutorials on how not to consort with known terrorists. I work in one of those 800# call centers and talk to about 100 honked off people a day. For all I know, ALL of them could be terrorists...they're as angry as terrorists. (Generally for excellent reasons.) We don't have access to the daily changing federal list of the 10 or 20 thousand or so known or suspected terrorists in the US, but we had to watch this stupid video about the list and sign a statement afterward saying we understood that if we were caught doing business with a terrorist we would be terminated and be subject to a punishment of up to 20 years in a federal prison.

  Again, only we dangerous call center operators were made to do this. I told my supervisor, I'm a little apprehensive about signing all these things, what if I don't want to sign these stupid papers? And she said, um, I dunno...Please just sign 'em okay? She is currently on indefinite medical leave...

  I'd quit, but in the depressed former factory town where I live this wacko place is currently the best game in town. I have two college degrees, 15 years of work experience in finance and office operations, and a state license to sell insurance products, and I make $17.43/hr and am watched like hawk so I don' manipulate world markets. I've been sending out resumes. For four years.

  I did sign a nondisclosure agreement about all this too, so signing my real name to this letter could be dicey, but I'm thinking, at this point, one of those posh white collar prisons sounds a hair better than what I'm currently doing.

  So, report me. Please!

  —Pam Grundy
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