Hello. Welcome to a chronicle of what happens when a soul is sold.

Some ground rules:

1) Please do not expect prissy, shocked observations like, “Corporate people are greedy, my goodness!” or “But I thought HR was there to help the employees, not to run interference for the company.” I am idealistic, but I am not naïve. After flinging my soul at the acting world and getting an encouraging-but-not-encouraging-enough-for-me response (six years after I stopped it remains unclear if I quit the acting business or the acting business quit me) and two productive but poverty-expanding years at writing school, I was very clear that I wanted to be somewhere where my hard work would bring home a wheelbarrowful of shekels. I fantasized about soothing the ontological pain of my increasingly shriveled soul by slathering my earthly skin in expensive moisturizers made from extract of lavender stamen and pulverized seal testicles. You will not find disillusionment here, because there wasn't any illusionment to dis.

2) What you will find as much of as I can bring you is the inside dope on some the inside-iest dopes in my particular office (and who knows? There may be a future guest appearance or two from other offices, down the road). If you're looking for shock--not to mention Class A highjinks committed by people who wouldn't know what a highjink was if it bit them in their chauffeur's ass--that's really where it lies in the financial services arena. Some of the people I work with are extraordinarily smart, highly educated, hardworking people who love what they do and believe in it the way I believe in art and literature and music and architecture, which is to say they believe their work can save people's lives. And they have a point. But some are just shockingly stupid -- like, I-don't-know-how-you-lived-past-the-age-of-twelve stupid -- and in their stupidity they have provided some of the brightest moments of my last 18 months. These, I will do my best to pass on to you. Please understand these stories must walk the razor-thin line between enough disclosure to be worth telling and enough obfuscation to keep me employed. (See #4 below.) It may take some time to figure out how to do this, so posting may be a little slow at first. In the next couple of weeks I'll introduce you to the characters--it'll be like a play! You'll get to know them, and with luck they'll jump right into being as stupid as you and I both know they can be. Highjinks to follow.

3) Dispatches from the Belly of the Beast: You might have read there's an economic crisis. On the flip side of the highjinks are stories I would never have known about, from the epicenter of the industry whose collapse has precipitated some of the most devastating consequences we have experienced as a nation in decades. There's been plenty of talk about all kinds of stuff that I have no interest in repeating; the stories I'm interested in are the ones where odd little details you didn't know existed suddenly become critical and things get weird. Take, for instance, the Tale of Person 4:

In a round of layoffs in my group last October, three people were let go on a Wednesday. A fourth person was going to be let go, but was out sick until the following Monday. There is a rule at my company--maybe a company policy, maybe a state or federal labor law--that prohibits laying someone off unless they've worked the full day prior. Which meant that upon returning to work, Person 4 was the only person on the entire floor who was unaware they were going to lose their job the next day. The rest of us lurked around like vultures, wondering if Person 4 hadn't noticed that everyone who had the same function was gone, or if they noticed and figured they were going to do the work previously done by three. "Jeeeeesus," I said to someone else who knew after I ran into Person 4 in the hallway. "I had no idea what to say, it was SO AWKWARD!"-- fully aware that if I were a character in a book I was reading I would loathe me for saying that. It was one of the strangest and most uncomfortable days I have spent at a job, and when Person 4 was finally let go the next morning, the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief that it was over. Then we felt evil for feeling relieved.

4) Regarding the razor-thin line between being employed and not: as a general observation, I have written a ridiculous number of things in my work email that could possibly have gotten me fired. As an ongoing feature, every so often I'll post one here and explain what the issue was, if it's not already blindingly obvious. Then we can run an over-under on how long it might take for this blog to go from “regular old posts” to “cautionary tale told by someone who once had a job.” Or something. The point is, it'll be fun! And it might involve mayhem, which is always exciting.

So that's basically what to expect. Stick around, won't you? (Or, given that this is my first blog entry ever, come around, won't you?)