I have found that, as adaptable as I can be, sometimes I am falsely adaptive… that is, I adapt by letting my situation depict my behavior, even if that behavior is illogical, non-beneficial, and disruptive.

Take my job, for instance. I work for a pretty liberal e-commerce site, the name of which I will withhold (though you can read about the Sacramento corporation’s bankruptcy in the papers). It is completely unprofessional here. I have always considered myself a professional person, someone with a good work ethic and would always conduct myself in a manner suitable for a place of business. Of course, depending on the business, I would always supplement my professionalism with a douse of whimsy, or defiance, or outspokenness, or stoicism, and so on; whatever the nature of the environment allowed, and whatever I thought would best suit my or the institution’s/company’s/group’s goals, I would act accordingly.

Here, at my current job, all of my professionalism gets thrown out of the window. Oh, sure, I’ve tried to keep it cool, I’ve tried to remain passive and let the unprofessionalism go ignored – I just wanted to do my job. But here, I’ve let the environment get to me in such a way where the logical mind I like to say I possess gets thrown out the window in favor of a raging, over-reactive, lazy, distracted, angry, foul-mouthed, arrogant, piece-of-shit bitch. Everything I do not want to be I end up being when I am here, sitting at this crap computer, trying to tell our customers, one by one, that we’re not a dying, crappy company and that they should still order from us, despite our mishandling of pretty much everything.

What I also “like” about being here is that, since all logic gets left in the car as I arrive to work, factors only remotely related to the issue I’m pissy about – which is any one of about a hundred things at any given time – suddenly become relevant and used as the premise of an argument, or a whole new “supporting” argument, even though those factors aren’t really relevant at all. All good argumentative skills get thrown out the window.

Yes, it is my fault that I let my job get to me as it does. I’ve always wanted to be a Vulcan Jedi (in my mind, that could happen), but so far, I’m just a Romulan Sith, and that depresses me. I mean, a Romulan Sith has just got to be the most devious, evil, angry thing in the known universe.

It’s too bad I can’t be in an environment where I could use my rage for good… like Jack Bauer; instead of working, I’ve been reading Dave Barry’s 24 Blog. Professional, yes?

I resolve, again and again, to become a man unaffected by this horrible, horrible environment. I’ve never been in a place more poorly organized, unprofessional, or inefficient, unless you count a certain high school band I used to instruct. But let’s not go there.

As I finish this blog entry, I once again must center myself, remove myself from the burdens this working environment thrusts upon me, and remember – it’s not worth being affected by it.

I hate this place.

(EDIT – 1-31-2008: Out of respect for my fellow employees at the time, this blog entry was kept private. Now that none of us work for the company any longer, I have made this entry public)