Working at The Mega Corporation or The Mega Government Institution, there is a lot of bullshit you have to put up with.

Things like…

Waking up in the morning and realize that you have to do the work of two people for the pay of one because the bastard who runs the sweatshop you work in laid off a bunch of highly skilled workers to save on labor costs so the owner/program director can buy his third yacht and have enough left over for a set of custom knee pads for his secretary.

(Yes, I realize that the above sentence was one long run-on sentence, but when you get pissed off, your ability to use proper grammar and punctuation goes right out the damn window.)

A never-ending supply of ass-kissers who are annoying as shit and who are continuing to promote and also continue their annoying habits of breathing & breeding.

Trying not to puke when you hear the words from Management: “Shareholder Value,” “It is all about The Customer,” and “We are family here at The Mega.”

The list goes on and on. But what can be done to relieve the stress we all feel at the shitholes we work at?

Granted, some people love where they work and what they do. Individuals who firmly believe they are doing something useful with their lives for their customers and their community.

These are people who were dropped as babies by their parents and suffered blunt-force cranial trauma. So, they don’t count.

But what about the rest of us? What can we do to relieve the workplace stress we must endure? There are a few things we can do to combat this never-ending battle for sanity and, in most of our cases…survival.

For starters: We can come up with the perfect combination of LSD, Xanax, and Hawaiian Pizza (Because you have to be wasted to work there and swallow the lines of bullshit they feed us daily). Then, when you leave, you get a shot of ketamine so that you can forget what you just experienced in the flaming circus, which you call a job.

But outside of taking things that will cause you to have an extended stay at a beachside rehab clinic, there really isn’t a hell of a lot you can do to relieve your job stress…Unless you start out on your own and do something for yourself.

For example, it is 4:57 in the morning, and I’m sitting here at my dining room table, pounding out content on my laptop while my girlfriend is upstairs watching Tic-Toc videos because she can’t sleep. Never mind that I could be at my desk in the corner of our bedroom upstairs, where I have my three monitors hooked up to my desk and a standard keyboard to write on.

But I can’t because I work from home 2 days a week. I have the Mega Government employer laptop hooked up to all of my personal equipment, so it would be more manageable for me to do the job of two people that I get paid for only doing the job for one; that makes me want to take the “perfect combination of LSD, Xanax, and Hawaiian Pizza” to get through my shift.

You know what sucks? You get stressed out about work BEFORE you go to bed, WHILE trying to sleep, and AFTER you wake up. Ok, that’s three things, but you get my drift.

Why are we getting stressed out? It’s just a job…right? Well, yes and no. We have to have our jobs to keep a roof over our heads, put food in the fridge, and pay for our health care. But then again, if you did your best to avoid employment like the latest version of the plague, you can get free healthcare, food stamps, free medical, and a place to live, all paid for by people who work for a living.

Welcome to California!

So, tell me, why are we going to work again?

While in the private sector, I heard the phrase: “We Have to Maximize Shareholder Value.” What that means is Management telling us, “Listen, you worthless and replaceable tools of humanity, you have to save The Mega even more money while working twice as hard with half as many people so we can cut down on labor and production costs so our stock values go up. This way, I will get a massive quarterly bonus from the incredible profits our company has made. At the same time, you underpaid slave labor force, get a company-sponsored pizza party using microwaveable pizza that we got on the bargain table at 7-11.

And you know I’m telling you the truth for anybody who has worked in Corporate America.

But when you work for any government entity, “It’s all about ‘The Customer,’ or as they are all called “The Constituents,” which is a euphemism for “People we attract to use and give money to, who can advantage of our taxpayer-funded program who don’t actually need it and shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

Most people, like me, went into working in the government sector because we got tired of dealing with the bullshit of the private sector. Well, let me be the first to tell you: Bullshit is still bullshit, no matter what side of the government/private sector job fence you are on.

While profit margins drive the private sector, government entities are driven by their budgets and funding. When you are in the government sector, you have to spend all the money in your yearly budget because if you don’t, you won’t be allocated the same amount of money you had before for the worthless programs you are forced to push out to an unsuspecting public to try and justify your existence so you don’t have to go out and get a private sector job.

Because, in the government sector, the more money that you can spend on stupid shit and things that make it look like you are “helping the community,” the more money you get in your budget. And the bigger the budget you “manage,” the more you get paid.

Programs that include: Putting every government form in every language on Planet Fucking Earth other than English to “help those who don’t speak our language.” Or “How Smooth Jazz Music Affects the Left-Handed Members of the People Pretending to be a Member of the Opposite Sex while wearing last season’s Vera Wang clothing line that majored in Interactive Underwater Basket Weaving in college?.” My favorite is “Why do we even need the people who run these assine programs in the first place?.”

Can anybody say USAID?

Budgets are so big that one day, they brain-dead individuals and idiotic and wasteful programs at the top of the government food chain. You spend your time traveling to different conferences at five-star resorts/hotels, congregate with other “governmental bigwigs” in a rented ballroom that looks like they were decorated by R.U. Paul’s former costume designer while having your assistant take notes and give you a brief summary of what the speaker was saying in the first place.

Then, later that night, you and your other “contemporaries” all get together for a meal and Tequila shots that cost more than what one of your “government employees” makes in a week; all the while, the entire experience is an allocated budget item in your yearly budget funded, mind you, at taxpayer expense.

Thanks to President Trump and the DOGE agency, the wasteful spending enacted by the previous mentally ill administration is in the process of getting its financial throat cut.

But I digress.

Why do I get stressed about work? Well, it could be that I’m thinking about how my money goes everywhere except in my pocket. It could be that I’m thinking about how I am nothing but a cog in the machine of some entity that, if I died today, would have my job posting up faster than my obituary would be in the paper. Then, I sometimes wonder if it is all worth it.

And, to be honest with you, it’s not worth it at all. Now, that doesn’t mean I’m quitting and will conform to the mind-numbing will of my Corporate and Government Overlords…not by a long shop. But what I’ve decided to do is to make my own way. Or at least try to.

Hey, if I make it or not, at least I tried. And the best part of it all is telling the system: Kiss My Ass.