As I might have said before, I'm really not much of a conspiracy theorist. But I do like symbolism. And in that sense, I'm becoming convinced that this place called my job is designed to kill me.

I'm seeing the same thing I saw at my last job. My last job was a once relatively happy place, but got transformed into a miserable corporate world, little by little. I get miserable as the environment gets miserable, and I get a bad review. Following the pattern of my last job, I should be quitting right about now.

It's been one year since we've moved to the new office location. It's been a year away from the joys of Kendall Square, with everything you could wish for within walking distance. And we've been moved to a building in the middle of nowhere, where you need a car if you want to eat at some place other than the over-priced, predictable cafeteria.

We had a massive lay-off. We're in this huge building that last year they said they insisted we needed for space, but now I see whole rows of cubicles with nobody inside them. For years the company had a "Museum", which more specifically was a collection of odd promo items from the past: frisbees, mugs, funny nick-nacks, tiny basket ball hoops, even a music CD created and recorded by some collaborating co-workers who were musicians. Some were branded with our current name and some under our past names. But that museum is all gone now. No more. Scavenged with the remains thrown in the trash.

We used to have free beer and chips every Friday. That's gone. And even the occasional get-together lunches with the rest of the team, to welcome new employees, celebrate hard work, or to just keep some morale, are gone. In fact, here's part of an email we got from the VP of Development:

The company is taking advantage of the shitty economy, which means they can knowingly afford to be hard-asses. The new mandatory in-time of 8:30 for my group (an unheard of thing for almost all companies in this field) is especially killing me. Lack of sleep is said to lead to anxiety and lack of creativity. It makes sense that they'd give me an early time to get in when they know damn well it's not how I best operate. But better to keep me in a state where I'm easily put on-edge, and have no creativity to dream up of better things to do. And when I get home, the tiredness continues, and I don't feel like doing anything creative.

I usually spend over 12 hours here every day. Yet when I get to my mandatory daily status report, I can't think of what I've done that actually took 12 hours to do. So I list some of the things and increase the numbers until they add up to 8. It doesn't seem right. I don't mean immoral on my part; I mean not right that I spend half of the 24 day here, only to make it seem like I only put 1/3 of a day in.

What's stopping me from quitting? It's what I'm being told: "the economy sucks". And it's seeing those laid-off co-workers still looking for jobs. And calling my headhunter again after a week to hear him say "No, I still can't find anything. Again, there just aren't that many jobs out there."

And just when I think things can't get any more ridiculous, I get this email regarding our 401k fund:

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