Ha Ha

I love getting the last laugh. At my cubicle day job I had last year, where they gave me an idiot manager that caused me to get up and walk off the job to start my new career as a freelancer, my manager had a Ford Expedition. She had to be at the office by 8:30am, which included fueling that huge fuel tank, fixing anything necessary, feeding her 4 babies (she was Catholic), and dropping them off at school or daycare. At lunch time, she drove out again for a lunch she would bring back and eat for 30 minutes. She then had to leave at 3:30pm to pick up a baby from daycare, pick up her kids, drive them to her mother-in-laws, and make it back by 4:15pm and continue working until her total 8 hours were completed. Her husband, who ran his own construction business, did nothing for her in this regard. Meanwhile, her job required that she be just like us grunts -- woken up at all times of the night and weekend for emergencies where systems were down or some other major crisis was about to happen.

Now enter the fuel crisis due to the falling dollar. Her grocery and gas bills have doubled. Her daycare rates will likely have to go up as well. Meanwhile, morale is even lower in the office since I'm gone and all that boatload of work I accomplished is being handled by low-paid idiot sloths who probably don't even know the difference between uppercase and lowercase in Linux command lines. So, the only thing that can go up for that office are costs, and if they go up enough, then that company will close the whole operation down and move everything to India. Last, the security and business continuity audits there were very aggravating, and I was the only one there who knew enough to ensure that they passed these audits. Now that they have to do this on their own, I can guarantee you the place is falling apart at the seams. It's only a matter of time before there's a major shakeup in that department, where people get fired, and then eventually the whole darn place falls apart and needs to get outsourced to India.

In other words, I was like the little-known glue that held the place together, heavily overworked, passionately disregarded, severely underpaid, aggravated at every promotion turndown. I had no office with a window, no time with my wife and kids for 6 years, had to drive an hour into the office there and back, was called at all times of the day and night and on weekends, vacations, and holidays, and a whole laundry list of craziness that was long ignored.

So now, I have the last laugh. While my former manager is working long hours and paying $150 to $200 a week in fuel costs, which is $10,400 a year, living with all that aggravation and risk of her getting fired by her management, I'm having the last laugh. My salary is now double hers as a freelancer, my gas bill is near $0, I get an office with a big desk, a window, and any comfort I want, and the list goes on and on.

She bitterly wanted me out because I was smarter than her, knew that she was stupid and making stupid decisions, and didn't like that I didn't fit into a little mold of suck-ups like the other brown-nosers that worked under her. She failed to see the value in me, but I'm sure she sees it crystal clear now.

So Lisa, ha ha. I told you so. My commute is 5 seconds, I make twice your salary with far less aggravation, I'm having the time of my life, and I see my kids far more than you ever will in your pathetic life. Makes you stop and think, doesn't it?