Prayer Circle

The 6th of May is the “National Prayer Day.”  I’m very sorry that I know that, but it just couldn’t be avoided since all the pantries in my office building were plastered last week with fliers and posters encouraging staff to “come to the roof between noon and 12:30 and pray towards the Capitol for peace and change.”

Yes, seriously. I, of course, spent the better part of a day tearing down all the fliers and stuffing them deep into the trash can, but that doesn’t change the fact that things at my day job have gone horribly wrong.

I’ve been here for nine years, and I had somehow fooled myself into believing the rhetoric coming out of the executive office – we were a left-leaning, people-friendly company.  We cared about the little people and worked hard to get those silly “best workplace in America” awards (though we never made the grade, and that should have told us all something).  It took the economic freakout in 2009 to expose the true colors of the executive office.  They immediately panicked and stalked through the hallways executing staff members (and our benefits).  They laid off ten percent of the staff, all of whom had a diagnosed medical condition (the lawyers say that’s just a coincidence). They rolled back our pay and they trimmed just about everything that was good in our benefits package.  Then they started fucking up their products because, you know, they fired a bunch of people.  So they released a defective item and went right back into the red trying to make it right, setting the stage for more economic trouble down the line. Though, instead of taking advantage of the biggest fuck-up the company has ever done to fire a few deadbeat big-wigs responsible for all of our woes, we were all forced to give those deadbeat big-wigs a standing ovation for…releasing…the defective…product…and…

Yeah.  I don’t get it.  As 2009 rolled into 2010, our company went from an unhealthy workplace full of bad practices into a sort of eccentric LSD nightmare.

Most recently is the National Day of Prayer, where the company not only allowed for fliers to be plastered all over the place, but they’re also allowing a cultist revival ceremony to be held on the roof.

This isn’t the first time God has invaded my workplace, though.  Our director is a big church person so, before every meeting, and birthday party, and pot luck, and all those idiot gatherings you have in an office, he would lead us in prayer.

Eventually, some brave soul complained and the prayers stopped at the staff meetings, but they continued at all of the special gatherings.  Now, for the record, the director does try to side-step leading the prayer.  He’s either encouraged to do it by the prayer nuts, or he sheepishly asks everyone if it’s okay.  The former are legion, and the latter is tough because you can’t turn to your boss and say, “Fuck, no.  Hail Satan!”

So we still pray.  Non-Christians sit silently and awkwardly in the midst of a Pentecostal blaze of zealotry. And despite repeated complaints that have travelled all the way up the ladder about this prayer disease, here we come to May 6th, which is all about the staff taking half an hour out of their day to crowd together on the roof and call the wrath of God down on Obama.  Or something…

It has long ago become clear that my company is diseased and insane, and cares little for the employees and the customer.  And, really, deep down, I’ve always known this.  I saw it when I first started and I didn’t care because I got 18 hours vacation every month, and they let me take 4-6 weeks off every year to travel the world and live like a rock star. And, after all, isn’t every company like this?  There is no integrity in the American workplace, so I shouldn’t be shocked by the evil that they do.

But I am shocked by the prayer shit. I never imagined that the company would start to resemble a bad day at The Heritage Foundation.

Layoffs, pay cuts, defective products, insane internal politics… It’s all fine.  What do I care?  Just send checks and stay out of my life.  But the prayer thing is just too much.  It’s too offensive.

I believe religion is a weird tribal holdover anyway.  Some sort of Neolithic, proto-Cro-Magnon anachronism that’s become a bad habit.  It’s designed only to comfort (or, rather, prey upon) the weak and the foolish, and therefore has a toe-hold in the modern day when, really, we should have long ago evolved past religion.  It’s the one thing holding us back from greatness.  It encourages hate, prejudice, vanity, hubris, and fanaticism. Religion – and especially Christianity – has come to embody everything that is wrong with the Human race.

I single out Christianity because I can’t stand hypocrites.  Since the 300’s, and especially for the last thousand years, we’ve all practiced a form of Christianity that is so perverted and wicked, it would make Jesus want to go right back to his tomb and roll that rock shut.  Fuck you all.  And all of my inbred co-workers who mumble right along with our arch-deacon director, and wave their Bibles on the roof of the building, should be exterminated. There’s just no other way.  I remember on 9/11, when we were told to get out of the building in a free-for-all hysterical freakout.  Most of my co-workers stayed, forming prayer circles, preparing for the end.  The rest of us pushed and stumbled past them to escape the building.

Outside, black smoke on the horizon, jet fighters screaming low, emergency services in a scattered tumult of sirens and panic, more co-workers fell to their knees and prayed.

I suppose that was an extreme situation.  My only thought was getting out of town, going home.  Processing what had happened.  But I suppose prayer has a place in such instances…? Still, though, that’s who I’m working with, and that’s why we’re subjected to inappropriate prayers when the staff gather together.

And while I blame the god-head fools, the real problem comes right back to the executives.  All part of this emotionally crippled corporation. Why have they approved this? Why do they allow it to continue?

How many of you reading this are going to have the bulk of your co-workers gather on the roof today to pray like some suicide apocalypse cult?