You left out the rest of the exchange (from a comic called "Tune," by the way):

Andy: Thank you, Father. Thank you for opening my eyes.
Andy's Father: There is no need for thanks, my son. You need only to pass this fundamental knowledge to your own son when he is ready. Remember, "the chain must never be broken!"
Andy: You can count on me, Dad! Listen, I'm gonna go down to the hardware store for some rope to hang myself. You want anything?
Andy's Father: Pick me up a Frosty at Wendy's, willya?

shit, that sounds horrible. I am glad I work in the public sector and live in a country with unions.

Well said, Kamlem.

There is a video (I think the first one) where the guy describes how he got in trouble for posting folowup story with an unflattering picture of the police chief. Looking at the video, the picture isn't crazy.

I doubt the guy is wrong in this case, news agencies decide who gets to look nice in pictures in seemingly biased ways.

The guy wasn't wrong there, he just wasn't domesticated enough to know that if you are posting a picture of the police chief it needs to be super serious and awesome.

Yikes. I had a similar experience with a local non-profit arts organization that I worked at for about 5 years. At first I thought it'd just be a nice stepping stone and an organization I'd be proud to have on my resume, but this was like August 2008 and we all know what happened in October of that year. Since I was the new guy I assumed I'd be first on the chopping block, but a couple months later they asked me to become full time (which is weird because I was already working full time, but was just nonexempt, and would get in trouble if I worked any overtime hours. For a .25 cent wage increase bringing me up to the lovely number of 11.50/hr.) Over my 5 years there I brought in over 10 million dollars but immediately after I went full they initiated a wage freeze to avoid being in the red, which was weird because they were cutting all of the people whose exempt positions I was ostensibly supposed to be in charge of. To do those tasks, I would've had to make at least 3 extra hours in the day, which I did, completely off the books, until I was caught after work catching up. Among other things, after the freeze one of my employees got Mono and another was hit by a UPS truck, both of whom were out for most of the busiest part of the season. So basically it was like managing a Dominoes Pizza while still having to make and deliver the pizza. And the other departments would be on my ass about it. And so I'd stay extra hours and my own department would be on my ass about working extra hours.

And then after the wage freeze, there was a huge staff reduction. I like to think I was a hard worker but honestly I think they kept me on because they knew I'd work my ass off as the least paid person in the organization, even though I pretty much knew that a raise was never going to happen. And one day I walked into work like any other day, and they simply said "you're fired." No other explanation. Which was weird because it was a 9-5 and I'd be there at 8:45 in my office drafting up whatever info my staff needed.. at first it was a shock but it was kind of like getting out of a marriage gone south. You feel really bad, but in the long run it was a good thing. Plus, I was able to get unemployment, which REALLY pissed off a struggling arts organization, because quite literally they were too under-staffed and busy to have someone, anyone, get on the phone during the hearing. And when someone FINALLY picked up (it was just me and the judge waiting in mostly silence, and I could almost hear steam coming out of the judge's ears) it was someone who I never ever saw, and kept referring to me by a different name.

I love to work (and love my new job) but fuck if I didn't get a celebratory 9AM bloody mary (actually a few of them) because fuck that kind of shit and those kinds of people.

Nonprofits are almost always a huge clusterffuck of conflicting personalities in my experience. More so than any other kind of workplaces I've experienced.

Yup. The day to day of a non profit is run exactly like for profit corporation, but for some reason almost always has shittier upper management and the office politics atmosphere is out of control.

I remember one of my first temp jobs was at an ASPCA office. I was dumped after just one week. Reason? I worked the front desk phone and was told to just refer calls to other official numbers and nothing else. Would constantly get calls from desperate people not knowing what to do with pets they couldn't afford anymore and I wasn't officially allowed to do anything but refer them.

Then finally some frantically sobbing old lady called saying her cat had been diagnosed with FIV and she was worried it was a death sentence and it would have to be put down. I finally broke the rule and assured her cats can go on to live long lives with FIV and just gave her a general info site to look at. She was so relieved and kept thanking me. It felt pretty good.

NOPE! Salaried worker overheard the conversation and ratted out my inconceivable infraction to the boss. An hour after I left work I get a call from the temp agency saying the ASPCA didn't want me to come back the next day. I was freaked but they told me not to worry that no one lasts long there; the bitchy management is never happy with anyone.

Other crap I saw there:

-The vast majority of effort spent on more fundraising. The office and store room were littered with piles of boxes containing promotional crap like "Strut your mutt" cheap plastic pink purses for little girls featuring some chick in designer clothes strutting around a diamond collar poodle, because the best way to raise awareness caring for animals is teaching young girls to treat pets as a Paris Hilton fashion accessory? Three quarters of the stuff ended up being thrown out and never used.

-A starry eyed volunteer who came in gushing how she loved animals and wanted to help and work with them. They stuck her in sorting files the entire time.

Then anyone who lives in Massachusetts can tell you the horror stories of Mass PIRG.

It seems like all non profits follow the same pattern. Start out with some lofty goal. Then when they grow, they become divided into idealistic volunteers and cynical couldn't give a shit paid managers who only do the bare minimum effort for the cause, just enough to generate publicity and keep the donations coming in. Doesn't matter if it's a animal welfare group, environmental group, or terrorist organization!

Heh.. the PIRG in Oregon was the only other place I got canned at. At least they're part of SEIU, but not when you're in your training period. The job was easy (even though I'd be calling on behalf of Mass or Penn PIRGs more than OR, which is tough when you've never been there and they ask what your favorite state park to go to is.. "uhh.. I like all of the parks are equally important to us (?)" and even though I was making my commission every night (more than any of the unionized employees) they had me cold calling during a fucking State of the Union address. On my final training night. Really? So I didn't make quota my my last night and I was gone. I care a lot about our environment but I really wanted to piss in the river or kill a spotted owl myself right about then.

Not to mention the stupid scripts they have you read, with more typos than your worst case of Bible errata.. seriously.. one time the script told me that our goal at CoPIRG was to destroy the lakes in Colorado.

I had a union, but the union were split among different trades, operators and cleaners. Also, industrial companies know how to split the workforce into different sections so that most people in the workplace are strangers. Also, convincing the majority that take a allowance to take a phone and "guarantee a return to work" to question the reasonableness of the system when they never get called is somewhat difficult.

Apart from a couple of outliers, most Australian unions are weak. I pay union fees mostly as insurance so that companies will dot their i's and cross their t's while they screw you.

Still, the positive is that now I save like a demon and through the arcane art of not spending any money should be able to scale back to backpacking 6 months / casually working 6 months after the next 4 years. Hopefully I don't go postal before then. :P

I've been seriously considering going through the necessary steps to move to Australia permanently. Besides my parents, my whole family lives down there. Oregon's beautiful but I've pretty much done everything there is to do here, and would like to learn to surf (there's surfing up here but the ocean's freezing all winter long so what's the fun in that) and could probably live with one of my relatives until I got a job and got on my feet. Plus, even if I worked at a call center again, at least I'd have a unique accent? I like where I live now, and I like my job, and unseasonable January warmth, but next time it rains for 60 days in a row..

okay my story, I work in a hourly wadge warehouse, and for the first four years I was treated like complete shit. Basically the manager was convinced I was there out of sheer desperation, all that changed when one day he found me fixing the pluming in the bathroom and it came out that I had built houses with my father. Suddenly realizing that the reason I worked there was because I WANTED TO, he began to get really desperate to keep me, and for the last five years I have fucked with him at every opportunity......ah life is fun.

I love jobs like that. I was working at this little cooperative in Madison that stayed open late for the college kids, and it was like my 3rd night. For whatever reason they turned out scheduling me with someone else who didn't have a key, but it was TOTALLY ok because someone would come in to lock the at 2:30AM. And now it's like 3:30.. anyway all 3 people with the key were probably just stoned and passed out (and later said they were never told), and I wasn't about to call my boss at that time on my third night. So I just locked up from the inside and crashed in the store. I got a key and was promoted the very next day. I wasn't pissed (it was actually pretty fun) but I'd give him shit the entire time until I moved away. I'd probably be owner of that place by now if I stayed..