Good afternoon, Lauren.
Um, what is this about?
This is an exit interview.
An…exit interview? Whatever for?
It’s an interview we give out to employees that get fired or who resigned so that we at the human resources department can understand your reasons for leaving and how we might improve the work environment for our employees and potential employees.
(ORLY LOL.) Okay, let’s do this!
What is your primary reason for leaving the company?
Well, I’m attending grad school at the University of the Philippines Diliman to take up Creative Writing, and my classes happen to fall under work hours.
Were you happy with your pay, benefits, and other incentives?
Not particularly. I didn’t stay long enough to become a regular employee and get a thousand bucks worth of SoDexHo gift checks per month. That would have taken care of my cigarettes. Also, I’m pretty disappointed that I didn’t get any raise.
What was most satisfying about your job?
To be perfectly honest, there’s little satisfaction to be gained from being a poor sweatshop writer. I spend eight hours a day writing articles I don’t even get any copyright to or credit for. What made my job satisfying to some extent were my teammates and my friends at the office. When other people at work went out of their way to make life difficult for me, they stuck by my side even though they really didn’t have to. They’re such sweethearts, plus they never seem to notice nor mind every time I sneak into their cubicles and steal their food and cigarettes.
What was least satisfying about your job?
The pay. Definitely the pay. I don’t mean to sound so arrogant, but I believe that a writer of my caliber deserves to get a little bit more than what I’m earning right now. Just a little bit.
What did you like most about this company?
No dress code! Should I ever choose to get shackled by the golden chains of capitalism once more, it will be at a more professional work environment, which means that I can no longer show up at work wearing torn jeans and multiple facial piercings. I’m going to miss that. I also love the fact that you can go out and smoke as many times as you want, and how I was such an expert at ducking out for four-hour cigarette breaks.
What did you like least about the company?
I know that at the start of this interview, I made a lot of noise about how I’m not being paid enough to do this job. Truth is, my salary is not the biggest complaint I have. I’m a fresh college graduate with no skills other than my ability to write and I honestly don’t expect to get more than what’s being given to me. In fact, this is probably going to be the highest paying job I’ll ever get in my life since I am seriously considering a career in the academe. Nope, this complaint is not about the money.
I don’t know if you remember the sexual harassment case I filed barely a month after I started working for this company. Oh, you don’t remember? Let me refresh your memory.
On the afternoon of June 14, 2007 (which was also my mother’s 50th birthday), I received a link to a forums called “Fully Grown Midget” (hyuk hyuk, what a clever) from Gil, my coworker and Kristel’s boyfriend. He said he received this link from someone who works in the same floor as him, and that my picture was in the forums. I paid little attention to this message since this Gil is notorious for sending me joke links that I keep falling for. He once made me think that the North Koreans blew up the moon with nuclear weapons, and I damn near broke into tears in the middle of work because I didn’t want the world to end just yet. After that, I’ve learned to ignore pretty much every link he sends me.
A few minutes later, a very distressed Kristel approached me and said that something horrible has happened. A bunch of unknown classless louts I work with at the office managed to get their grubby, cum-stained e-hands on a photo of me wearing a short skirt. A photo that I only uploaded in my Multiply and Friendster accounts. In a thread called “Exotic Womens”, they posted that photo and made a lot of sexually explicit comments about how much they’d like to do me. (I have screen caps for proof.) The forum guys, whoever they were, unwittingly revealed that they work at the same place as I do by mentioning the company’s name, that I smoke at the poolside, and that there’s another girl who’s always with me. What a morans, fantasizing about getting into my pants in a public forum and not being too smart about hiding their tracks.
You might argue that this particular photo was placed in a public profile, therefore people from the intarwebs are free to wank off to it as many times as they want. But you see, there’s a drastic difference between a horny loser on the intarnets and a person I go to work with. People on the intarnets are not required to be nice to each other; in the workplace, there’s this thing called “professionalism”. I’m too brain dead to come up with a clever definition of “professionalism” right now but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t involve guys at work making demeaning comments about their female coworkers in a public forum, then passing the link surreptitiously, like five-year old boys with their first Playboy magazine. Whoever those Fully Grown Midgets forum-goers are, they showed an appalling lack of respect for me as a coworker, a woman, and as a human being.
What disgusts me about this ordeal was this. Despite my request for an investigation and numerous follow-ups to the investigation, you, good sirs from the Human Resources department, did nothing to find out who the perpetrators were. For godsakes, there’s an entire team of IT guys in the company! I may not be the most tech-savvy chick in the world but don’t tell me that it’s difficult for them to track down the IPs of the forum posters, trace it to their workstations, and sanction the bastards. After a month of pestering you and receiving no better response other than “we’re still working on the investigation”, I decided to drop the issue…until my resignation.
Well, the time has come for me to resign. And now that I’ve collected the signatures for my clearance, I will let the whole world know that I, Lauren Dado, got sexually harassed at iWebmasters. And the administration did nothing to protect me.
As for the everyone who contributed to the “Exotic Womens” thread, I have a message for you. If you don’t believe in a God, now’s a good time to start praying that your wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, and daughters never experience that kind of humiliation. Getting sexually harassed at work is not the most pleasant feeling in the world. Getting sexually harassed sucks, period. If that should ever to any of the females in your life, know that the Twisted Laws of Karma says that that is somehow YOUR fault.
I could easily file a labor lawsuit against you but I think I’ve already wasted enough time and energy being angry about this issue. Instead, I shall leave you all with a curse.
May your premature ejaculation embarrass you every single time you attempt to get laid, and may every sexual encounter you experience from this point forward be short and unsatisfying. Same goes for your children, and your children’s children.
Assholes.
…..
…I still get my back pay, right?
…..
(uh oh)
So…would you consider working here in the future?
Perhaps, if I get paid more.
Any other comments?
No. Fuck you.
…..
I can has my back pay nao?
