Thursday, April 25, 2019

Due to a screw up with my “employer” I earn money to do nothing.

https://old.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/bhayt8/due_to_a_screw_up_with_my_employer_i_earn_money/
The title is inaccurate. I didn’t earn anything. I am paid. You’ll see why shortly.
No one knows what I do. I don’t know what I do. I do nothing. All day long.
I’m “confessing” this because I don’t know where else to tell my story, and I’ve never told anyone anything ever. Not even family.
What prompted this, is I received a new iPhone that I didn’t order in the mail, with unlimited high bandwidth data. I also got a certificate stating I had ten years of loyal corporate service with a particular Fortune 100 company, and now eligible for something like five weeks of paid vacation a year, not counting numerous corporate perks for key employees like myself.
I’m a corporate drone who keeps his head down. I’m invisible.
I haven’t been to the office in eight years.
It started at my old company when they melted down and went bankrupt and absorbed by a competitor, so they laid me off and paid me to keep my mouth shut about the 2006 nonsense.
I went and got a new job; it’s doing drone like corporate work in financial services. Then three amazing coincidences happened. I didn’t know it at the time, but they were under investigation for some slightly fraudulent things that was in the news, just standard financial nonsense in the industry.
So they had fired a ton of people to clean house, changed some protocols to make the Feds happy, which is why I was contracted. After contracting for awhile, they laid off more people, and I was “forced” to roll permanent, which I hate. Rolling perm means less money, but I figured this company would melt down too shortly, so why not.
So I went perm, and the person who hired me was fired that week, and second, everyone but me on the team was fired, and third whatever we did was being done by automation or absorbed by others. So I didn’t have a lot to do. I had a lot of dotted line type bosses, since what I used to do affected a lot of departments, but I didn’t do any actual “work”, and no one asked me to do anything.
The division was spun off into its own billion dollar concern, then absorbed back into the parent company, to keep the liability levels down when Johnny Law gets curious. Each time, they give out stock grants or give tender offers above the current value, and like a good corporate drone I keep maxing out my employee stock profit share whatever thing to buy company stock at a discount so each time I come out well. I max out my 401k. I have every benefit that’s offered.
Since I was bored and had nothing to do, I would do odd jobs for other groups. Then that got automated, but somehow I’d get the credit as somehow being involved in it.
With all the layoffs and mergers anyone that knew me has been removed, arrested, jumped ship, or been laid off. I think the whole place has been taken over by an AI system and there are no more humans. I honestly have no idea. I’ve written glowing annual performance reviews and rated myself as horrible to see what would happen. I’ve written haikus in the “additional comments” section, but it’s always the same COLA annual delta regardless.
I started “working” from home often. Then stopped showing up entirely. No one noticed or said anything. I would ignore meetings just to see what would happen. Nothing.
I just went on vacations, a three day weekend here and there. Then travelled around the world a half dozen times. Nothing, just regular direct deposits kept coming. A healthy 401k match, nice stock options. W2 at the end of the year. Tons of standard corporate perks. I just moved $250k into bonds to hedge against some emerging market investments. I’ve earned none of it.
I’ve basically retired from a career I never had. I’m hoping I continue to get paid after I’m dead.
When people ask what I do, I usually tell them I’m unemployed. I don’t know how to answer the question. On official forms I say I’m a “consultant”. People assume I won the lottery or deal drugs, as I am always available to do things and travel a lot.
I wanted to buy a condo so I got a second job for a year. I bought my condo for cash. Now I have fewer bills and save even more money. All from working hard doing nothing.
In all the “employer” has paid out over two million dollars in salary and benefits for me to use their iPhone and bandwidth to binge watch Netflix and porn. I’m writing this on it now from a bar off Times Square on a “vacation”. I started drinking at 10:30am.
I have no idea where my employee badge is and would need FBI forensics to locate it. If found I wouldn’t use it, for fear of it triggering questions. If I do anything it might expose my “crimes” and I’ll be found out.
So no one was murdered, I didn’t cheat on a wife, and this is barely a “confession” other than I’m a useless corporate weasel sucking off the corporate tit. I’m not even sure they could sue me to get their money back as they never told me to do anything.
I get paid $120,000 a year and do nothing. My life is meaningless.

FirstWorldProblems

Edit: for those who think this is made up, I don’t know what to say. I can’t (and won’t) prove it, and not even sure how I would do so. This isn’t meant to slam some /r/hailcorporate type nonsense, some subtle stab at capitalism, or any of that shilling. I really do nothing. They keep sending me phone upgrades and I check my email once a week or so, and all I have is the standard corporate dross one gets at large businesses, message from the CEO and that crap.
It was a comedy of errors where I did something on the periphery of everyone but never had anything to do.
As a parallel, and not what I did, imagine you did Linux helpdesk support. Then they switch to using Windows, but to maintain “something” you needed to have a Linux support person on staff, so you keep them around but they do something else, now subtract the “something else”. Now manage a resource that has nothing to do but you can’t fire them. Sort of like that.
As far as the “legal” issues, I do 100% of the tasks assigned to me, which are zero. I don’t see how I’m doing anything fraudulent. I’m not shirking my responsibilities, I’m given none. It’s not my job to seek out things to do.
I asked /r/legaladvice and this was their opinion.
https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/bhcngs/newyorkemployment_law_i_do_nothing_and_get_paid/
So reddit’s Legal firm thinks I’m ok. For what it’s worth. .
Edit2: awarded a silver for confessing that I do nothing for six figures. What? Too cheap to spring for gold or platinum?
http://archive.is/wGQLT

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