My last day with BearingPoint is a week from day, on Thursday 27 July. As I go through my last days here, I’m taking stock of the things I won’t miss:
- The circuitous parking deck
- The funny smell in the corridors outside the elevators on the parking deck levels
- The depressing, silent elevator ride every morning
- Overhearing painfully cliche Dilbert-esque elevator banter
- Waiting in line for the damn microwave
- The 12 square feet of billboard space dedicated to CYA regulatory compliance posters explaining my rights to decline a polygraph and earn minimum wage
- The immensely annoying ringtone on my Cisco IP phone (yes, I could change it, but it’s easier to curse the darkness than light a candle)
- Remembering to log into my phone every morning
- Wearing an ID badge everywhere I go
- Dressing up every day for no good reason
- Paying $5 for the privilege of wearing jeans on select Fridays
- Commuting on the toll road every day
- Being the only person in the company who has used
gdb or WinDbg to solve hard problems
- Abusing an endless supply of good coffee
- Having to violate corporate IT policy on pain of death and termination in order to run any operating system developed within the last five years
- Developing .NET apps on a Dell Latitude D600 identical to the ones BE hands out to all its other employees, be they admin assistants, management units, business analysts, or senior developers
- Developing software with Oracle 8i
- Security policies that can be summarized as “fuck it, just unplug the damn thing, your work isn’t that important”
- Keeping a timesheet, daily, on pain of death and termination
- Wondering which key employee will be leaving this month
- Overhearing other employees tell eachother how ready they are to go home at the end of the day, and knowning how they feel
- Counting the days until the next weekend
- Sunday evening depression in anticipation of work on Monday
Of course, it’s not been all (or even mostly) bad, but as I’m on my way out, I can’t help but notice all the little things that have bugged me for over two years, and delight in the knowledge I will suffer them no longer.
