And they were oft inspired by my attitude. Signs of:

"You can't be competent in a dysfunctional environment"

were popping up all over the place, as was my book, "Assertive Incompetence: An Introduction to Management Malpractice".

Still, I doubt I was a prostitute wandering around trying to please the gods looking for the good.

In Europe, there are a number of Laws which prevent some of the abuse of the United States Corporate and Government world so prevalent here. There, as I understand it, you actually get vacation and aren't on call day and night as the sole support of the most important system in the whole place -- you don't have your boss insist that you take your phone with you so they can call you back thousands of miles away on your vacation with your family if something happens. They can't make you give up your honeymoon to Hawaii because you an important piece to complete an 18 month project.

And I would suppose that if the Executive Vice President sleeps with his admin, he would do it discretely and not fire the HR person who brings the matter of the admin signing her time slips -- forging her boss's signature -- for thousands of dollars of overtime she didn't work (they finally fired the VP in the middle of his trip to China and prosecuted the admin).

I would see the Europeans as being more enlightened than the Americans and so your experiences of extreme insane abuse of employees may not be one you have experienced. Perhaps management over there is more rational.

Life over here in the government / corporate circles continues to be ever the more chaotic and sometimes, like those who work for Dish Network, become so intolerable that the only solution is to leave, because of the low pay, long hours and terrible working conditions, all to make the billionaire at the top more profit.

So I hope you enjoy your European management. I'd bet, if I were a betting man, it's a whole lot better now, but you never know what's coming.

So keep up your spirits and continue to sing "Tomorrow" on the job, because it's only a day away.