Public Service Announcement: Videotaped Crime

This is another PSA brought to you by Shane. See the last one here

If you are gong to commit a crime, please take a second and reconsider the banality of your actions. If you are still going to continue and commit this crime, then by all means, do not videotape the crime. Do not videotape it yourself, do not tell your friend to videotape you committing the crime, and if you see a stranger carrying a video camera as you are about to commit this crime, ask them politely not to videotape you..

Apparently (and I was shocked when I learned this), this videotape can be used in a trial as something called [air quote] evidence [/air quote] and this [air quote] evidence [/air quote] is quite powerful in convincing the jury to prosecute you, the defendant, to the fullest extent of the law. This so called [air quote] evidence [/air quote] is said to remove beyond all reasonable doubt the fact that you indeed committed the crime. I am also led to believe that the jury awards extra incarceration points for stupidity.

If you have been a victim of being videotaped while committing a crime, call your local public defender and ask for the [air quote] evidence [/air quote] tampering division. Your counsel might just get this [air quote] evidence [/air quote] thrown out in the court room because it violates some constitutional right you probably did not deserve to have in the first place.

 That is all.

What happened to Shane?

One word, PROXY. Okay, it is really two words because it is a proxy statement but I like to call it the black hole that sucks all the fun out of work. How many shareholders of the company are really going to read this proxy statement? Short of a few institutional holders who are going to request a research analyst to summarize the details, no one is going to bother to open this crap. In short, the culmination of my last couple of weeks at work will be a stack of paper that will be thrown out as soon as it is received by ninety percent (90%) of its recipients. Well, there you have it; the proxy statement has sucked all the enjoyment (and time) out of my life and my work. And there was not that much to begin with.

What really irks me about the proxy statement is the manpower and man-hours it takes to put together this piece of document (remember, no one reads it) that doesn’t really bring in any additional revenue for the company. Rather, my work on the proxy actually prohibits me from completing tasks that actually bring in value. The proxy has undergone so much rework even its plastic surgeon will barely recognize it. All this to be either more SEC or NYSE complaint compliant so we do not get penalized or worse, made an example of . (Kudos to Applied Materials Inc.. I would have loved to work there only to put out this proxy as a sort of practical joke). If either of the agencies (I’m really just looking to you SEC but I thought I would be passive aggressive) could stop changing the rules every year, maybe, just maybe, I might get some sleep at night.

It is almost over now. The final version of the proxy was sent to the printers yesterday and I received a draft of the proof this morning and lo and behold, the printer screwed up the format. If the printer was trying to prove a point to me (that the last weeks spent staring at the proxy until late into the night was not worth it), they might as well have sent blank pages back except for the “Loser” sign stamped on each page’s right bottom corner.

It’s almost over now. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe after the proxy is finally complete, the executives will remove the chain that binds me to my desk and I’ll be allowed to see the sun again. Oh, I miss the sun. After all this, I tell myself, “It’s just a job.”