out of the frying pan...

having recently moved to a new area has necessitated my need to go out and meet new people. and as a part of meeting a new person, the question of "so what do you do?" inevitably comes up. generally, i tell people i'm in manufacturing. however, that's a pretty vague description and people typically are less interested in what work on as much as who you work for. so i end up telling people who i work for (whom we'll call company 'i').

the strange thing is, when i tell people i work for company 'i', they go "oh". and this isn't the "oh, how interesting!" type of "oh". it's more like the "oh, i feel sorry for you." type of "oh". and i say this because after learning that i work for company 'i', people tend to respond with thoughts like, "wow, i heard it's really cutthroat there" and "isn't the pressure there really intense?" now, if one or two people say these kinds of things, it's easy to play it off as hype. after all, how many of them have actually worked for company 'i'? the thing is, this didn't happened with just one or two people. this is coming from four or five people--complete strangers even. and when people start giving you advice like "watch your back" and "make sure you get credit for your ideas", it makes you wonder if there may be some truth to it after all.

i just hope that i still have a job in 2 years...