• 10 Nov, 2025 *

I’ve written and rewritten this post countless times. Making sure company names and individuals are obfuscated to hell. Hopefully this rewrite sticks.

Among those rewrites, I lost track of what this was even for and who would care. But it’s something I have to get out there, at least so I could be free of the idea of it.

Preamble

My consensus is that most companies are inherently dysfunctional. Like death and taxes, this is just a grim reality of the world.

But companies with dysfunction that runs so deep are novel. The ego-tripping, micro-managing, tribalistic incompetence of some of these companies are inspirational.

You know why? Because if such an entity can survive, an entity so large and disfigured it cannot move or think freely, an entity fueled by the crushed spirits of its constituents struggling to get by to pay bills, by its sheer greed, then something you’re brave enough to make can come into fruition.

I speak to you not as someone with hidden knowledge, nor as tech business-bro-guru, but as someone with only the authority of which liberty can grant; a regular person speaking their experience. And I think I’ve learned something about the corporate world.

It is all fucking bullshit.

The Gig

I started working at a geosciences company as my first post-university job. Not as a geologist mind you, but as a member of their Facilities Department. Now, I studied Computer Science, how does that relate to Facilities Management? It doesn’t in the slightest.

I had just returned to the country I grew up in, a place in what you may call The Third World ™. I’d have liked to have stayed in America, mind you, a country to which I am a citizen, but after the pandemic, resources and capital were exhausted to hell. I needed money.

A friend of mine working at a geosciences company hooked me up, said he could get me an interview working at their Facilities department. I say “bro, thank you, you have no idea how much that means to me but, I don’t know a damn thing about Facilities Management.” He shrugs, says no sweat, that they didn’t either.

It wasn’t a guaranteed position. He got me an interview but didn’t have any real pull other than that.

So I did research on Facilities Management, memorized some buzz words, headed into the interview and bullshit my way through. Trying to be charming and charismatic as much as I could be (being a chronic introvert).

I land the job.

The Company

GeoCo1 is European corporation, but has a lot of branches around the globe. I thought this was neat, that I was lucky to be so privileged to have a major player on my resume.

Turns out the local branch in the country I was at is as organized as a dumpster-fire with the company’s logo sprayed onto the side with an unsteady hand.

When I tell you this place is unorganized, you would not believe it 2. The fact that it’s still even operating is begrudgingly impressive.

Sure, the rampant disorganization and poor communication got on my nerves, but the thing that genuinely evoked a certain kind of indignant rage was the racial tension. There was a hierarchy. If you were white, you were treated better, paid more.

I’m of mixed race and of dual-citizenship. I was treated remarkably better than those who weren’t white (who didn’t wear flannels and baseball caps and talked with a west-coast American drawl inherited from their mothers side).

So I didn’t notice the disparity until a few months in when I was talking to my coworkers about their experiences working at the company.

I was told by a member of HR that they have pay brackets categorized according to race. So you’d have the average offered salary of a position then a modifier based off of your ethnicity.

I thought she was joking but she was dead serious.

Now, mind you, this being The Third World ™ certain things can be said and done that would be a damn lawsuit in other countries. The HR member was stirring their tea, casually dropping this fact as though she were talking about the weather.

Layoffs happened a few times during the few years I worked there. Nobody with my skin color was fired 3.

There’s so many stories I could tell

• Like how the General Manager was making close to 70k USD a month while the company was barely surviving. An absurd figure considering our revenue.
• The logistics department’s struggle to keep finding new contractors because we’d never pay any of them.
• How the company stressed frugality, (because we were usually two months away from bankruptcy) but certain department heads never check their emails or attend meetings and would then proceed to launch renovation projects costing tens of thousands.

There is so much I could tell, but this is dragging on enough.

The Facilities Department

The department was run by a man named Robin 4. Robin was a grifter (among other things) and was well connected. You see, GeoCo was actually a joint venture with a local, native corporation. The head of that local corporation was Robin’s friend.

This effectively made him borderline untouchable and resulted in him being something approximating a benevolent-dictator.

Rules and guidelines stipulated by HR were all but noise to him. He barely spoke English, which was the lingua franca of GeoCo.

He’d have his more linguistically gifted subjects replying to emails on his computer, often while nosily watching YouTube/TikTok videos. Grunting approval or disapproval at questions asked.

Facilities was one of the worst departments in the entire company.

Our job was to manage 27 facilities across the country. “Managing” in this case meant:

• Making sure utility bills were paid
• Maintenance jobs (Work Orders) were issued and carried out.
• Making sure every company accommodation had it’s needs met 5.
• Acquiring new facilities and seeing to the lease and legal requirements.
• Making sure our local maintenance crew had the supplies they needed.

Everything was handled via email and poorly constructed, often nonsensical, spreadsheets. LOTS of spreadsheets. It was absolute chaos.

Me being a more software inclined person, I researched what other Facilities guys were using in other companies. I came across CAFM (Computer Aided Facilities Management) software. It had everything we could have wanted. Work Order ticketing? Check. Asset Management? check (we didn’t log anything). Conference room bookings? Check. An Actual sane way of working? Check.

I made a proposal and sent it to Robin. To his credit, he let me make my sales pitch. But with glazed over eyes he shook his head and said management wouldn’t pay for it.

At this point I was rather naively trying to turn things around and make our lives easier. But you can only hit a brick wall so many times before giving up.

Departure

I continued working there for a few years, silently with my head down, paying off my debt. Numb to the world around me. To the crushing pressure of the corporate shit-show that was GeoCo. Office politics, layoffs, passed around me but I didn’t care. I was numb to it all. Sick to my stomach at the racist, chaotic circus dance.

The second I got my debt paid off and I had some emergency cash in my bank account I decided to bounce. Thanked my friend for saving myself from financial ruin then put it my notice.

I cannot express the relief I felt to be out of there. Facilities Management wasn’t something I had ever envisioned for myself, but I feel a sort of kindred spirit with people in that field now. It’s not a bad line of work by any means (unless you’re working at GeoCo).

I’ve been working on myself after I got out. Figuring my life out. But I wanted to put this out there. I had to, I felt as though I have some moral obligation to do so. To wash myself clean of the place.

Also to help me remember, if an entity like GeoCo can be allowed to exist, then I have a shot at making something better. Projects that could be smaller, efficient and focus driven. And that I have a shot at doing.

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For obvious reasons, this is the only way I’ll be refer to that place.↩ 1.

Or may some of you can. I’ve read some corporate horror stories on here and other platforms.↩ 1.

I often felt grossed out by this. We’re all human beings, ethnicity shouldn’t matter. But there I was shielded by my mother’s ancestry.↩ 1.

Which obviously is not his name, and is the furthest thing from it that I could pull out of my ass.↩ 1.

They didn’t. Some of the living conditions were horrendous. Attempts to fix this was met with “lack of funding” Oh and if you were white you’d be given a hotel paid for by the company.↩