What We Have Here Is A Failure to Cooperate v.1

Cooperatives are a great concept. With a corporation, the person with the most shares runs the company. With a cooperative, the person with the most shares gets the biggest chunk of the profits but only one vote. Very democratic. If I had a time machine, I would have gone back to the dawn of the industrial revolution and organize workers into owner-operator factory cooperatives. In one fell swoop, I could have knee-capped big business and big labour.

One partner of mine was big on co-ops. He was drunk with the idea of augmenting his plans with big government grants aimed at helping co-ops. He roped me into it and set about gathering the information we needed to sell the co-op concept to others. We gathered a bunch of people. Here's a quick rundown of two of the more colorful members:

Surly Tech. This guy look a shaggy version of Harry Knowles or Bruce Villanche. He was chock full of stupid ideas. I had actually seen his work first hand. He built a database system for a wholesaler. 110 database tables for a place that had three product lines and probably 140 SKUs in total.

Web Designer/Writer/Flooring Guy/Burger Flipper. He would bicycle from 20 miles away and walk right into a closed meeting room for our two hour sessions. Rreeeeek. This guy was a super-duper writer. No; scratch that. He couldn't make a living as a writer. He was a web designer. Nope. He was on compo because he blew his knees out in construction (I get the feeling that wherever he goes he might blow his knees out to keep his job).

For the whole summer, we met weekly and hashed out the details. Surly tech vomitted his stupid ideas into the meeting room. Web Designer/etc. targetted one prospective member just because he didn't like him. Some people got tired of the ordeal and left. By the end of the summer, we were ready to set-up the co-op. I was tasked with getting the paperwork together. I showed up at our meeting and my partner said, "We're going to set-up a corporation instead. It's a better structure." I was shocked. Only I was shocked. My partner got everyone else on side before the meeting.

Good bye co-op v.1. They went onto form a little company I've dubbed "Black Hole Software." My partner made himself the president (big deal, Castro did the same). He invited me to join, if I bought $2000+ in, folded my IT business and basically swore subservience. He made the same requirement of the other members. Surly Guy was expected to quit his job at a big institution. He didn't. The other members were allowed to come in without their cash. Rules are made to be broken.

My Time With The Nazi Party

I did a website for this right of center political party. They were kind of hapless. They had lots of infighting going on-- like fighting over ashes. Anyways, after that "success", I was tapped to do a website for a national political party. They liked the U.S. model of government, they wanted to repeat it here. I was desperate for money, so my moral indignation took a back seat to generating grocery money.

The people I worked with were remote: one in Alberta, one was nearby but he was a shut-in (kind of like a Canadian version of Hunter S. Thompson-- no rifles allowed, traded camos for corduroy). The woman in Alberta beamed over the opportunity and gushed over me. I believe that respect is earned not given away. I felt she was setting us up for a fall but the need for grocery money loomed.

She told me to come up with a design. She pushed for plain, basic shapes and a really dry design. Okay, you're paying. She had this cartoon she fauned over. It was this image of Godforsaken Canada: a tired mule trying to drag a cart full of Canadian institutions: Medicare, Unemployment, Bilingualism, the Parlimentary system, the CBC, et cetera. Below that was an image of a rejuvenated mule trotting away from that cart. The message being that if we follow the American method, we would free ourselves of all this weight. I looked at it differently: if we abandon all these good things and walk away we'll be like the Americans. Whatever. It was stupid metaphor that was accurate for this political party.

She wanted something she could work with, like a content management system. What a loaded request. She was too stupid to turn on a computer, let alone use a CMS. She needed to talk with me via the phone because she didn't like email (usually a good warning sign). Fine. We scheduled a call. No show. I waited an hour. Nada. I called: bo answer. Seven hours later, she calls. It turns out she needs a little more flexible: that is, a 7 hr. window for a 1 hour meeting. We tried this a couple more times and it left her really frustrated. She wanted professional service for almost no money and absent of professional conduct. Good idea.

When we got to the subject of the donations/membership page, I got the full picture. I figured that they would have to follow Elections Canada rules for recording donations and memberships. I asked her about this and she said, "Well, we're not leaving ourselves hemmed in by all of these Elections Canada rules." I can understand: they probably should have been left on that mule cart. "We're not a party, per se, but an organization." Of course! I saw "The _____ Party of Canada" and mistook this political party for being an organization. Wow was I dumb.

At the end of it, she got someone else to do a redesign. She got rid of the CMS. She didn't pay me for the base amount agreed. Last time I checked, they and their website had disappeared. Seig Bye!

Clown said it best in Spawn. "Why is it God gets all the good ones, and I get stuck with the retards." Retards form and/or join fringe parties. Desperate retards do their web design.