Dignity.
Straight out of my first university I received an offer I couldn't refuse - an offer to work in a big scary company called Caterpillar. Yes, the one with the cute yellow machines.
Later on I realized that the offer was most easy to refuse and that would've been the best thing to do, but what's done is done. For the first few months I tried to make myself believe that working in an international company is nothing compared to working for Russians. Alas, the biggest difference rested in the amount of restrooms per office.
I was surrounded by a bunch of stereotypical office types: a tight-ass fat angry boss with a mustache who makes you his work and cuts down business trips, a party dude snapping fingers through the day and making awful internet jokes, a clinically retarded blonde, who had no control over any language as well as her motor skills and finally an overweight Ukrainian goth nazi which is quite enough to be despised. To top it all up I had to sit next to the HR department; 5 aging bimbos discussing their kids, make-up and pop stars all day. Which is explainable, since HR's very existence is entirely worthless to suck out some more funds from the resources, but hearing their horse laughter through the whole week was more painful than listening to Merzbow live.
Soon enough I started hating everything about my job, I had to work for almost everyone in the office and since I was the only person who knew more than one language, I had to do thousands of translations, because our boss wouldn't afford another fancy vacation if we hired an interpreter. The peak of his genuinely Russian approach was during winter holidays of 2007. Each department had to gather some funds for entertainment, but our dear boss decided to make his employees dress up, sing and dance for the public.
"Enough is enough, they're not going to fire you, they're not raising the pay for extra work, why strain yourself anyway?" - I thought to myself and started coming in a couple of hours late and leaving around 5pm. I'm pretty sure I downloaded most of the internet at my work, at least my goth nazi colleague couldn't get enough of coming up and shouting "ooooh, what is it you're downloading hyuk hyuk?"
Sooner or later I realized that I can't go on like this and the whole misery is eating me alive. That's when I found AAU and decided to make a switch.
After being accepted I started my full-frontal attack on Caterpillar; 3-4 hours workday, gigabytes of downloads, consuming all the birthday cakes I could find, playing pranks on other office dwellers and finally booking the worst hotel I could find for the blonde.
As the heat turned up I took a 3-week paid vacation. I spent it drawing and preparing for my trip. As I came back with a 2-day delay my boss was happy as a puppy first taken outside on a bright spring afternoon. "Roman, I think we need to talk" - he told me with a satanic grin. "Can I kindly spare you the effort and quit before you fire me?" - I asked watching his smile fade away. He was clearly disappointed, he expected me to be humiliated begging on my knees for a second chance. God, that felt good.