So, here I am again, woken at 3 AM in the morning by the narcissists that run the company that employs me. They’ve tied my compensation to acquiescence to their industrial ambitions, and won’t take “no” for an answer.

When my boss told me two months ago that he wanted me out of the company, I memorialized the conversation, and ended up in a scrum that included the owner and the HR manager. Offered control of the agenda, I chose compensation as the topic. At one point, I asked the owner whether he could characterize the value that I brought to the company. He stammered, and then admitted, “Well, perhaps I know more about other parts of the company that I know about your area.”

He has no idea what my contribution is worth, and interprets his ability over nine years to avoid that understanding not as a testament to my value and virtue, but as a reason to ignore them. In fact, my boss is his fair-haired child, a man that the owner sees as driven and strong enough to ensure success in the competitive world of commerce.

To clarify the emotional context that drove my concerns, I shared that my father had passed two years ago, and that I had been living in proximity to my mother in Westlake Village until rent increases had forced me to move away. The owner interrupted me, stating that others had come to him with family issues to demand higher pay, and he had the same response for me: my family issues were my problem. He had a “family” of more than a hundred employees to consider.

To demonstrate his sacrifice, he tendered a letter of offer for his business. He said that he didn’t really need it any more, and I was tempted to tear the envelope in two. My family is eight billion people. The mind that I occupy took three billion years to create, and will survive long after the sun has annihilated the earth and with it all material evidence of human accomplishment.

Our mind is worth more than his company. It is worth more than all the businesses in the world. There is no price sufficient to purchase a billet of entry. The qualifications for entry are the compassion, tenderness, and awe that guide those responsible enough to walk in the temple of the Most High without corrupting his Creation.

Those aren’t typical in those unable to recognize and honor virtue when they see it. I shouldn’t have to think twice about being close enough to support my mother. I shouldn’t have to think twice about flying out to Texas to support the survivors of our most recent mass shooting. If they recognized that, the executive team at my company would be bending over backwards to garner the benefits of awareness among those that receive my love that “I work at Advanced Motion Controls in Camarillo, California.”