Took me several years past school just to get used to the ordinary level of dishonesty and scumminess that's common to pretty much all business, let alone the worse stuff. Sometimes I think my parents (and, to be fair, children's media) messed up by giving me such a keen sense of right and wrong. Enough otherwise-decent people (like, almost all of them) seem to just look at you like there's something wrong with you when you bring this stuff up that I caved, since the alternative seemed to be becoming a living-off-the-land recluse, or a monk or something.

But I still hate it. Still feel like I'm kind of ruined in some sense for not going the really, really hard route to avoid it all. Every day. Some jobs more than others, but even at the best I sometimes go home catching whiffs of something that make me think my soul must have stepped in some dog shit on the way.