A Day in the Life Of an Office Grunt

5/23/06




7:54 a.m. -- Arrive at work. I'm not yet disillusioned enough to dread the yawning stretch of hours between now and when I can sprint for the parking lot like a gazelle with a lioness on her heels.


7:57 a.m. -- I dread the yawning stretch of hours between now and when I can sprint for the parking lot.


7:58 a.m. -- Read new posts and some archives from Man vs. Clown. Pulled up a work intranet page, just in case anyone comes by and notices I'm "easing into" my business day.


8:25 a.m. -- Actually start work, pull up the NPR website and listen to Morning Edition while trying not to fall asleep as I enter the Point-&-Click Hell which is my job


9:15 a.m. -- Contemplate eating what I brought for lunch. Not really because I'm hungry, but because it would distract my brain, which is trying to escape from my right ear in protest for the intellectual dead-zone of my vocation. I end up purchasing a bag of pretzels from the vending machine.

Fiddle with the monitor wire behind my computer for 5 minutes because, for over 2 years now, it occasionally loosens spontaneously and renders my screen the color of diseased urine. My distaste for speaking to other humans prevents me from simply asking IT for a new cord.


10:00 a.m. -- Break time. 15 minutes. I go outside and smoke half a cigarette (I'm trying to quit or at least cut down, and this pathetic other truncated stump of a butt will be combusted after lunch) and read my book (Stephen King's IT) desperately hoping this action is enough to deter the other smokers from speaking to me.


10:34 a.m. -- Return to work after a brief, twenty-minute foray into searching for my own name on Google. Gaze reproachfully at the ever-increasing stack of work sent to me from the Collections Department. Decide to ignore it for another day.

Start listening to an occasionally amusing but largely unimpressive audiobook called Fletch Reflected.


10:47 a.m. -- In a link to the blog A Capital Idea (from Peter Lynn's blog, Man vs. Clown) I found this, which is an example of how often news publications accidentally print "pubic" instead of "public." It pretty much goes without saying I was horrified from an editing standpoint and delighted from the juvenile part of me that still thinks farts and penises are funny.


11:10 a.m. -- Briefly ponder whether I could rig the microwaves in the break room to cook everything outside of them while leaving whatever's inside undisturbed sort of like that chamber in the Fortress of Solitude from Superman II.

This thought leads to a cascade of potential practical jokes I can play on coworkers, one of which is giving a sleeve of Oreos, with the cream filling in one of them carefully replaced with toothpaste, to my more corpulent peers.


11:32 a.m. -- The woman next to me has been talking about flip-flops for five minutes. I sort of want to put a screwdriver in my eye. Oh crap, she just stopped talking about footwear and has now started narrating her actions: "Okay, find that check, lets see, $23.45 plus . . ."


Noon -- Lunchtime. Tortilla chip and almond-encrusted Salmon with garlic-broiled cauliflower. Book again employed as conversation deterrent in the lunchroom.

What is it about Paula Dean (invariably on the TV in the lunchroom) that these middle-aged women find so addicting? If I have to hear one more shitty joke about "a stick of buttuh," I'm going to put a squirrel in someone.


12:25 p.m. -- Came back from lunch and, in the process of setting down my rapidly-fraying lunch coolie thing, spilled the entire cup of water I'd been carrying all over my desk and chair. I am an insufferable moron.


12:28 p.m. -- Desk dried (and much cleaner, wow!) but I'm a little sad that it took my entire cache of Subway napkins Id been accumulating in my filing cabinet for the past year.

Chair fundamentally un-dryable; surreptitiously replaced it with identical model from coworker's cubicle. Should the fact that "her chair" is now mysteriously covered in several stains from the various foodstuffs I eat at my desk fail to tip her off, she's in for a very wet, very angry ass. I giggle maniacally and wring my hands like a cartoon villain.


1:24 p.m. -- The coworker from whom I pilfered the chair has returned and curiously not mentioned anything. Hypothesis: Either the chair has, infuriatingly, already dried, or she always has a preternaturally moist ass. I like the sort of frightening implications of the latter.


2:01 p.m. -- Flirt with the idea of masturbating in the bathroom, driven by the fact that I've inadvertently gotten an erection that's being rather stubborn about going away. Maybe I'm sitting improperly. Or maybe I should get my hand out of my pants.


2:36 p.m. -- After thirty minutes of nodding off involuntarily, I finally break down and procure a cup of coffee. Vile stuff, coffee. Like hot, dirty river water. I don't know whether it's the caffeine or the horrific taste which keeps me awake.


2:59 p.m. -- A sort of severe, twisting cramp like a racheting socket wrench seizes my guts. I briefly flirt with the idea that sometime in the night and alien rammed its ovipositor down my throat and laid eggs in my belly.


3:00 p.m. -- Cramp gone. Break time. Another half a smoke. Gads, man was not meant to live like this. Can't decide whether I'm pathetic because I can't just give the goddamn things up, or because I'm actually trying to.


4:12 p.m. -- I find that I'm annoyed with myself because this miserable, semi-amusing time-stamp list is what I'm passing off as a blog entry.


4:30 p.m. -- Sprint for the parking lot like a fat kid chased by cannibals. Stalwartly refuse to succumb to Pavlovian training by not lighting a cigarette for the drive home.