Work Truths
When things stop mattering, you drive in the right lane no matter how far you have to go. The car in front of me is a land yacht and has an obvious handicapped parking permit hanging awkwardly oblong from the rear view. It used to be a screaming beacon of, "DO NOT FOLLOW ME!" followed by a quick swerve and acceleration in the next lane. It's 9:23am and I'm late for work. Late is a relative term. Work is becoming a relative term too.Time Distortion
When you do nothing all day, time changes. It's an amazing property that not even Einstein managed to identify and explain correctly. There's the whole two minutes two hours hot stove hot girl quote to capture perception of time distortion, but what he neglected to mention is that doing nothing all day stretches time and also makes you feel like you're stretched too. Remember back in the day of Shrinky Dinks, there were also those heavy paper stock books with a vinyl family in the middle insert? You could peel them off and stick them in different waxy scenarios on each page. And when you got bored playing with your welfare version of a dollhouse, it was always fun to pull in both dimensions to make a stretched out funhouse mirror version of the character. I'm fat, I'm wide, but only two dimensionally. When I sit on my chair at work for eight full hours, I don't sit, I flatten out and conform. I am one with the chair. My beige suit blends into the noncommittal neutral furniture and carpet. I am a floating flattened head.
Doing Nothing, Dissected
I hate when people ask me, "What do you do?" It's such a simple, generic small talk conversation starter. When you do nothing all day, it's a sensitive subject. Do you really think I want to be doing nothing all day? Believe it or not, it is very difficult to do nothing all day though most people think of that as a dream job. There's a big difference between doing nothing by choice, versus being required to be in an office all day to be accessible, with no work to do. See, I'm pretty sure you think "doing nothing" translates into "doing whatever you want" but you must remember that I am still AT WORK, which unfortunately draws a very thick black boundary around what you can and cannot do while "doing nothing". Also, working in a classified environment means no fun gadgets, so no electronics for amusement. And definitely no portable gaming systems. It's often hard to remember that I get paid for "doing nothing", so most of the time, having to come in wearing business casual garb or worse yet, a suit, becomes highly offensive. It's a mockery. Though, one perk about working in this line of business is that it's acceptable to say something like, "I'm sorry, I can't really discuss it. It's classified." You'll notice that if you do run into someone in my line of business, they will often use that line. Then you will think that they're an overly self important asshole, or simply a pompous prick. I assure you, they are neither. It's easier to say "It's classified" rather than "I do nothing all day".
posted by v @ 5:29 PM
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