On my way inside, I stop in the kitchen/break room to put my salad for lunch in the fridge. I overhear two building personnel talking about ongoing unresolved issues they’re still dealing with from the move to this new space. At one point I hear them say “okay, well let’s plan on going to that plan when the other plan doesn’t pan out…” and I once again think to myself, God Dammit.
In the bathroom later, I walk in and some guys are in there talking. At the urinal, at the sink, and they’re having some kind of fraternity induced khaki pants convention bro love fest. Or maybe it’s just their morning chatter. Whatever. You don’t fucking talk in the men’s room. Period. If you want conversation while you pee, go use the women’s. Seriously.
It’s 8:48am.
I’ve been instructed to smile. Why? No reason given, except that she’ll start calling me ‘grumpy’ if I don’t. I told her I have a license to not smile before 9 am. But maybe I don’t, at least not without being ostracized. So here I sit in my cubicle, forced to keep my ever-increasing fury to myself, facing lovely windows to the outside, but with my back to an aisle where anyone can walk down and see everything I’m doing.
God. Dammit.
Curse this need I have to give people the benefit of the doubt, to make allowances for those different from myself. Plenty of people have no problem with this modern office culture, and even if they do have a problem with it, they know all too well that there isn’t anything they can do to change it and that attempting to change it gets one labelled a trouble maker, a rabble rouser, a “problem”. Oh yes that guy, I know the one you mean he’s nice enough but he’s always complaining about being treated like cattle instead of a human so we all just pretty much leave him alone and try not to upset him but you know he’s sensitive!
Give those gossiping bitches some gum to chew, a pair of pom-poms, and send them back to the high school their psyches are still trapped in.
The ergonomic furniture guy comes around to show me how to use my new chair. He does so by way of changing all the settings that I had already worked so hard to get right. Mother. Fucker. But he wants to make sure I know how to use all the different levers. “We want to fit the chair to you and not the other way around.” Yeah, because a flimsy piece of plastic that happens to be adjustable in sixteen useless ways definitely makes up for the fact that I work with my dick hanging out for all to see.
It’s Thursday. I don’t have a case of the Mondays, I have a case of the everydays.
ErgoMan leaves, but not before reminding me to sit all the way back in my chair. I tell him I sit at the front of my chair. He says, well, we’ll see what we can do to fix that. Because apparently I’m not even allowed to sit in my chair what way’s comfortable for me without being harassed for it. Maybe I should inflate a smiling, pose-able, blowup doll who never needs to shit and just stick him in place at my desk. I bet they promote him within a week.
The stillness outside draws my eyes. I look out the windows and see trees in fall colors—red, gold, yellow, and ever some green. An empty field. Train tracks. The freeway with cars and trucks and busses moving by. Buildings in the distance. The sky is blue, blankets of clouds with wispy tendrils. And in here the air conditioning blows, keeping the building space at a pre-determined optimal temperature that’s just a little too cold.
What have we done to ourselves?
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