On the clock.
So … my job has an interesting designation for me, I am an hourly part-time employee, five days a week and 7 hours a day. If you’re a sharp one, you’ll know this comes out to 35 hours a week. Beyond that, I am expected to sit in the office from 10 to 6, each day, which comes out to 8 hours .. so how does this California math work out?
Well, lunch is unpaid. So, lunch then, should take an hour. Usually this isn’t a problem, now, it’s about to be a big one. I decided to start packing 4/5 of all lunches, because I’m going to save up money from this job, and travel, and that doesn’t happen as easily when I’m leaking change all over 42nd street on the way to a bougie deli full of tourists and neo-cons.
But bringing a lunch suddenly gives me a ton of time. There is no time expense. I open my desk drawer and like that, lunch is prepared. I’ve been watching TV online during lunch for the past lunches, I guess I could go into our lunchroom, but for the same reasons that a high school lunchroom is a harrowing experience, so is my company’s. I could do the chill table by myself thing, but not today. Today I am sick, and when I am sick, I look a little too much like the unabomber.
I could just do work, but that seems foolish. I feel like a douche reporting “and fifteen minutes” on my time sheet, and would feel even worse doing work for free (unheard of!). Volunteerism should go to the children, to the bums, and to the mentally deficient. But not to companies planted firmly in the black. So I putzed around, I urinated twice, I bought coffee, and then I wrote a blog.
January 10th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Our company’s lunch room is just big enough that there are too many people to have one big conversation together, yet not big enough that two people can talk at the same time without it being wildly distracting. Awkwardness usually ensues. I’ve contemplated going down to the big food court to try to make friends with Boston, but really, who has the energy?