employablog

So, being in an office means, a lot of the time, being bored.

Being bored is a two-edged mistress, it heightens and dulls the senses all at once. So while you may drift in and out of conversation or miss an end parentheses here and there, you also get a knack for noting the most minute minutia.

One thing that I particularly notice is people’s bathroom schedules, and not just that, but their habits. I’m not snooping around like Ramona Quimby, this is just what happens when my method for not falling asleep at my desk is to go take a walk. And because aimlessly wandering through a bunch of semi-cubicles is, well, pathetic, I force a trip to the bathroom.

Here’s how my ‘ol office goes to the bathroom:

CEO guy has the same pee schedule as me, so does Janitor guy. Neither are afraid to talk to you in the bathroom.

Eccentric math guy only uses the handicapped stall (larger, more luxurious) for all his business, and washes his hands in each sink at least once before leaving. There are five sinks total, but the fifth sink is actually in the handicapped stall, and has no soap. The handicapped stall’s sink then is like a preliminary rinse before moving through the main four sinks. The last two sinks are push handles rather than turn handles, so they give shorter bursts of water. These are how he finishes when he has his druthers.

Youth-marketing guy has chronic diarrhea, and is a grunter.

Foreign-market guy continues hallway conversations into the adjacent urinal. He is as foreign as the markets he reaches.

Flamboyant HR guy doesn’t understand that his office spot is in-between my desk and urination, and holds long painful conversations, and I hold painfully contain sweet release, wishing that I hadn’t downed two Nalgenes with the specific goal of leaving my desk for the bathroom.

Executive-who-looks-like-an-absentee-father-from-an-’80s-Disney-movie Guy has poor Kidney — ureter communication. It takes him a while to get going.

This is just the beginning of the taste of the fruits of 6 months of office labor.

School’s Work’s out for summer!

Yesterday, just a little past six I walked away from my first and last office job ever. My six-month amble through rush-hour commuting, fabric cubicle walls, beady fluorescent lighting and high-school office cliquery is over, and it wasn’t so bad.

But my life is on a different road, and will have so much more.

During my last two weeks I’d get a lot of,

“I can’t believe you’re leaving us,” and “Oh! We’ll miss you! Who said you could leave?!”

It’s nice to feel wanted and loved, but I had no idea what to do with these. I was leaving, and elated, so, it wasn’t really that bittersweet, more along the lines of sweet. There is something grating and awful about moving the same way as all of humanity every day. We all get on the subway to arrive at work between 9 and 10 in the morning. Then we all pile out to the same places for lunch between noon and 1:30 in the afternoon. Then we all go home at the same damn time, after which we all go to the gym and then the grocery store.

Rush hour is nothing new. I understand why it exists, and God bless Chris Tucker. But this is more — it goes beyond the motions to and from the office, it reaches into everything. I can wear little skull earrings all I want, but I felt like my individuality was starting to crumble away.

And that is why I’m a quitter, at least in terms of this J O B. Now I’m off the schedule and finally on to the last leg of the first next leg of my track.

So, thank you work, you made this year possible, funded my trip to Peru and helped me, well, survive.

Smell ya later work, next time we meet I’ll have a scalpel.