Monday, March 31, 2008

That's the sound of the men, working on the chain...ga-a-ang.

I had been at my new job for almost a month when I confided to my friend Erin that although I was very very important at my place of business, I was finding myself with...Down time. Lots and lots of down time. I was spending (well over) half of my day staring at the computer screen, reading emails 20 times over, Googling this and that, trying to keep things work related but drifting occasionally.

So I says to Erin, "Dude. I'm thinking I'm gonna ask Marcy what I should do when I don't have anything else to do"


And she says "Dude, don't say that!" (like she knows everything.)

And I'm like "Oh. I didn't realize"

And she goes "Yeah man, everyone has downtime. That's the shit of work."
And up until that very moment I had never thought about it in that light. In fact I thought that as a good American capitalist, the work day is not a work day unless I was as amped as Barry Bonds, gripping onto the edge my desk enslaved with all of the other lemmings yelling BUY SELL BUY SELL BUY BUY SELL SELL until the big whistle on the top of the building signals the day is over. At which time my colleagues and I would pick up our metal lunch boxes, throw our coats over our shoulders and walk in a single file line out the door avoiding eye contact and taking turns to stamp our time cards as the monotony of the world bares down on us.