Driving
to and from work has been really depressing lately. The number of people
cutting me off while driving the Spaulding Turnpike seems to be on the rise.
People driving crazy fast. People passing me so they can ride the bumper of the
car I’d been following for the last five minutes. I feel like those people find
me lacking in a Darwin on the Highway kind of way.
Hater: You weren't going
fast enough!
Me: Hey! I was pacing
the guy ahead of me. There’s a line of ten cars ahead of him. Now you’re ahead
of me. Awesome! You’ll get to the toll both 16 seconds before I do!
Hater: Seriously, this
happened to you before? You timed it?
Me: Admittedly not my
proudest moment.
Hater: Whatever, loser! I’m
still ahead of you now!
It’s
disappointing. It feels like I’m living in one of those dystopian sci-fi
futures where this cult of highly judgmental assholes in triangular art deco
hats has decided the planet must be washed clean of all human life. You want to
argue that human beings are worth saving – There’s
art and music and pets and… love! – but then you drive to work on the
Spaulding Turnpike and you think, ‘You
know, the end of the world is like a total bummer but that guy in the
triangular art deco hat might actually know what he’s talking about.’
I
try to distract myself with music, a CD or a radio station. I find myself
wondering things like, “How was ‘Horse with No Name’ ever a hit?” Or, “Can I
blame America for the Dave Matthews Band?” Probably not. They’re really not
that much alike. They’re not anything alike. But someone definitely has to pay
for the Dave Matthews Band. I understand this to be an irrational position. All
my friends at work love the Dave Matthews Band. They've gone to their concerts.
They have posters. A small data sample to be sure but still like 100% of those
responding. Seriously, though; ‘cause there ain’t
no one for to give you no pain? La la, la, la la, la la, la? Can we admit
to a time when this was cool? Because that happened.
And
then I’m at work.
I
don’t expect to be happy at work. I expect boredom, anxiety, silent but
seething frustration, cynicism wrapped in sarcasm, lying to myself and others,
brief periods of lost time when I contemplate reverse spin kicking co-workers in
the head when they don’t refill the printer when it runs out of paper, awakening
to the reality of actually having to go to Kung Fu classes long enough –
Months? Years? – in order to be able to execute a reverse spin kick capable of
delivering the justice they so richly deserve. I reserve my fantasies of
telekinetic powers for those of my co-workers who gather near my desk for no
apparent reason and laugh too loudly about something I didn’t really hear but really
wasn’t that funny. You gave your dog some
peanut butter and posted a video of it on YouTube? Hilarious! I look at
them with a smile, seemingly bemused by their rapier wit while imagining the
laser beams of unimaginable power emanating from my eyes. Can’t you all see that you’re disturbing my boredom, anxiety and silent
but seething frustration? I’m trying to get some work done here! After
three hours of contemplating which email notes I will respond to, which I will
mark as read without reading, and which I will delete without reading, it’s
time for lunch. It just sneaks up on you.
I
really hate the people who schedule meetings to start at 1:00pm. What if I lose
track of time staring at my email inbox and l get to lunch late? But I don’t
hate those people as much as I hate the people who come by my desk after 4:30 and ask me if I've got a
minute. First of all, I hate them because they’re lying about that minute. They
should ask me if I've got 45 minutes but they don’t. Second, I hate them
because they make me hate myself. I know they don’t literally mean one minute
and yet I answer them on the basis of this literal interpretation of the
question. Fifteen minutes later, while they’re droning on about the treasury
disbursement utility and my mind is wandering, wondering what the tall girl’s
name in accounting is or whether I have any reasonable chance of winning
PowerBall or what exactly was it that happened to the Patriots in the second
half of the AFC Championship, I come to the realization that I’ve lost the narrative thread of my
co-worker’s parable of the treasury disbursement utility and know I should’ve
said something like, “Can we catch up in the morning? I need to pick up some
clothes at the dry cleaners and they close at 5:00pm.”
Given
my lack of any discernible fashion sense and my love for three button pullovers
and khakis, the dry cleaners story would be recognized immediately for the lie
it is, but it’s a soft lie, a lie that says, “I respect you enough not to tell
you right to your face, in front of the people we work with and who gossip
about and judge us every day, ‘No, I can’t spare a minute of my miserable,
meaningless life for you. Every minute of my quietly desperate workaday world
is more important than you. Leave immediately and return to whatever
dung-filled, festering hole from whence you sprang and never again come to my
desk at 4:30pm unless you want me to press my fist into your face at a high
rate of speed, leaving a mark.’”
Depending
on gender, my workplace fantasies generally revolve around sex or fisticuffs.
Mostly fisticuffs. Other than the tall girl in accounting there aren’t that
many women in my place of work I’d actually want to see in lingerie and our network filters block internet sites that feature supermodels in lingerie. On the
other hand, there are plenty of people I would punch in the face. Or kick in
the face. You know, pending months or years of training in the martial arts, of course.
Finally,
I’m on my way home, wondering if it’s cool or creepy that I like Taylor Swift
and why anybody should be in that much of a hurry to get to Pizza Hut.
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