Sometimes it feels like I'm suffocating at work. The cubicle walls feel like they're closing in. Every piece of paper that comes across my desk, every question I answer, and every correction I make feels like I'm slamming home more nails into my own coffin.
Example:
Mechanic: "This paperwork is wrong. I could eat a bowel of alphabet soup and vomit better technical direction than this."
Me (after looking at the paperwork): "This the twentieth time we've done this job this week. I should be able to yell out the window, 'Do another one,' and you should be able to do it. Besides, it's the same paper you worked to the other nineteen times.'"
Mechanic (looking sullen): "It's wrong. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it."
Me (looking very, very tired): "Right. I'll fix that for you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish beating my head against my desk."
That all sounds terribly morbid, but it's how it feels sometimes. On those days, I want to get away from it all. I want to step out from underneath the mountain of technical documents I'm supposed to have memorized to do my job, step away from that and... I don't know... become a poet or a professional yo-yo master or something.
Then reality sets in and I realize that my poetry is awful and my yo-yo skills, while impressive to four-year-olds the world over, are not near good enough to warrant the amazing $5.25 an hour I'm sure yo-yo masters make.
Then I think, hey, I could write for a living. Yeah, that's the life for me. Spending hours and hours each day staring at a glowing box in my office at home, eyes bloodshot, stomach slowly widening due to my inactivity, hands maniacally typing away. I would, of course, begin talking to the office equipment. You have to talk to someone, and everyone else would be at work. But not my stapler. Oh no, my stapler would never desert me. Not after all we've been through.
At this point, I usually decide that being an engineer isn't so bad after all. There are even times when I like it. Not all the time. Not today, for instance. Or this week for that matter. But I'm pretty sure that at one point in my career, I actually liked doing this.
On second thought... does anyone want to buy any bad poetry? What about a yo-yo show? I can almost pull off "walking the dog."
Example:
Mechanic: "This paperwork is wrong. I could eat a bowel of alphabet soup and vomit better technical direction than this."
Me (after looking at the paperwork): "This the twentieth time we've done this job this week. I should be able to yell out the window, 'Do another one,' and you should be able to do it. Besides, it's the same paper you worked to the other nineteen times.'"
Mechanic (looking sullen): "It's wrong. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it."
Me (looking very, very tired): "Right. I'll fix that for you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish beating my head against my desk."
That all sounds terribly morbid, but it's how it feels sometimes. On those days, I want to get away from it all. I want to step out from underneath the mountain of technical documents I'm supposed to have memorized to do my job, step away from that and... I don't know... become a poet or a professional yo-yo master or something.
Then reality sets in and I realize that my poetry is awful and my yo-yo skills, while impressive to four-year-olds the world over, are not near good enough to warrant the amazing $5.25 an hour I'm sure yo-yo masters make.
Then I think, hey, I could write for a living. Yeah, that's the life for me. Spending hours and hours each day staring at a glowing box in my office at home, eyes bloodshot, stomach slowly widening due to my inactivity, hands maniacally typing away. I would, of course, begin talking to the office equipment. You have to talk to someone, and everyone else would be at work. But not my stapler. Oh no, my stapler would never desert me. Not after all we've been through.
At this point, I usually decide that being an engineer isn't so bad after all. There are even times when I like it. Not all the time. Not today, for instance. Or this week for that matter. But I'm pretty sure that at one point in my career, I actually liked doing this.
On second thought... does anyone want to buy any bad poetry? What about a yo-yo show? I can almost pull off "walking the dog."
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