Half a (night) Person

For 17 months now, I’ve been busy finding ways to bill clients for my time spent perusing cars and casual encounters on craigslist. I haven’t been that successful at it, but at a meeting that occurred last week, it was strongly recommended that we bill 80% of our time. This entry is being paid for by four clients.

I am not new to the work force so it baffles me that it still smarts to go to bed early on Sunday night, in hopes of being well rested for that period during the week when I check my fun bone on the shelf and dedicate my waking and sleeping in the pursuit of profits for the Man, and toys and bill payment for me.

I write this entry as I am installing Adobe CS3, which is large enough to allow me to guiltlessly fritter my time away at my desk. The privacy screen is serving me well today. No loose heads peeking over the barrier.

The end of a tape measure just poked my left arm. Sam was on the other end of it, happy to announce that we are exactly 86 inches apart. Duly noted good friend.

Last night I did not sleep well. I could blame the weather, I could also blame the AC unit near my head, my ill-fitting earplugs, my naked partner, my anxiety about not getting enough sleep, Harleys passing on the street. I could spend my life making a list of the things that keep me up at night, and still I have to show up to work, relatively on time.

I stopped at 7-eleven on the way in because I saw an ad on TV for the Five Hour Energy Drink. The ad purports a gentle high without the achy, ready-to-rob-a-Denny’s, Michael Douglass-starring-in-Falling Down feeling. The ad shows a happy woman, time is compressed, then the same sleepy, depressed woman, slumped over her task chair; the voice reassures that this will never happen again if you do shots of their product. It comes in an opaque, plastic crack vial in the shape reminiscent of whipits. You down it in one horrendous, enamel disintegrating shot. I winced so sharply that I swerved abruptly from my lane, nearly causing a Chips accident starting with the teetering gardening truck adjacent to me. It tasted like what I imagine to be sangria made of antifreeze and berries, with a coy kiss of nitric acid.

Of the many times I awoke in the night, I imagined the time. I try my very hardest not to look at the clock in the night because when I do, the doomsday machine in my sweet head fires itself up and establishes a countdown procedure that cannot be terminated. My brain escalates to Defcon 1, and all contingency plans as outlined in the BIG MANUAL OF WHEN SHIT HITS THE FAN are rehearsed to perfection. Although I did not see the time, the machine GATHERED the time, and therefore, I was busy all night pre-resolving my many different versions of Dr. Strangelove.

I am now three hours deep into the five-hour energy period. I do not feel jittery or agitated or even light-headed. I feel no more alert or smarter, still unable to make snap decisions. I don’t feel focused, but I’m WILLING to focus. I’m not clenching my jaw. All in all, I would say, I’m content. I wouldn’t call it the Friday feeling, it’s more like a prozac-based smoothing out of the edges. For the cost of a caramel macchiato, I have given myself a mild temporal lobotomy. This is actually quite lovely.

I will check in at 11:45 am, when my five hour period expires. I hope that my present state does not devolve into my own version of Flowers for Algernon.

…………

It is now 11:45 am. My jaw feels tight, but I have very little desire to drive the stake-bed truck through the front lobby. My weight remains the same. My day is humming along, I have not noticed any change in my internet usage, but I am not taking as many senseless trips out to the shop or to the parking lot to look at my car as a means of working out the jitters. I am not bleary-eyed, which is the biggest surprise. My mood is pleasant and semi-focused. Much time has passed and the woman in the ad is still seated upright with great posture and a winning smile, although she could use a little more water and some gum.

…………

2:45 pm. I am recovering from what felt like a shot of the dirtiest vicodin this side of Fontana. At roughly 12:20 pm, my eyes rolled back into my head and I could only move my feet in the kind of shaky shuffle seen in physical therapy after the patient wakes from a 12-year coma. Dawn drove Sam, Carrie, and me to Starbucks for lunch. I kept my sunglasses on for comfort, head hung low. Dawn suggested food and lots of water. Check. I eked out some words and they gave me some food and water. The woman in the ad looked as though she had been following the Dead one decade too long.

…………

It is the end of the work day. At one point an armored Sheriff’s bus carrying inmates crossed my path and I said my thanks as well as a thousand small prayers that I may never have cause to ride that bus. I was not close, but my post energy drink mind was so clouded that I could easily envision my arraignment.

It’s not the drink’s fault. Work just makes me sick. On vacation, I can happily thrive on 2 hours sleep per night indefinitely.

I am rat number 4,923,458,373 in this marathon. In a few minutes I will tidy my desk, clear my internet cache and browsing history, I will forget about the things I want to buy on ebay, and I will get into my car that is almost as old as me. It will be a long and slow drive back home. This “dream job” has afforded me a number of opportunities and freedoms and it definitely "corrodes my soul," as a certain poet said.

Today, I made someone else richer, and I am that much closer to the weekend. I don’t pretend to understand the point of this, and I’ve curtailed my attempts to wrap my mind around existence. I don’t know much. In seconds, I will be cruising down the highway. I will be fighting the urge to drive while sleeping by blasting Stretch Out and Wait. In between long stretches of road with my eyes barely open, I will look over the hood at the chrome headlight surrounds of my car - the car that I should have owned when I was 17. I will catch the glossy sun on the red paint and I will just howl loudly.

The woman in the ad is no longer at her dreaded task chair. She succesfully slogged through another self-medicated day, and she's ready for a glorious summer evening of staying up way past her bedtime.

Learning on the Job

The team moved into our new office, and as a courtesy to me, my desk was outfitted with a neck-height privacy screen. NECK HEIGHT!

What I have learned in three days of sitting here is that privacy screens actually invite intrusion. All who walk by now feel compelled to stop, divert from their intended path, and peer over my screen. Oh it looks like so much fun for the disembodied head to taunt me and recycle the most basic office humor. The head usually takes on a very animated voice, and then addresses the most obvious features of the landscape behind the screen. “Wow! That shirt is very green.” It seems even more fun for those more sophisticated to peer over the divide in mockery of fellow peerers.

A note about the screen. It is made of one-quarter inch thick, steel plate, to which a charcoal-colored, directional patina has been applied on both sides. It is securely anchored to the ground by a 2-inch angle iron cleat, with four studs epoxied into the concrete floor. It is also anchored into the desk with four lag bolts into a similar cleat. When the jihand makes its way to this zip code, I will make sure to stand behind this screen, cradling a litter of kittens. It is four feet wide, while my desk is seven feet wide. It does not start from the wall the way my desk starts from the wall, rather it floats three feet away from the wall. It is this three-foot gap that caused me concern in the first place. As it stood, the bullet proof screen effectively cut me off from the rest of my team, but allowed passers by on the way to the copier, the restroom, the partner’s offices, the atrium, the front desk, the supply closet, anyone who wanted – and all did, to wave to me, make a finger as gun shape with point and click gesture, as they passed. “Heeey 853! How you doin? Workin hard or hardly workin? Come on, smile man!”

So the person in charge of this design fuck up rectified the situation by filling that gap with a piece of frosted lexan, taped only to the edge of the metal screen, as a temporary measure. It butts against the wall, but is not fastened to the wall. It more flirts with the wall. As long as no one touches, breathes, or waves hello in the direction of this gap filler, I can have privacy up to someone else’s neck.

I have tried various solutions, including extending the height of the lexan barrier, but it seems that greater measures invite greater intrusion. Just to be clear, I can't prevent the intrusion; and if that's the case I don’t want to see only the head.

This barrier should be revised, but not removed. If removed, I will be able to see everyone entering and exiting the restroom, and thus will become the restroom monitor. The person who currently bears that designation is Sam, who sits to the left of me. Yesterday, Sam and I heard sounds from the restroom that could only be described as the Slaughtering of the Giant Jello Filled Whoopie Cushion Man. I did not see who it was. Sam did and has since come to regret it.

I have considered pigeon spikes, or applying a layer of poop to the top of the divider. I’m thinking about a scarecrow too. I have spoken with the power broker of design who brought me such an amenity. He suggested that a further improvement would be phased in – date TBD.

Until TBD, I will have to employ such techniques as counting backwards silently while smiling, or feigning autism. More learning opportunities in the area of interpersonal skills are afoot.

This is office life. As I peed, or did something like that, which caused me to be alone with my thoughts, a grand marquis flashed before my eyes, the letters spelling the phrase “Is this what you wanted?”

I caught a reflection of just my frowning face in the mirror. I looked back at myself and egged, "Come on, smile man!"