The Office Is Not For Sleeping

When my boss asked me if I wanted to be recruited to the office rather than stay "out in the field" I tried to discourage him saying something like,
"Are you sure? Because I'm a really slow learner and I'm really, really bad with computers. I can't convey to you just how unimpressive I will be at this job."

But somehow he still wanted me, even though I thought it was a really bad idea. He must've been really desperate or maybe he just wanted someone to make him look like a harder worker by comparison. As you can see from the illustration above, I'm prone to sleeping on the desk.

So now I'm an "office chump", I sit on my arse until its numb and drink lots of liquids so I have an excuse to walk across the hall and visit the toilet, my favourite place. I was never asked to wear office attire so I don't, because quite frankly I'm not into suit jackets and ugly shoes. The other day I thought my casual clothes fling was finally up when my boss stopped me, pointed at my shoes and laughed. Gold Onitsuko Tigers, with velcro straps, so maybe not my most subtle pair of shoes. "They're ghetto fabulous!" he yelped, beaming. Now whenever he sees my garish sneakers he gets just a bit happier. Office attire has not since crossed my mind.

Although I am technically working in the office; I have a desk (isolated from everyone else, perhaps for my own good) and a swivel chair, I just don't really feel like I belong. It's like I'm visiting my Dad at work everytime I go in, except my Dad's not there, just a bunch of socially retarded 20-40 somethings who can't make eye contact and decorate their desks with lots of stupid crap.

There's no stupid crap at my desk, in fact there is even less stuff since I've "moved in" because I keep stealing everything. I opened the desk drawers to find a goldmine of stationary, all ripe for the taking. It started as the odd pen or highlighter but now my little habit has morphed into a full blown addiction. I snoop around for anything I can find, suddenly everything looks steal-able, four different types of post-it notes, all sorts of writing implements and one of those things that stamps the date on things. You don't even wanna know how excited I got when I found the postage-paid envelopes. I don't even send letters, I have nothing to send, nothing!

Lunch time is the worst time in the office because all the cubicle zombies come out and wander around. Seeing as I live to avoid these people I usually just make a quick dash for the exit. Sometimes though I bring my lunch in, like every fucking other chump, and I have to wait in the dreaded kitchen line. Two microwaves, many chumps, lots of standing near others under fluorescent kitchen lights and trying not to scratch some lady's eyes out when she heats her soup up for 27 minutes. The lunch table is littered with the daily papers and unfortunately the source of many debates about the the "hot topics" of the day. My desk, only a couple of walls away from the lunch room is subjected to this vocal pollution every lunch hour. Some overweight 45 year old ranting about some sensationalist story to some other macho chump through a mouthful of left overs. Headphones and mp3 are my best friends.

One of the few perks of office life is the free coffee, I had a great system where I would eat like a pig, then sedated into a food coma I would drug myself with caffeine until the energy balance was restored. Apart from the obvious health risks of this routine I was starting to become immune to coffee. While the first week I would be crawling up the walls with caffeine induced efficiency/paranoia/irritability, now a humble double dose leaves me straight. I know, I know drugs are for the weekend but really, anyone who has worked in an office will know, the work is much better approached from an altered state of consciousness. Perhaps I'll get into that glass of wine with lunch thing that grown ups do. These days my coffee mug looks like a pub toilet, stained with the dregs of many a drink.

As if that isn't enough to make you want to staple your face to the notice board, everyday I get group emails abusing me in capitalised red font because someone didn't wash their teaspoon in the kitchen. Often this abuse is in rhyming form, truly horrific. To take my mind off it all I try and exploit their internet connection. Unfortunately but not surprisingly everything is filtered, even Beyond Blue, which I tried to look up shortly before I attempted to cut myself open with a bulldog clip. When I looked up my favourite web toon Cyanide and Happiness I got a nice little blue and white message on the screen "The Websense category "tasteless" is filtered." Ha, well thats right, I am tasteless. I have something for the suggestion box...more cowbell.