Garbage

I followed a garbage truck the entire way home from work, which pretty much followed the theme of the day.

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Motion Sensors

Sometimes when I walk into the ladies room the motion sensor lights don't turn on. It's then that I assume I must've died of boredom.

The Matter to my Antimatter

This is a post from I Love My Job, a blog written by my polar opposite - somebody who calls herself an eternal optimist.  I'm pretty sure that if the two of us ever came into contact with each other there would be total annihilation of the universe.  In any case, while this post refers to a job search, I thought it was a nice general thought about working toward any goal, and I will try my best to keep it in mind.

"We can learn from past failures and mistakes, be we shouldn't get stuck there. We can keep future goals in mind, but we shouldn't get stuck there, either. The only way to reach our potential is to focus on what we must do now - this moment, this day - to perform effectively and win." - Joe Torre

Both are more like a marathon than a sprint - with a 162 game season, baseball is a great analogy for the numbers game that IS the current job search. No team is ever going to win every game, but they need to play them all. 

You may only care about crossing home plate, but you only get to touch home if you touch first, second and third base first.

A winning job search strategy: learn from your mistakes so that you don't repeat them, keep your eye on your ultimate goal, but touch them all - play to win every game every day.

Printer

I just cursed the person who sent the really long, slow, annoying print job to our shared printer. Then I remembered that it was me about 15 minutes ago.

The Non-Working Lunch

The best part of the day, aside from when you get to leave to go home, is when you get to leave to go to lunch. Bosses often try to ruin this by scheduling lunch meetings, or as they call it “a working lunch.” A working lunch means that instead of scarfing Chipotle, you're choking down something from a place called Apple Spice Junction and surrounded by pit stains. Bosses don't mind working through lunch because a) they are able to survive on a diet of cocaine and energy drinks, and b) they have no life. Never do you run into your boss at Starbucks reading a book or updating his Facebook status. If bosses had Facebook statuses they would say, “Having a working lunch.”

For the rest of us, that one hour plus round trip drive time allows us to clear our minds of corporate bile and do a little something for ourselves. If there's a restaurant located immediately outside your office, don’t go there unless you want to commit relaxation suicide. Nothing sours a lunch faster than spotting a co-worker at another table. If they’re sitting with somebody else, you may stand a chance. But what if they’re just chewing and staring straight ahead? Depending on how much food they have left on their plate and whether or not they hold a management position in the company, it is probably worth it to just chuck your lunch and buy a new one somewhere else.

The second part of lunch begins when you return to the office parking lot. If a favorite song comes on the radio, sit and listen to it for as long as possible. If a song that is sort of okay comes on the radio, sit and listen to it for as long as possible. Check your Twitter app. Floss. This is called "multi-tasking" and is valued by employers. And, depending on the layout of your building, multi-tasking involves parking far enough away to avoid being seen by those inside having a working lunch.

Secretary4Life Someecards

 Secretary4Life Someecards

Spiral Binding

The spiral binding machine has jammed.

Copier

Whenever our copier says it's "performing a self check," I feel like I should give it some privacy.

Meeting Minutes

I'm typing some meeting minutes that included the F word.

Read-Receipt

I requested a read-receipt on this report I compile and email out to
10 people every month. I got 1 back.

Big clip, small clip

A billion ugly squares of clean carpet

Carpet

I moved everything off the floor so the carpets could be cleaned. The carpet underneath all the stuff I moved was spotless.

Doing Time vs. Doing Timesheets

I just watched a Dateline report about Joran van der Sloot and how he’s locked up in a Peruvian prison where he befriended another murderer and they work out together using barbells fashioned from sticks and water bottles. Which made me think – these guys don’t have to do shit. 

First off, they’re in a maximum-security prison, which means they’ve committed some sort of sick, heinous, crime. And if watching Lifetime movies has taught me anything, they had a blast doing it. These sickos are really living it up out there while I’m updating my boss’s Outlook contacts. Then they get caught and sent to prison where they are forced to spend all of their time sitting in a cell reading books or going outside to play basketball. Where am I during all this? Oh that’s right, sitting in my cubicle under the same lighting they used to film Alien Autopsy. According to an interview on CBS with prison expert Larry Levine “…in this prison, if you can get money on the inside, you can get drugs, you can get special food, you can get a woman in your cell. You can get just about anything you want.” Imagine that. I can’t even get a decent cup of coffee. And let’s not forget that they get all their meals served to them. For free. Granted, you are under a constant threat of getting stabbed or raped by another man, but hey, you’re a murderer. You can take it. It’s like someone telling me if I volunteered to get punched in the stomach once a week I would never have to work again. Where do I sign up?

Of course there is the whole issue of eternal damnation and having your soul roast in hell for all time. I suppose that’s where I draw the line and say “Hey, I’m just going to stay here at my desk, probably for the rest of my life, with my dictaphone and my Frappuchino and type this 5,000th letter to some boring old jerk who I don’t care about.” Because while Peruvian prison may seem like a paradise to the average office worker, at least we get to rest when we’re dead.

Is it Bring Your Cat to Work Day?

MB

I just read "5 MB" to myself as 5 Mega Bucks.

Back to Work

I need to get a good night's sleep and clear my head after the holiday weekend. Thoughts of independence and freedom have no place in the office.