Friday, February 11, 2005

Most. Boring. Day. Ever.

Here I sit, confined within my walls of corporate servitude, staring at a computer screen as if searching for answers to life itself. The stretched, grey patterned wall carpet surrounds me; just tall enough to hinder my ability to see what is happening in the world outside. No, not outside as in trees, and birds, and grass, and fresh air. I mean outside, as in “outside of my cubicle”. The hallway, the bathrooms…the break room filled with chairs and vending machines. The world that is so close, yet so far away from me. Even though the chances of anything important and/or interesting occurring outside of said cubicle are very slim indeed, it is a hope I cling to on days such as these. A hope that, somewhere nearby, something entertaining is blooming.

Yes, faithful and few readers, today is a very boring day for me. Today I find myself yet again in a predicament so very familiar to me, that I have begun to see it as an inescapable trap filled with staplers and emails and phone calls; a swirling abyss of doom hurtling towards monotony and repetition. It is 2:38pm on Friday afternoon...and I have absolutely nothing to do.

I have no emails to read, no phone calls to return. I have no Excel spreadsheets to go over, nor any databases to update. I do not even have any queries to write. All the work that I had scheduled for this day has been accomplished. All the emails and reports and spreadsheets are finished; I have nothing to do but wait for more tasks to be assigned to me by my ever-present supervisor Kathy.

But alas! Kathy is not here this afternoon. She was rushed to the hospital with chest pains just before lunch by a co-worker, a fact which was not known to me until just moments ago. While I sympathize with Kathy, and wish her a fast and speedy recovery (if there are, in fact, heart problems occurring), I cannot help but feel annoyed with the fact that I sit here now alone and without purpose. I have nothing to do.

There will be no new tasks put forth in front of me; no questions to be answered, or puzzles to be solved. My inbox is as empty as desert lake, and my voicemail has committed sepaku. So here I sit, writing this post, in the hopes that some of my boredom will dissipate.

It has helped, to be sure…but I am almost done. Soon, then, will I sit here again, staring at my computer screen with the grey carpet cubicle walls surrounding me. Soon I will be randomly and needlessly searching the internet for entertainment. Soon I will be reading the same news articles again and again, and memorizing units of Pi (3.1415926535897….), and throwing penguins through the air like Frisbees.

It is now 2:55pm on Friday. Here I sit, chained to this desk until 5:00 with nothing to do to occupy my time, nor keep my sanity. My only hope is that someone will read this post today, and take pity on me…and post a comment. A comment that I can read, and perhaps even chuckle at…and forget the clock for one fleeting moment.

Perhaps this is asking too much. I think it’s time to see what is on the news is again.

2 comments:

Jen said...

Hello, Peter. What's happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.

Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.

Yeah. Uh, did you get that memo?

Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. The problem is, I just forgot this one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even a problem anymore.

Yeah. It's just that we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could just remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. Alright!

Shanshu said...

OMG you feel my pain! Damn the man!