Breakfast of Champions

As the previous few posts should tell you, I’ve been ill with a bit of a bug. FOR OVER A WEEK! I, for one, am wholly tired of it, and wish to return to good health this instant. However, it would seem that the bug that’s bitten me came from a particularly hardy stock of germies, and refuses to leave in toto. Thus, it was the I found myself experiencing yet another coughing spell this morning on the way to work, hunched over the steering wheel, trying to squint through the effort-induced tears that squirted out helplessly as I gagged and sputtered through paroxysm after paroxysm. I was driving so erratically at one point that folks prolly thought I was texting and driving! Horrors!

And then, after one last gasping heroic cough from deep in the diaphragm, out it came – a gigantic glob of lung butter that shot up and out so forcefully it would have hit the windshield if I, in my wisdom, hadn’t SUCKED IT BACK IN.

Say it with me: ew.

So there I was. Driving down 98 highway with a mouthful of mucus (slightly salty!) and noplace to ‘put’ it. Can’t spit it out the window – there’s too much and I’m going too fast - I'd risk backsplash! Don’t have a napkin or tissue to spit it into, and I’m not even sure they’d hold as much as what I thought I had in there. So, with all other options seemingly right out, I did the only remaining thing. That's right, I swallowed it, like a warm oyster.

I felt bad about that in more ways than one, because that was one snotball I would have liked to examine further. At the very least I’d have like to have been impressed with what my lungs created, because face it, it’s not every day you get to see something a body part has made besides boogers and poop.

You KNOW I'm right about this one.

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We got word at work yesterday that come the beginning of next year (or sooner!), our cubicle homes are moving. Yessir, in an effort to ‘consolidate’ or ‘maximize space’ or ‘piss off the minions,’ the powers that be have informed us that as of January, we, the writers and programmers and statisticians of our little company, will be sitting in THE NOISIEST PART OF THE BUILDING. Because, naturally, when you have a group of people whose job it is to think and write and draft detailed analysis plans and program outputs, you want to put them in the part of the building that has the maximal number of distractions. To wit:

• Near the main employee entrance? Check.
• Near a stairwell? Check
• Near TWO stairwells? Check
• Near the “good” coffee maker and fridge and sink and first aid station and copier station? Checkcheckcheckcheckand check.
• Near the primary central corridor, which is 3 stories high and clad in nonacoustic materials, which amplify everything to the point where normal humans develop hearing like a dog? Big check.

Clearly, someone in the head office has no idea how we do our jobs. Clearly, someone in the head office has an OFFICE, with WALLS, and a DOOR, and can shut that door when they need to do some major thinking, like how to utterly frustrate the people who make the company run.

Meanwhile, in a real face-slapping move, the marketing folks who have started to invade our formerly quiet corner of the building, are likely staying put. Right – because those are the people who never met a speakerphone they didn’t like, hold teleconferences in their cubes with multiple people in attendance (some even just standing right there!), believe the phone is like a second heart and wouldn't be without using it as near to 24/7 as possible, and who are engaged in a furious game of ‘spout the buzzword’ with anyone who dares have a conversation with them. THEY are clearly the ones who need the quietest corner of the building in which to work! Clearly!

This is all elevated in the ass-chappery because, well, I hate moving. It’s been nearly 3 years I’ve been sitting in this corner, and I like it. It’s a backwater, an eddy, a nice protected spot, and I can look out the window and there’s a wall facing the door to my cube and I’ll likely not have any of that again so it’s one more rung down the corporate ladder of real estate.

The trajectory of my work environment has gone something like this:

Lab bench
Office with real walls and a door (step up!)
Office with glass walls and a door and a view (step up!)
Office with real walls and a door and a view if the person across the hall from me had her door open (lateral move)
Cubicle in quiet corner (step down)
Cubicle in noisy spot (huge step down)

Therefore, if the current arc is any indicator, the remainder of my work environments will likely be the following:

Open plan table in giant echoey room
Potion of countertop in ladies room
Cardboard box in basement
Where’s my damned red stapler?
Beach.

I’m looking forward to that last one. The others? You can keep ‘em.

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Hope y'all are faring well. Keep it up!

Tiff out.