Things to bang your head on your desk to

It’s not that I consider my job unimportant.  After all it is the main source of income to help me pay the rent on my over-priced decrepit rental house.  It also takes care of the astronomical gas bill, which said over-priced rental house seems to consume like a Milky Way sized black hole, even though there is only ONE 1’ x 1’ square foot space in the not often used dining room corner that feels luke-warm at any given point during the arctic Cleveland months in the entire house. 

What I do find important about my job is that it is an escape from my very stressful “life”.  I use the term ‘life’ very loosely for I don’t feel like it’s necessarily my direct actions which make my “life” stressful.  Rather it’s the constant battle of subduing the actions of most members of the blood line from which I stem in order to keep them from unleashing their insanity onto the rest of humanity.  I’m still waiting for the populace of the world race to reward me in some way for my very arduous and painful efforts by the way.  A key to a city perhaps?   Or maybe half-off appetizers to my favorite Mexican restaurant.  Anything really, it doesn’t take much to please me.

With that said, I highly look forward coming into work to escape Them.  If I don’t answer Their phone calls or emails, (telling me how the basement at my parents’ house is flooded and They need me to somehow fix it, even though I don’t know the slightest bit about plumbing or welding, or that another 3,000 acres of Rainforest has been eliminated off the face of the earth in the last half hour which sends me into fits of hysteria because Their guilt which was planted into my fragile mind at such a young age, has been conditioned by Them in a way that it sends me into agonizing patterns of thinking that there could have been something I could have done to prevent this global catastrophe had I just ordered fish the other night instead of a hamburger) I always have the excuse of, “but I was busy filing this one sheet of paper which kept me away from my desk…for 8 hours.”  My office I consider a safe house which lends me the much needed down time to regroup the miniscule shards of sanity I have left, because when it hits 5pm and They know They can reach me, we start the vicious life sucking cycle all over again. 

Needless to say, not every moment at work is full of puppy dogs and magic cotton candy colored sedatives.  No, unfortunately even the office has it’s points of great mind blowing inane moments.  What is that you ask?  What could possibly throw someone like me who tries to keep a smile plastered onto her face between the hours of 8am – 5pm Monday thru Friday into such a rage of quiet ‘I don’t want them to fire me or commit me into a very crazy, this will be on 'A Haunting' next season, type of mental institution’ you ask?  Well, let me tell you in the form of this very thoughtfully constructed list:

Office “things” my co-workers do that make me want to punch myself in the face


1.  Talking to me in length when I’m on a business phone call and getting upset when I can’t immediately answer them.  -  Now I know that I’m endowed with a miraculous curly and unruly head of locks.  I know that in the past my hair has been capable of consuming items such as rubber bands, clips, brushes, toy cars etc. when in close proximity of it.  I know that the circumference of my hair on a good day can best be described by the following equation of an ellipse’s angular eccentricity since the particular shape of an ellipse is what gives my hair its natural curl which means it can get pretty damn big and hide certain items

  

But it still just completely baffles me as to why anger must ensue after they find that I’m not just ignoring them, but ignoring them because I’m on the phone…doing my job.

2.  Refusing to put cups, plates, bowls, silverware etc. into the dishwasher which isn't even a half an inch away from the kitchen sink.  – This particular office phenomenon is up there with the mystery of Atlantis and the lost continent of Mu.  There are records of this particular act taking place (the leaving of eating utensils in the sink), but the circumstantial evidence that someone in this office was responsible for it seems to elude even...me.    Apparently no one is responsible for this event and apparently there is some anti-gravity machine in the kitchen which renders the human body incapable of bending over to open the dish washer door and place said eating instruments into its vast cleaning cavity.  Due to the frustration of one administer who couldn’t seem to figure out why anyone could be so mean, decided to take it out on me and made it my responsibility to keep the sink clear of plates and the such.  After many emails, empty threats and monetary bribes, I have yet to get through a single day where I don’t walk into the kitchen and have an immediate aneurism since someone couldn’t be bothered with putting their rudimentary eating utensil into the high end technological cleaning machine.  *dies*

3.  The inability to replace rolls of paper throughout the office: i.e. toilet paper, paper towels, paper in the copy machines etc.  – I’m going to keep this simple.  I work for people who design multi-million dollar buildings.  Why they can’t replace a roll of paper is just mind boggling.  I don’t even think it’s an act of defiance really, A.D.D. maybe, since I’ve battled the stupidly designed toilet paper rolls holders in the bathroom, but just giving it 4 seconds of attention and voilà! you have a freshly rolled tube of butt wipe suspended gloriously from its appropriately designated area.  The ol’ unwrap the toilet paper roll, stick it ON TOP OF the paper holder receptacle, wadding up the covering paper and hurling it somewhere within 5 feet of the trash can does NOT constitute as a successfully replacing.  And guess again who somehow gets blamed for this???


4.   Ticker Tape Parades in the copy room and lay-down areas.  AKA, hole punching documents.  – I cannot tell you how many times I’ve crawled around on my hands and knees using packing tape strategically rolled around my hand trying to pick up little dots of paper.  I do this in a sheer panic that if I’m not on top of it, one particular rule delegating administrator will once again make it my responsibility to pick up each and every spec of paper or I will have bamboo shoots shoved under my nails.  And it’s not like it’s a concentrated area of paper.  It literally looks like someone cracked out on coffee ran into the room and Swiss-cheesed the hell out of the thinnest card stock paper they could find while doing jumping jacks up and down the room.  All but one of our 3-hole punchers have sleeves that go on the bottom of said devices to contain the remnants of a new bound document but somehow, even though I hide it, that particular person seems to find it and insists on using the one that doesn’t have this special sanity saving sleeve.  <-great alliteration if I do say so myself.

5. Recycling banana peels.  – We have not 1, not 2 but 3 garbage bins in our kitchen.  There is a large garbage bin for every day trash, not even 5 feet away (I don’t understand this one either) there is another garbage bin, but smaller for even more trash.  In between these black garbage bins is a very large blue, square in shape, recycling bin with a sign posted over it which reads “RECYCLABLES ONLY!” in large and bolded font, typed out by your's truly.  Again, I walk into the brain blood vessel splitting kitchen to be of witness to various trash items in this clearly marked basket for recycling.  Coffee grounds, fruit peels, wads of used tissue litter this bin as if someone spitefully threw them in there to show up the designating sign.  I don’t know who has so much hate for protocol here in this office, but it makes me want to just sit down Indian style rocking in the corner sobbing uncontrollably. 

I love my fellow employees but can't help but sit here spending most of my day (trying to kill time) wondering how it is they got degrees in such a prestigious work field such as architecture and design.  It makes me worry a little for the new tenants of our lovely buildings, that they may be in peril of structurally sound design, faulty toilet paper roll dispensers or a psychotic administrative assistant.