My Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day
June 22, 2007
Today is not a good day. I’m in a pretty crappy mood. My boss is out of town for the week, which should make it a fairly relaxed, cruise-the-Web-for-eight-hours-and-get-paid-for-it, happy kind of day. Except it’s not. I woke up this morning feeling lousy—scratchy sore throat, headache, wanting to sleep for about three more hours. So that’s part of it. But also, this job is just really killing my enthusiasm about being on summer vacation. I mean, even if you have the kind of job that allows you to mess around on the Web for 8 hours a day and get paid for it, you’re still stuck in that cubicle for 8 hours at a stretch. This morning, as I was driving to work, I was thinking about all the things I had hoped to do with my time over summer vacation. Get some reading done for my eventual thesis project. Look over some resources for the class I’m teaching in the fall. Steadily review my Chinese characters and learn the simplified version of the characters I’ve learned. How much of that have I done this summer? Almost none. So, here I am, nearing the end of June, and nothing to show for it except for 4 40-hour weeks of sitting in a cubicle, listening to the doctor across the hall use company resources to make phone calls to his friends and talk about his family vacation, and which of his daughters are graduating from college, and who has kids, and where they live, and blah-dee-blah-dee-blah. Yesterday, I worked on developing a disability claim in which the woman’s only alleged condition causing her to be disabled was a “large right toe.” Seriously. That’s her disabling condition. And I just looked at a case where the woman applying finished up her application for an appeal of her claim by writing, “Looks like you guys didn’t do your job, huh?” I understand that she’s upset that she wasn’t given benefits the first time she applied, but I’m pretty sick of the jerkstore things people write on their applications. It’s hard not to lose enthusiasm for your job, much less faith in humanity, when you encounter assholes all day long. Meanwhile, Dr. B. (still across the way from me) is busy accusing people of smoking bongs in the office (no, Dr. B…that’s just the coffee pot burbling over there…just like it does every day…several times a day) and rhapsodizing on his incredible ability to diagnose traumatic brain injuries from a patient’s records, even the patient’s own doctor wasn’t able to see it when they examined the patient in person. Geniuses, I tell you. I’m surrounded by geniuses.
(Note: This was actually written on Thursday, 6/21)
Man…I think you should work just enough to pay your half of the bills for the summer and then quit. Then we go to Mexico. No, my students won’t mind. I’ll just tell them something like this:
Due to unforseen circumstances, my wife and I will be in Mexico. So the class is done. Stay sweet. Have a great summer. See you never again.
Actually, I’ll just write that in a note and tape it to the class door. Then we’ll leave before any of them get there.
Harper’s Magazine just reported that the Swedish government decided to recognize a man’s preference for heavy metal music as a disability and consequently granted his request for benefits.
Seems like you cannot really escape the madness, which means that you have to “get down with the sickness,” as the metal band _Disturbed_ would have it. My suggestion: now that the coffee-maker burbling has been established as the answer to the pot-smoking accusations it is safe to bring out the bong.
Mexico? Mexico? Really, Ben, you can’t even safely brush your teeth with the water in most parts of Mexico (believe me, I know). And Houston’s a good five hours closer to you then the border. And you’d have a free place to stay. And it would make me happy
Hang in there, Erin. I’ll be there in a few days and we’ll make a big spreadsheet on posterboard that shows how you can still accomplish everything you wanted to get done this summer. Maybe Visual-Aid Girl (AKA Megan)will throw in an overhead and markers to make the project even more exciting. Oh, the joy of planning and organizing and spreadsheets mixed with vodka and Parliaments…only in my dreams.