The New Account: Part 2

Walking into the conference room at precisely 12:04 pm, I was greeted with stares and ogling. The stares were those executives who were not happy that I was strolling in late. The ogling was from my co-workers who were surprised to see me in the room. I could imagine what was going on in their minds: Really? That moron is on the team? Did the janitor turn down the invitation, first?

"Nice of you to join us." One of the executives mockingly told me.

"It's nice to join you!" I responded back. I should probably avoid being a wise-ass.

"Out of Service" Part 2

With rare exception, I don't think any of my co-workers left their cubicles for the first five hours of the day. It was like they were at a luncheon and they were waiting for someone to make the first move to get food. No one wanted to be the pooping-pioneer and venture over to the neighboring building. If I had to go, I would have had no problem being the Lewis or Clark for the office.

Instead, I got to watch my co-workers squirm for hours. I knew for a fact that several of my colleagues needed to clear their system, but they were too embarrassed to proceed. Some people even took the trip to the pharmacy to pick up anti-flatulent drugs to fight any impending doom. It's insane that these people went out of their way to pick up drugs, considering that they had to walk passed the very building they were avoiding.

"Out of Service" Part 1

"The toilets aren't working in the building, so you're only allowed to urinate in them today." You would have thought a ghost walked through the office. The shade of white that covered every one's face was like the street after a snow-storm.

The announcement was very telling. After my boss finished with his opening remarks, it was clear by my co-worker's individual reactions that you could tell who were the office-shitters. It wasn't audible, but a collective "FUCK!" filled the room amongst all the males in the office. Some of the ladies tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but their posture told otherwise. Some slouched, some pouted, and some had looks of horror on their faces.

"So what are we going to do?" One of the concerned female co-workers asked my boss. "We're going to have to go to the bathroom at some point. Where do we go to relieve ourselves?"

Back on Track

It took a while, but it seems like the office is running like a fine oiled machine - even with me being the squeaky wheel. Between the Holiday Season, New Years Eve, and Snow Days (Parts 1, 2, and 3) we all haven't been in the office for five days in a row since the second full week in December. A reason why the office is back on track is because all the employees that were on vacation have all returned. For the first time in almost a month, we are working with a full staff.

Cell phone pictures have been the death of me today. Anyone of my co-workers, who traveled anywhere, has taken the time out of their day to show me their trips from start to finish. I've seen way too many unflattering shots of my co-workers lounging on a beach somewhere. Not only are the images of my co-workers in their bathing suits burned into my psyche, but I have had to also endure their stories. My god, does everyone have a story.

The Test: Part 3

Wanting to secure my spot in the finals of Survivor: Cubicle Island, I had to make sure my other competitors (my 3 other co-workers still in the office) would be dropping out of the game. I thought, since this was a competition, why not make someone earn their way to the finals.

"Office challenge." I declared as I walked into the three different cubicles of my three different co-workers. Surprisingly, they were all game.

The four of us met up in the middle of the office, where we could take advantage of the most spacious area in the place. I came prepared with the necessary game tools and four candles.

Meeting With the Executives

Standing in front of the executives, I saw a few familiar faces, as I remembered meeting these select few once or twice in passing. Since I had a very limited interaction with a handful of these executives, I didn't know how to treat them. Unsure of how to "mingle" with the executives, I went into the vault and did what I thought was best. Introducing myself to each individual executive, I had the following routine. First, I shook their hand. With my hand in their hand, I would pull the executive closer and give him or her a kiss on both cheeks. Finally, I would take a step back and bow. I'm glad that time I took 45 minutes out of my day to search for articles on "how to greet someone" finally paid off!

"Well, that was very unique." One executive said to another executive, commenting on my greeting procedure.

The final executive that I greeted said to me, in the slowest manner possible, "Do you speak-a-the-English?

Furrowing my brow, I replied. "Yeah, dude. Why what's up? You don't?"

"Um, oh. Nevermind." A look of confusion was plastered on every executive's face. Combined with complete silence, I decided to say something.

The Incentive Program

Good-old Friday! The most beautiful sight during the weekday showed it's pretty face again. How was I going to waste away my day today? Surfing the Internet? Probably. Flipping back and forth between solitaire and spider solitaire? Very likely. Before I could dive right into my normal Friday routine, our company's office receptionist buzzed me.

"You have that phone call at ten." I completely forgot about that. I had actually planned on getting some of my backlogged work done today, but I really screwed myself since I pushed back all my work until after Christmas. That decision pre-Christmas is not surprising. When I'm in the office, my judgement level really goes to shit. I have a better grasp on impending consequences when I'm at a bar, 4 in the morning, 20+ drinks deep.

"That phone call" that she was referring to was an end of the year checkup with a client. This call required active participation on my part, but let's just say this phone call wasn't my best performance. I probably didn't say more than 15 words the entire time. My heart wasn't in it, but to be honest, my heart isn't into any of the things I do around this place. Still, I wanted to give off the impression that I cared, so I considered postponing the call. I talked myself out of it, because I knew "postponement" would actually lead to me never speaking to this client again.

The Return From Christmas Vacation

Well rested and ready to put in minimal effort - were my feelings coming into work post-Christmas. Did I contemplate calling out sick and extending my vacation to a third day? You bet your ass I did! But I'm not an amateur, I spread out my "sick days." It's Thursday after-all! Two more days and it's back to the weekend!

If my company was smart, they would have sat me down on December 1st and have said the following thing to me: "We're going to cut right to the chase: generally you do nothing. You bring absolutely nothing to the table and frankly, you should have been fired a long time ago. Having said all that, we would like to offer you a deal to either cut back your hours or have you take off the entire month of December." I definitely would have stopped listening to whatever offer they would have given me, and accepted the entire month off.

The lack of effort I have put into my work this month was abysmal. If I hadn't attended this month's meetings, that required a mandatory appearance on my part, there is a high chance my boss would have been filing a missing person's report by December 3rd. My boss, or really anyone with the authority, should have played the role of Howie Mandel and offered me a "Deal or No-Deal" at the beginning of the month. Instead, they choose to have me linger around like a parasite on its host body.

Since I pretty much did little to no work in the days leading up to the Christmas break, I had a lot of ground to make up. I needed to do something, I couldn't just keep putting my work aside, so I went through my pile of paper and organized them into different stacks of equal proportions. The three stacks were as follows: "Important," "Could Wait," and "Shredder." The first two categories are pretty self-explanatory. The third category - "Shredder" - are papers I deemed not important (to me, at least), thus allowing me to discard of them via the shredder.

Obviously tackling the "Important" stack was priority A-one. It was a shock to my system when I dove right in and actually started to do my work. It felt like the first day at the gym after a month of sitting on the couch and crushing bags of chips. I am not in shape to do this.

If I was going to get through this day, I needed to take it slow and steady. After all, a workday is a marathon, not a sprint. If you were to compare my working speed today to that of the mile pace splits in a marathon, I would be running 25 minute miles.

I was really taking my time today, not for precision, but for reasons of falling into old habits real quickly. As soon as I would start on a project, my attention would be onto something else. The more I worked, the smaller my attention span became. I wonder what is on Facebook? Any breaking news in the world of sports? Maybe I should find a recipe for all that leftover ham? What is the name Peggy short for?

Soon enough, time passed and the dent I made into the "Important" stack was barely noticeable. I spent more time on Wikipedia than I did on my work. The image on my desk at that time looked looked almost identical to when I initially made the three stacks of paper. To make myself more worried, I realized I didn't even touch the "Could Wait" stack, which made me freak out a bit. Feeling like the clock was working against me, I made an executive decision - I was going to merge the "Could Wait" stack with the "Shredder" stack. Basically, I wanted to shred some paper, which I did, as I discarded of the newly merged "Could Wait" and "Shredder" stacks.

I felt a little relief come over me when I was down to one stack of paper. The stress-free moment was much needed. Once I realized that I shredded 66% of my work, a feeling of uneasiness once again sat in my gut. The feeling of uneasiness was also probably aided by the fact that is was only 10:30 in the morning.