The Test: Part 1

The weather here is horrid. The blizzard-like conditions have affected mass transit, highways, expressways, and all forms of travel - to the point that people are being forced to stay home. You'd think I'd know this information, but fortunately unfortunately, I was one of the lucky unlucky ones who were able to successfully make it into work today.

"I thought for sure I wouldn't have seen your face today!" One co-worker told me in passing.

"I would have bet the farm you would have called out today." Another co-worker said to me.

"I'm shocked to see you here!" A third co-worker told me. Do the people here think that little of me? Sadly they do. Those were the only three other co-workers in the office at that time and I'm sure I would have heard more of the same from the others if they were present.

New Years Eve

The meeting with the executives distracted me from the fact that we have another vacation day coming up! On days like this it makes me wonder why the white-collar world isn't given off from Christmas Eve to January 2nd. This time of year makes me feel like the only man on the planet in a post-Apocalyptic world - that's how dead it is in the office. When I'm in my cubicle on these days, I feel like Will Smith's character in "I am Legend." Even some of my brown-nosing co-workers are struggling to look like they're busy during this time of year.

Despite business being really slow this time of year, the energy level today is as high as ever. The reason: it's New Year's Eve! For the occasion, some of the female co-workers purchased New Years Eve party supplies and began passing them out to everyone. My delivery came at 9:30 this morning.

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.

The Day Before Vacation: Part 2

Well, that didn't take long. Within five minutes of take-off, my remote-control helicopter was taken from me. No, it wasn't stolen. Like a child being punished, my boss came into my cubicle, physically took the remote out of my hand, and told me that, "I can get it back at the end of the day." The last time I was told that was when my high school biology teacher confiscated my cell phone. It feels good to know that I haven't lost a step!

It started off innocently. For the first minute, I kept the helicopter inside my cubicle - making sure to only fly it within my walls. At one point I lost control of the helicopter and it flew into my cubicle wall, knocking down a calendar. This is when I discovered the potential that this "machine," created for children between the ages of 8 and 14, had. When my calendar hit the floor, I had one thought that immediately popped into my head: What else can I destroy with this helicopter? 

The Day Before Vacation: Part 1

I survived "The Report" incident and came out unscathed after the Holiday party - some would say it was a Christmas Miracle! I beg to differ, because I definitely feel like I could get away with anything this time of year. This, of course, is something I plan on putting to the test today.

I started early on my plan by showing up late this morning - by about ten minutes. Why? Because I wanted to. Also, because I wanted to prepare for my upcoming vacation days.

Some of my teacher-friends begin to change their habits towards the end of the summer. They start to "train" their body to adjust to their upcoming schedule once the school year approaches. By this, they'll start altering their sleeping patterns by going to bed early and waking up early. I thought I could apply this method to my own life, by doing the exact opposite. I'm training my body to go to bed late and to sleep in as late as my body allows me. I want my bed sheets to have the shape of my body imprinted in them by December 26th.