fun day at work

i worked with cowboy this week.

every time i've worked with him before, it was an empty house and we worked alone with the radio on.

this week, though, we worked in a house where people lived.

we were let in a door from the garage that led down a hallway to the bathroom needing work. the hallway passed the main living room where an older woman sat on a sofa and played solitair on her ipad and watched game shows the entire day. the entire day.

the morning began quietly - except for the frustration cowboy had with rockboard and my lack of skill and gravity and the toilet paper holder - but it quickly turned.

first, the woman's thirteen year-old grandson came home and stared unflinchingly at both of us working, but when i said hello, he responded with the same stare. it was a bit more awkward when this scrawny pale kid changed into baggy shorts, a wife-beater tanktop, yellow-tinted shades, and a cap. in this new outfit, he again just walked slowly in and out of rooms staring at us.

he was even kind enough to continue the awkward walk and stare out in the garage when i cut tile.

then, the dogs arrived. they stayed behind the temporary gate put up by the woman who presumably took a moment away from solitair.

at the point in the day when the sun slanted and pointed directly in my eyes when i stood at the tile saw, when the teenage boy's relentless staring added to him mumbling things to his grandmother when she wasn't in the room, and the dogs barked uncontrollably. that's when we decided when the day was over.

no more

my temp agency called yesterday afternoon. this job ends today. smeller hasn't mentioned it to me and i think she knows, but i'm not sure.

next week, if the temp agency doesn't call with another job, i'm working with cowboy.

good morning

working in an office sucks. you sit in a cubicle with your back to a window (if you have a window) and go through the same mundane tasks every day. you look forward to your lunch hour, which you usually spend at your desk, eating and typing and working, even though you're not paid for that hour, but you feel like you're wasting time if you actually take time off for lunch. you think about going outside for a walk, about getting some fresh air, but that pile of invoices won't wait, so the idea of seeing the sun in the early afternoon fades to a far off dream meant only for weekends. slowly you realize that your life continues in one unending, sludgy routine. to fight it, you decorate your space with as many photos and drawings and dilbert comics as you can to remind yourself that you're unique and your own person. you try to convince yourself that this beige office doesn't define you.

and then the day comes when you realize that it didn't work.

- i came in today and picked up my water bottle and headed to the kitchen, and in that time passed four  different people from four different departments, and when i greeted them, they all responded the same way:

'morning. how're you doin?'
'i'm here.'

note to anyone: if i ever genuinely respond to a question like that, please throw me down a long flight of stairs.

new day

i stayed home yesterday and worked for the company i'm not legally allowed to talk about and created a new invoice design for cowboy's company.

but now i'm back at the temp job and my soul is weeping.

smeller keeps complaining about anything - it's too cold, too warm, she's tired, too wired, hungry, full, or something to do with the broken stapler.

on the other end of the spectrum, i received an email this morning inviting me to join the board of the local film society. it's all kinds of strange and surprising, but something that also seems pretty darn cool.

another day in the office

lots happening around here:

west nile returned to work this morning, apparently not stricken down with a deadly disease, but with no word on why she didn't come in yesterday.

someone informed me this morning that one of the vice presidents will not be coming back - and it wasn't his decision. overnight, they removed his name and all identifiers from his office.

smeller has a headache and doesn't know if her smeller is broken from a cold or allergies.

the other temp can't wait to go to the fair this weekend, but has to make sure she cleans her house on saturday since she'll be gone on sunday.

the other vp came up to me and whispered, 'shit is crazy here today.'

more to come...

ADDED:
trailer park gramma compared the storm last night with 'war of the worlds' with tom cruise.

contagious

three women constantly share news reports of shootings, attacks, or anything else that qualifies as gruesome.

yesterday, i passed their cubicles when one shared the news that someone in a town about three hours away died of the west nile virus.

apparently, this morning, the same woman who shared that information didn't come in. and she didn't call. her supervisor asked the other two women if they'd heard anything and one woman responded, 'no, she didn't call or anything, but yesterday she told us about someone dying of the west nile virus, so...i didn't really think about it when she told us, but maybe that's why...'

i think it would be made a bigger deal if this woman is out today due to death or disease, but we shall see if she ever comes in or we get news of a west nile case close to home.

waiting area

my cubicle sits right outside the door of the ever elusive controller, which means i get to entertain/be entertained by people waiting to see him.

this afternoon, a woman from across the office who, when i first met her many months ago when i began this temporary assignment, informed me that she didn't want to be an accountant like her mother (she's in her sixty's).

so, the not-accountant came over to see the controller, but he had someone else in his office, so she waited for him and talked to me. she seemed extremely shaken up and it turned out that she had to take a half day to get a refill of her narcolepsy medication because her husband "couldn't get it for her and he already missed a half day even though he's a bus driver and today is the first day of school and that doesn't look too good." i also found out that the previous drug she took for her ailment was not a narcotic, like the current one (the reason for the problem), but it cost a hundred bucks a month, where this one is five.

the entire time she spoke, she slowly cleaned her iphone with a kleenex.