Work. What a Dreadful Idea

Last Thursday I went back into work for the first time in a couple of weeks and didn’t last long. I had planned to stay for half a day, but after one measly hour, I realized that plan was not going to fly. I may have mentioned I was lying on the floor trying not to faint when I came to this conclusion. That kind of insight is just something I’m noted for.

Before I fled, I had noticed the hundreds of emails that had piled up while I was out, many, many of which include astonishingly generous offers of people I have never met, but who want to share a big chunk of their enormous inheritance with me. Usually they are from some African country which, oddly, I have never heard of. Scattered in amongst them were also plenty of messages about my job. Since staying in a locked and upright position was the most I could focus on right then, I decided I would deal with all that when I felt better. Today, as it turned out.

Do you have a job where you suspect your boss does not actually know just what it is you do? Do you work in an office with several dozen other people who have no apparent function and yet, should you be out sick for a couple of weeks with, oh, say, bronchitis, cannot figure out how to deal with the crises they carefully forward to you? I do.

I love my job. I really do. It’s interesting, the work is gratifying and at times like this, I get the very false impression I am irreplaceable. I know, of course, that’s not true. If I were to accept those kind offers that flood my email to share in the wealth of the Republic of the Ivory Coast and I never came back to my desk, eventually someone would have to figure out how to do what I do. Since I’m only sick, they know they can ignore the problems, place them tidily on my chair (office protocol: the more desperate the situation, the more important it is to leave it in a really neat stack) and go out for more coffee.

Tomorrow mrpeenee will be back in the office, will remove his pathetic voicemail message claiming he is out sick and has no idea when he will return and which 21 people so far have ignored in order to leave increasingly testy voicemails, will respond to a few dozen emails, and will triumph. He will not lie down on the floor. That’s what he gets paid for.