Henry Miller Wept
Tonight, me and the Desk had a going away party for one of our longest standing members because she is transferring to West Africa. It was a happy/sad occasion where one of our strongest members found her calling and took it, and I will be sad to see her go.
I am slow when it comes to office politics so these get-togethers are always valuable to me because after the Irish Car Bombs make their round (to the uninitiated, an ICB is like a Boilermaker except instead of dropping a shot of bourbon into a glass of beer, you drop a shot of Bailey's into a half-pint of Guinness and chug -- it tastes like a milkshake!) everyone starts to loosen their tongues, and if you remember, you get a general landscape of what is going on in the office.
Seeing that I'm speaking about myself here, I discovered that I am perceived as the loose cannon psycho of the Desk, misjudged so because I use stolen martini glasses at my desk for paperclip containers, and like to wear purple a lot, and use a butterknife repeatedly stabbed into a pub table to emphasize a point. Since I write about Big Pharma I'm constantly suspected of receiving free samples (yeah, I wish!).
Sure, I get into loud, heated schoolyard arguments with Corporate Communications toadies over the phone when we're quibbling semantics over one business unit using another business unit's operating loss as a tax gain. Sure, I'll loudly shout to the ceiling when my editor asks me for a comment from "the other side": "Oh Spirits, tell Us whether We should pursue this Pfizer story?!" Sure, I'll talk to myself in a booming voice when it is necessary when others are making too much noise for me to work rather than telling them to shut the fuck up when I'm trying to concentrate. But is this wrong? No, I'm the one pegged to come into work one day like a trenchcoated John Cusack with his boombox blaring Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" rather than Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." What about those on my Desk, the quiet types who keep to themselves, never bothered anyone before, officer? No, I get singled out.
No, I add Color to my work environment. And I've been fired in the past for such a thing too. And if I get fired for it this time around then fuck them too. Where was it written that we have to be so Nice and Docile all the time? Where was it written that we had to have personalities as bland as paste to get ahead? At the old, old age of what most teenagers would consider old, old age, why again have I found myself at the point where all the accoutrements of success seem like thin, passionless ghosts wending themselves around a crux of Nothingness?
No, I know, I need to be doing that thing I always said I'd be doing. Patience, me pet. That'll save me.
I am slow when it comes to office politics so these get-togethers are always valuable to me because after the Irish Car Bombs make their round (to the uninitiated, an ICB is like a Boilermaker except instead of dropping a shot of bourbon into a glass of beer, you drop a shot of Bailey's into a half-pint of Guinness and chug -- it tastes like a milkshake!) everyone starts to loosen their tongues, and if you remember, you get a general landscape of what is going on in the office.
Seeing that I'm speaking about myself here, I discovered that I am perceived as the loose cannon psycho of the Desk, misjudged so because I use stolen martini glasses at my desk for paperclip containers, and like to wear purple a lot, and use a butterknife repeatedly stabbed into a pub table to emphasize a point. Since I write about Big Pharma I'm constantly suspected of receiving free samples (yeah, I wish!).
Sure, I get into loud, heated schoolyard arguments with Corporate Communications toadies over the phone when we're quibbling semantics over one business unit using another business unit's operating loss as a tax gain. Sure, I'll loudly shout to the ceiling when my editor asks me for a comment from "the other side": "Oh Spirits, tell Us whether We should pursue this Pfizer story?!" Sure, I'll talk to myself in a booming voice when it is necessary when others are making too much noise for me to work rather than telling them to shut the fuck up when I'm trying to concentrate. But is this wrong? No, I'm the one pegged to come into work one day like a trenchcoated John Cusack with his boombox blaring Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" rather than Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." What about those on my Desk, the quiet types who keep to themselves, never bothered anyone before, officer? No, I get singled out.
No, I add Color to my work environment. And I've been fired in the past for such a thing too. And if I get fired for it this time around then fuck them too. Where was it written that we have to be so Nice and Docile all the time? Where was it written that we had to have personalities as bland as paste to get ahead? At the old, old age of what most teenagers would consider old, old age, why again have I found myself at the point where all the accoutrements of success seem like thin, passionless ghosts wending themselves around a crux of Nothingness?
No, I know, I need to be doing that thing I always said I'd be doing. Patience, me pet. That'll save me.
posted by Doc Paradox at 10:58 PM
1 Comments:
I suspect that some people feel that the silent mouth conceals wiser thoughts, though most workerbees could only dream of such ancient Chinese wisdom working its way into their brains.
I'm the one who is viewed as babbling on, using 10 words where 5 would suffice. I am gradually realizing, though, that 5 well-chosen words would in fact be a triumph over the 7 or 8 they use.
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