This would no doubt have been another leave work early episode. When will I ever learn? I get through today with a new arsenal of nuclear strength meds. But I shouldn’t need them. I should be better than this. On the other hand if I die young I won’t mind. I mean, I’ll be dead but that’s not what I mean. I don’t care when I die. Not today, at least. Not this year. I think of such things when I come close to walking into traffic, or when I actually do walk into traffic. Cars and buses swerving around me. I don’t look crazy or derelict. Just some dude wanting to cross the street with some sense of privilege, I guess. Or so it seems. In truth I just space out, blank out, black out.
Some thoughts about this job, as I contemplate departing from it. Departure from this is inevitable, be it by choice or by fire. It seems every day, if I look around much, I see new faces, while the ones I had gotten accustomed to seeing disappear. One person I used to talk to some seems to have moved on. A woman I was positively infatuated with also seems to have set sail. It’s possible they moved upstairs but I’ve looked for them there, the woman in particular, and not found them. Like most people here I never even knew her name.
I love being here. I still do. But it is a lonely job. There is no camaraderie, no team building, no perks. The only perk so far has been a free sandwich. That was completely random by my reckoning. Just one day and it’s hey everyone here’s a free sammich.
Of course the lack of camaraderie or getting to know other workers here comes from my own self-sufficiency. The only real release, in which I felt like I was part of something bigger than just being on the phone all day, came with the coaching sessions. But those have been very few since the bosslady got Long Covid and has cancelled virtually all these sessions for the past several months.
I don’t really need the coaching. I do a good job without them. But I did take them seriously and considered them opportunities to do this job as best I could.
We really are treated like children here. No mercy. I feel I got some slack for my panic attack. 5 hours of sick leave with no documentation ever provided, or rather none ever accepted. I submitted Family Leave Disability or whatever it was called. I spent almost my entire day off arranging to get that paperwork together only to have it rejected immediately for being too junior. Only senior level people are allowed to have conditions that require them to leave immediately. That day I swear my BP must have been 200/100, as it might well have been today.
There is no reward here, no reason to excel. I think the term I spotted last week is “Quiet Quitting.” You do nothing more than is expected. Haven’t people been quiet quitting for generations? There had always been workplace types who preached the gospel of pacing yourself, not for your reputation but so as not to make everyone else look bad.
…
OK, the drugs have worked their miracle. I feel serene. Tomorrow will be my day of collecting myself. Reorganizing. Deciding how much of my past life I want to leave behind once and for all. Any of it?
I thought of Jack Welch again today. Normally he crosses my mind whenever I wipe my ass, or at least reach for the Charmin. I was fascinated by the terms of his retirement package, which included stipulations that he had x number of rolls of toilet paper available at all times. This was intended to prepare for shifts in time, where suddenly it is 2 weeks from now and Jack Welch had to take a shit. Unfortunately the supply of Charmin was not planned properly, and it did not accommodate for a possible elimination of two weeks during which time the Charmin was used, just not for ass-wiping. No one knows what purpose the Charmin served in its two weeks of disappeared time, but Jack Welch was might angry to emerge from that shifting of time to find he had to find some other way to wipe his ass, since all the Charmin was gone.
I thought of this today when I reached for the small bottle of water I am required to have on my person at all tims. I could not find it, buried in the bag as it was, but it turned up. I compared my self-imposed rule about always expecting a bottle of water for emergency pill-popping to Jack Welch’s rule for always having abundant quantity of Charmin should his incontinence suddenly become a problem.
Just like Welch’s need for endless toilet paper I maintain a need for a bottle of water, small enough to carry everywhere but with enough liquid to satisfactorily consume the necessary pills.
As the anxiety slipped away and the BP cane back to earth I looked up at the newly clear Federal Reserve Building. Newly clear meaning I see things but don’t recognize or respect them. That’s a nice looking castle-like structure. It looked different through eyes not swimming and swirling in anxiety.
