Friday, January 14  

Work

Vic sits in her overlit, screen-glare, dry-mouth, coffee-breath, walls-that-don’t-reach-the-ceiling office and dreams about some circumstance that would allow her not to work. Ever again.

work noun 1. Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something. 2. A job; employment: 3. Something that has been produced or accomplished through the effort, activity, or agency of a person or thing.

Human beings aren’t meant to sit at a desk all day, crossing and uncrossing their legs to avoid loss of limbs due to non-use. Vic finds her first day back at work stressful and beleaguering. Her shoulders ache from sitting through meetings and wading through 6 months of unimportant emails that have filtered through to her during her maternity leave.

Many of the recent ones say "Welcome Back Vic!" These are more depressing than the emails with subject lines guaranteeing a "slimmer, sleeker shape in only 30 days". Certainly more personally disturbing that those exclaiming "Increase your manhood!" and "Stay hard longer!"

She is back at work. And, to her, that is much sadder than love handles or short, flaccid penises.

Some people enjoy working. They define themselves by the job they do. They come in early, they stay until the streetlights come on outside the window and the highways have cleared of rush hour traffic. Vic is normally one of those adding to the crush of evacuees on the highway. She’d rather sit in traffic, not at work, than wait at work until the roads are cleared. She considers her job a waste of her personal time, a hardship. Traffic is a minor inconvenience.

Today, it begins snowing in earnest. Vic turns her chair to watch it come down, imagines standing with Grace at the window, enjoying vicariously the new wonder of white stuff billowing around the sky. A sharp look from her boss yanks her back.

"No work to do?" he asks pointedly.

"Plenty." she answers, knowing that she left her most important work behind this morning. Her finest work to date.