Elan Mudrow
Smidgens
American Work Day
- Try to get up
- Notice in the mirror, as you get ready for work, a cowlick that just won’t go away. Curse at every known god in the universe. Glue it down (partially) with Dippity Doo Ultra Toxic Glue Gel
- Stop at Starbucks. Order a Venti Ice Ice Baby Crappacino in a single-use plastic cup, while ten reusable plastic cups (Free Walmart gifts for applying for a credit card) sit at home in your cupboard, which will be 25 cents each at the next church bizarre or garage sale, which no one will buy. They will be dumped off at the Goodwill, by an unmarked white church van, in a large cardboard box, labeled “kitchen stuff”, ending up next to piles of cheap sunglasses.(Also free Walmart giveaways)
- Park your car in a downtown lot after almost rear-ending someone on the freeway, for checking the newest Tweet from some unknown Kardashian (No, it’s not the name of someone from the planet Karadashia) of whom you really don’t give a fuck about.
- Enter the office building. Wave to the security officer you feel sorry for, because you think he is a poor pitiful loser with ADD, when in reality he has a doctorate in literature. His area of expertise is 19th century British literature. No wonder he’s a security guard.
- Say small hellos to coworkers you hate, but pretend to like at office parties. You hope nobody stops you to complain about their kids and spouse, while at the same time you wish somebody would stop and talk, so you can complain about your kids and spouse.
- Say hello to your boss, calling her/him by their first name. (Or better yet, a nickname like Biffy, Bongo, or Chuck) Look around if any of your coworkers noticed.
- Reach your cubicle. Refill your foo-foo Starfuck’s plastic cup with pure black gut -wrenching MJB Death Valley black coffee. Reach in your purse and pull out a photo of your nephew, who just turned two with cake all over his face. Stick it on your outdated PC vacuum tube monitor. Even though you’ve never met the brat, it’s a way of making it look like your down with the family you avoid.
- Start working on the new project called “Merchant Accountability” your boss told you to do, which is exactly like the old project called “Mermaids Love Dolla Bills Y’all”. It’s all about who you’re talking to. Your boss tells you to “Get into their brains”. Code words for “Get into their wallets”.
- Take lunch at a food cart two blocks away. Order the vegan flatty eastern evil noodles. The cook smiles at you because he cooks everything in the same pan with fish sauce, vegan or not. The cook is somebody you really like a lot. You feel, because he is Asian, he must be a wise practitioner of Buddhism, when really he drives home in a Lexus, thinking how stupid white people are.
- Heading back to the office you get harassed by stinky kids that have to work just as hard as you for one singular dollar bill, to buy the same bad beer you drink that you think is saving you that very same dollar bill you refuse to give them.
- In between working on “Merchant Accountability” you play a computer game entitled Pong (Retro is soooooo, cool), not noticing your boss looking over your shoulder.
- Drive home trying to quell the anger you have for Biffy, Bongo, and Chuck, while in the passenger seat the office flyer sits face up for the next meeting called “Let’s make work a community, a family of love and understanding”. It is to be held after hours, off-the- clock, Friday night, and is mandatory.
- Stop by the store on the way home and check your American Grocery List
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27 Comments on “American Work Day”
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Very entertaining.
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I really enjoyed this. It sums up the typical work day frighteningly well.
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Nice my putt…
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Canadian work day too!
Excellent!
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This is great! Thanks for helping me smile!
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Informative! :))
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This is awesome 😀
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Thanks for making me smile once again : p
Meno
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very nice–thanks for making me laugh out loud at my desk…highly frowned upon in the office–LOL
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Glad I don’t work in an office! Made me smile, though ☺
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Hahaha – love it! My favourite line in this is about the guy doing everything ‘vegan’ in fish sauce 😛
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I enjoy this post
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Do you live in a large city?
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Sounds like a great reason to find a work from home job!
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Wow! What a horrible day!! How do you do it??!!
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Fortunately, this is not me. But, I see a lot of people who live fragments of these things.
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Mechanical human ,no emotions
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Very witty and wry. US humour at its best (Brit writing here). Takes me back to my MAD magazine days of the 1960s-70s….David Berg would have had a great time illustrating this.
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That sense of humor is a grand survival tool…
Thank you!!
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Really clever, spot-on description. And nauseating if I think about it too much !
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whether this is real or not it, I read it as such a hilarious day…thank you for the read…well done
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Nicely composed and quite funny. Reminds me of a past job.
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Yes, office work. I can say funny now since I’ve long been away from it. For quite some after I was out of offices, I dreamed I was still at one or another and wondering what happened.
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Reblogged this on Elizabeth Kaye Daugherty – Writer.
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Makes me not wanna have a normal job…like EVER! I’ve had several odd jobs and i’m sick of them. Doing what i have to do until i can get to my career. This is niiiiice!
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I’m tired just reading this. It is so true, but so exhausting to contemplate the typical working day summed up so starkly 🙂
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