Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Eleven Pages First Thing In The Morning

Every morning at about 7:15 I get an updated project overview in my inbasket. Every morning I must print this and bring it to the 9 o'clock meeting. Since there are ten people in that meeting, I've stopped whining about the environmental impact of our process. One hundred and ten pages a day, plus the spare copies the coordinator brings.
And anything else which needs printing. And there is a lot of that stuff. It makes me emotional. And my coworkers have learned that if I don't get coffee very quickly my mood deteriorates and my productivity ramps down to nothing and I cry a little more than most of them are comfortable with.
Usually the other guy on my team who gets in early just stands at the door of my cubicle holding his coffee cup until I get up to get coffee. No words are needed. We usually maintain the silence until after coffee is purchased. We both know it is probably safer.
This morning he spoke.

Coworker: Coffee?

Me: Should I be concerned by your inflection? I noticed it went up at the end as though there were uncertainty. Do you know something about the coffee?

Coworker: No, not specifically. Sorry for the confusion. I was just hoping to get an idea of the time-frame surrounding the inevitable coffee. I'm impressed that you noticed my inflection. I guess that is why you are in security.

Me: It may very well be. Where did I leave my pants?

Coworker: Did you say "Where did I leave my pants?"?

Me: Never mind. Here they are. Let's go.

I've given up on the Wii. Having never seen one outside the display model anywhere, I have no choice left but to consider them fictional like unicorns, fairies and giraffes.
In researching other options, I've managed to come up with even more questions than I started with. For example, what is the point of "included leather padded arm rests and the new ergonomic layout of the controls" in the PainStation?
I doubt they will offer that through MyCokeReward Points, anyway.
For the record, thanks in no small part to all the emailed in codes from you guys, there are over 8,000 points lying in wait in my account for something awesome to be offered. There is a pretty staggering buffet of crap up there now. My hope is that by the time they offer a Toyota Prius I'll have enough points to have one delivered to my house on the back of some giant, smoke-belching diesel flat-bed truck, ensuring a carbon-neutral status within a few decades. I've got time, after all.
It's not like the planet is going anywhere.
Coffee is good.

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