You are an airplane/ you are a strong and dangerous machine
The days while working proceed as though they were transpiring in a lock groove. The morning routine becomes ritual. You find yourself acquiescent, and are surprised by that same giving in. The alarm clock goes off and you obediently shut it down, with hardly a passing thought. You eat a meal of vitamin-enriched cereal, grinding the grains slowly and methodically between your clenched jaw, while looking at the front page of the paper. It is these calories that will propel you, forward, out of the door and into the world, where the woman on the interstate will be following too closely behind. In the rearview you can determine clearly that she is chugging a Mountain Dew Big Slam and is in a real hurry to get wherever she is going. Her job is pretty good, you imagine, pulling over and letting her pass. But for you there is no hurry. You know full and well what awaits. In a little while, it will be the grating voice of “Ginny,” and the contemplation of all the places which would be good to hide in. You will be moved to contemplate that same name, and will think of the infinite possibilities: did the curly-haired espouser of this name actually want to be named Jennifer, and thus the comparative-sounding value was just really attractive to her. Or alternately, is she just a big fan of late-period Tom Hanks films? And you will contemplate even further your own inability to pronounce this name, for the fear of bursting out laughing. Where you will be moved to a place of contemplating your own contemplation. When Ginny will suddenly snap you out of it once more, making your own alarm clock sound like the pleasant tinkle of a dinner bell, and something you are way less resistant to.

Oh oh oh is the job ever crushing. And the weird thing is, despite the continuous declarations to everyone around about how terrible this experience has been, and how it’s the worst job ever, somehow all of that has been misinterpreted into asking if we can come back again this summer. Our copying skills have evidently wooed them to the point that they are asking now about further services. “Yeah, well—uh, I don’t know.” You want to treat the situation delicately. I’ve worked enough temp jobs to know that you never want to march into a situation and declare that the life that these people have found perfectly acceptable is for you evocative of jumping out of a second story window. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” I tell them. In the meanwhile, I proceed to make copies and copies, lose track of time, punch out and go home. My entire day is so rigorously set up that I have the minutes planned out. I have been totally subverted by the workday and it’s crushing. Can’t go out tonight. I’ve got an early day tomorrow. But it’s true. When you’re an alien to working like I am, you realize how fundamentally wrong it is. The 8 hour work day, the office environ. The automations plugging away on Automation Lane. You want to do something to break the horrendous cycle. Something jarring. You want to invoke the wrecking ball rhetoric which will break the implacable shell of this terrible subversion. But mostly, you’re tired and it’s past your bedtime.