Mensch-Maschine
Dentists, I have recently read, take their lives more than any other profession, barring tollbooth workers and doctors. This statistic seems to make some amount of sense to me, seeing that what this profession mostly entails is standing over another person with your hands crammed down their throat as you ask them questions which can only be answered in monosyllabic grunts and garbled incoherence. So close, you are, but so far away. The same could be said of toll booth workers, who (with the exception of the dude at the Hudson exchange, where you pick up the Rip Van Winkle bridge, who mirthfully takes your change at 2:00 am as you make your way from Bard college, haphazardly ripping through the mountainside with reckless abandon) also have the most overtly pointless interactions with human beings. I think about this as I whiz down Washington Avenue in the back of a car last week, driving past the girl lifelessly waving traffic by whatever baroque construction they have set up there in the middle of the night. No traffic is on the road at this time, and no one appears to be doing any work, but there she stands, in her reflective orange uniform, waving your car through with an illuminated glow stick. “Is that what that girl does all night?” I want to know. “That’s totally outrageous!” I tell everybody. I cannot believe. It seems, at least, evocative of some kind of statistic, but mostly I use it as conversational fodder throughout the night, telling this to people who look back at me blankly and walk away.

Oh, man, I get so uptight about working conditions. I can’t believe a job like mine even exists, and that they haven’t refined computer systems to a point where they can more efficiently load that information in there. Charlie Chaplin made this commentary 80 years ago in Modern Times, but we don’t seem to be so up-to-date, here in modern times. What my job basically entails is entering dog-licensing information into a computer database for future referencing. I keep getting paranoid about sitting in front of a computer all day, the cancerous tubers it’s planting in my brain. And then I come home and look at my own computer, clack out an email, fret over another blog entry. It all seems pretty self-destructive to me. I explain this to my sister later, telling her all about how relaxed the actual job atmosphere is. No constraints are there in Information Systems, and no allotted work to be done. Mostly, it’s the job itself, I explain indignantly: the actual work, and the malleable worker robot drones who I have to work with all day. It’s kind of alienating. What is your problem, my sister wants to know. I don’t know, is all I can tell her. I don’t know.

Tonight is another night, the same as every other night. A light drizzle comes down, fogging over the windows in a car. I have to go to the bank, slicing through town, driving in a straight line past the capitol building to where I need to go. I end up see the girl waving construction through on Washington one more time, and I look out at her, my face pushed right up against the fogged window of the car. Her eyes lock on mine and she waves at me, sitting for moment that seems suspended in time. And then the light turns green and she motions to me with the bright orange glow stick of a wand she carries, magically, unenthusiastically.

Get me back on your leash
Office work coincides with respiratory illness. There’s something about the airtight atmosphere, built to minimize distraction by locking all productivity inside, and with it a host of airborne poxes, sweeping over me like easy prey. I’m new yet. I have yet to build up an immunity, and sick time. Joy, however, my porcine cohort and proletarian muse, has accumulated an entire onslaught of free days off with pay, and so it is with no indiscretion that she calls in sick once a week. There’s kind of an office in-joke about, with which I am greeted yesterday. “I hate work,” she tells me. “I guess I’m just kind of lazy.” I think this over for a bit, wondering what else I might have in common with this Frosted Flakes-consuming, popcorn-crunching co-worker. “I just like to lie in bed all day and eat,” she tells me cheerfully. And so it is with no surprise that she does not show up for work today. We knew she wasn’t coming, another coworker tells me. Whenever she brings her sweater and starts saying she’s cold that’s usually an indication that she’s not coming in the next day. She’s been doing this about once a week for years now. Apparently, two years ago, she went so far as to throw her work in the trashcan, which earned her a trail, whereby she got to spend the next two years at home with pay before getting her job back, and with it a whole bunch of vacation time. And so now, here she is, entering dog licenses into a computer and using her vacation time with all of the frivolity of a teenager with a limitless allowance. Such is the nature of working in the public sector, an environment where you can demonstrate your disdain for your job by actually throwing your work into a trashcan and not get fired. I spend my days in deep contemplation, peering out of a window that reveals a serene meadow. It will be fall soon, I think. Things will be changing.

Everyone I’ve encountered here is incredibly bizarre, but then I’m probably not the right person to be offering commentary on mental sanity. I like to think I have one up on other people because I’ve spent the entirety of my life avoiding situations precisely like this one, but I always find myself in the strange predicament of talking to these same people and wondering, why don’t I have any vacation time? A question which never reveals a whole lot of clarity. But I really just have to come clean and admit, this place is not too bad. Where else can you openly throw your work in the trashcan and be rewarded two years off, with pay? I read True Romance magazine in the break room and eat the free apples that someone has left. What’s so true about these stories, though, I don’t know. Today’s tale is all about the disillusionment of life in the big city, the dream gone astray, and the boy left behind in the small town. Is there any going back? Will he still be there on returning. I never find out, because I almost pass out from inertia.

Back in the office, my coworkers are still discussing Joy’s departure, and how unfair it is that they have to come to work. They’re getting all riled up and trying to get me to join in. I don’t really get it, though, honestly. Although her days off don’t affect any of us negatively (except for me of course, who is without humor for the majority of the day), they still insist on bemoaning the fact that she doesn’t come to work. “What do you think?” they want to know. But all I can do is blow my nose and cough out loud. I’d like a day off. But the whole thing is, I’m only temp. I don’t have any.