Friday, February 25, 2005
Once upon a time
...there was a student. This student had a decent, but relatively unexciting job at a big company. If it were up to him, the student would probably not work at all, and spend most of his time playing video games or perhaps starting some of the various projects developing in his mind for the past little while. Unfortunately, people with jobs (the mindless, soulless living dead of society, mostly) give people who try to do fun stuff all the time a lot of flack, and the student doesn't like to make waves, so he goes along with the job at the company for now.
The company has a lot of people working for it, and to accomodate them all, they simply give them a square of space on the floor with a chair and a computer in it. The reason the company gets away with it is that they put feeble walls of foam and cloth around the little space on the floor and call it a workspace, so the workers can continue to hang on to a small scrap of privacy. Of course, if a worker is important enough, he or she gets an office with a door that can be closed so some work can be done, but those workers are proportionally very few to the number of gopher-drones in their cubicles. The student considers himself relatively smart, however, and has figured out another way to get people to not bother him as much by simply looking at the problem differently - instead of an interruption, he decides to look at it as an opportunity to not work. The student jumps at those chances whenever he can.
One day, the company decided that the tan-colored cubes just weren't working any more, and decided to replace them with newer green-gray cubes. This involved moving everyone in the area next to the student out for a little while, ripping everything up, and putting new stuff in. The day this all happened was one of the rare days when the student was ready to work like a good bee, and therefore it managed to completely foil what noble effort there was.
Carpet is stinky, especially when it gets put in freshly. Because the student works in an old tan-colored cube, he can smell all the wonderful fumes coming from the smelly carpet. For a while, it makes him kind of happy, but then it made his head hurt and his nose itch.
The grey-green cube walls are like Ikea furniture. They need to be put together, sometimes with an Allen wrench and some percussive construction. Soon, all the student could hear was the boom-boom-boom of mallets on things. This was also kind of fun for a little while since it was the sound of things getting done, but then it made his head hurt more.
The student decided that something needed to be done. First, he tried getting some Munchie mix to try and cover up the carpet smell with nacho-cheese dust. While the mix lasted, it worked not to badly. The crunch-crunch-crunch sounds of pretzel-manducating* drowned out the hammering for a little while, and the nacho-cheese is welcome at any hour of the day. Once the mix ran out, however, the student was forced to turn to other measures.
He decided that of the two evils, the hammering was worse. Taking his trusty headphones and pushing them as far as he could into his ears, he unleashed the powerful might of Ronny James Dio. Holy Diver and Rainbow in the Dark were able to fend off the pounding next door, but the pounders must have sensed that Dio had entered the fray, and they redoubled their efforts.
The student thought that maybe he would not be able to fend off the carpet smell or the pounding entirely, but maybe some combination would help. In desperation, he turned to the only olfactory remedy at hand: the whiteboard pens.
I can't tell you what happened after that. All I remember is chaos and blue mustaches and the pounding of mallets onto something that sounded remarkably squishy, and certainly un-cube-like. The doctors say that everything is a metaphor created in my brain, but I'm not crazy. One day, the student will come back, and then you'll see.
Oh, how you'll see.
-----------------
* It's like masticating**, but better.
** It's like chewing, but for the dictionary-minded. ¶ 5:00 p.m.
...there was a student. This student had a decent, but relatively unexciting job at a big company. If it were up to him, the student would probably not work at all, and spend most of his time playing video games or perhaps starting some of the various projects developing in his mind for the past little while. Unfortunately, people with jobs (the mindless, soulless living dead of society, mostly) give people who try to do fun stuff all the time a lot of flack, and the student doesn't like to make waves, so he goes along with the job at the company for now.
The company has a lot of people working for it, and to accomodate them all, they simply give them a square of space on the floor with a chair and a computer in it. The reason the company gets away with it is that they put feeble walls of foam and cloth around the little space on the floor and call it a workspace, so the workers can continue to hang on to a small scrap of privacy. Of course, if a worker is important enough, he or she gets an office with a door that can be closed so some work can be done, but those workers are proportionally very few to the number of gopher-drones in their cubicles. The student considers himself relatively smart, however, and has figured out another way to get people to not bother him as much by simply looking at the problem differently - instead of an interruption, he decides to look at it as an opportunity to not work. The student jumps at those chances whenever he can.
One day, the company decided that the tan-colored cubes just weren't working any more, and decided to replace them with newer green-gray cubes. This involved moving everyone in the area next to the student out for a little while, ripping everything up, and putting new stuff in. The day this all happened was one of the rare days when the student was ready to work like a good bee, and therefore it managed to completely foil what noble effort there was.
Carpet is stinky, especially when it gets put in freshly. Because the student works in an old tan-colored cube, he can smell all the wonderful fumes coming from the smelly carpet. For a while, it makes him kind of happy, but then it made his head hurt and his nose itch.
The grey-green cube walls are like Ikea furniture. They need to be put together, sometimes with an Allen wrench and some percussive construction. Soon, all the student could hear was the boom-boom-boom of mallets on things. This was also kind of fun for a little while since it was the sound of things getting done, but then it made his head hurt more.
The student decided that something needed to be done. First, he tried getting some Munchie mix to try and cover up the carpet smell with nacho-cheese dust. While the mix lasted, it worked not to badly. The crunch-crunch-crunch sounds of pretzel-manducating* drowned out the hammering for a little while, and the nacho-cheese is welcome at any hour of the day. Once the mix ran out, however, the student was forced to turn to other measures.
He decided that of the two evils, the hammering was worse. Taking his trusty headphones and pushing them as far as he could into his ears, he unleashed the powerful might of Ronny James Dio. Holy Diver and Rainbow in the Dark were able to fend off the pounding next door, but the pounders must have sensed that Dio had entered the fray, and they redoubled their efforts.
The student thought that maybe he would not be able to fend off the carpet smell or the pounding entirely, but maybe some combination would help. In desperation, he turned to the only olfactory remedy at hand: the whiteboard pens.
I can't tell you what happened after that. All I remember is chaos and blue mustaches and the pounding of mallets onto something that sounded remarkably squishy, and certainly un-cube-like. The doctors say that everything is a metaphor created in my brain, but I'm not crazy. One day, the student will come back, and then you'll see.
Oh, how you'll see.
-----------------
* It's like masticating**, but better.
** It's like chewing, but for the dictionary-minded. ¶ 5:00 p.m.
