That Friday Feeling

It’s a Friday afternoon. It’s just after 2pm my lunch time is over and I have 4 hours before I can go home. Someone in our office is leaving today and in his leaving speech helpfully pointed out that he believes that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be and that the merger a year ago really changed things and that the good old days are over. Well so does everyone else but as he must have found about the only job going in the city good luck to him and commiserations to us.
I wonder if Friday afternoon for every office worker in the world is full of that utter inertia when your mind is already having the weekend but you body is still stuck to your PC and your fingers still look like they have to be tapping.
I have listened in my lunch hour to Andy Hamilton’s comedy on radio 4 Old Harry’s Game which is always entertaining although I am not too happy about the demise of Gary the Demon or that God has got bored of creation and turned it over to some newly promoted Project Managers. I liked Gary he was a very kind well-spoken demon – even if he was somewhat dim, and God’s voice, with the secret name of Nigel, was only rivalled by Joss Akland’s God in Piccolo Mundo.
I am even checking my Yahoo SPAM mailbox religiously and have just discovered how to get a bigger penis, a fake university degree and government funding although I have missed the e-mails offering me the chance to make lots of money even if I am really dumb. They seemed to have stopped since the bank crisis – if something looks too good to be true. . .
I have the eternal optimism, that only the truly deluded can have, that I am one yahoo e-mail away from an afternoon of entertainment or one work e-mail away from having something to do.
I fear this is also the problem with being in my mid-thirties and being childless. I am sure if I had children the utter boredom and drudgery that comprises the daily lot of motherhood (and before all you Mothers get antsy – I know this is true my Mother told me this and she really loves me and would never lie) would make any kind of outing with adults, even if it is to work, seem stimulating by comparison. For the childless work becomes the drudgery you do to be able to get out and do things that stimulate and excite you, for Mothers of young children work is the excitement that keeps you sane.
So, my solution to my Friday inertia? Find a random sperm donor, have a child and this will seem exciting – hmmm. But ohh look, its now 2.30 and I just got a work e-mail! If I’m slow it’ll keep me going until 6!

Earphones and Inaugurations

While I still officially have one of the most boring jobs in the world I have just been banned from using earphones at work. I think that three of us have been told this and it is my fault as I got caught watching the inauguration yesterday by my boss who is the type of person likely to ask ‘who’s inauguration and why is this such a big deal?’

Not allowing your staff to listen to music or the radio or have earphones during work might, at first glance, appear to be a good thing. However I, for example, am now looking very industrious typing away on a Word file which is in fact this blogpost. Had I been left alone I would be listening to a radio 4 programme on child trafficking in Liberia while searching through various Excel spreadsheets and cutting and pasting depending on the information on the various files. No headphones, no spreadsheet. I am just beginning to realise the magnitude of how much work I could get on with while distracted and how little will now get done.

Rather than actually dealing with these speadsheets I have now googled (is anyone elses life becoming so virtual that it isn’t very different from the Matrix?) How to Deal With Boredom At Work.

According to careerknow-how.com if boredom is left unattended (ie if I don’t get my earphones back) it can get so intense and last so long that it will leads to burnout which is a costly and potentially dangerous threat to my life and my career, To cut to the chase I will end up a depressed alcoholic selling the Big Issue on your street.

However professional speaker Michelle Yozzo Drake at michelleydrake.com (the time that woman must have spent thinking up her URL) on her blog tells us to face the facts that some jobs are just dead boring and we need to look on balance at the benefits and see if it is worth the boredom. For example they may offer you health insurance so that when you do become a depressed alcoholic you can go to the Priory instead of an NHS psychiatric ward. You may be the only person you know in your social circle who isn’t facing redundancy, that is a positive. On the other hand you may be bored, burnt out and facing redundancy- the good thing about that is you will be so busy saving in case you get made redundant that you won’t be able to become an alcoholic, just depressed but you can still get Prozac on the NHS.