another day in my life

sit down and let me give you a run down of how a productive day of work should look. i know there are a lot of theories out there about "getting things done," "going to meetings," and even crazy things like "answering emails," but i assure you these are all a hoax. that's what the man wants you to do. in order to be truly productive in the workplace, you really need to just open your mind to the endless possibilities of staring blankly at people until they think of something for you to do to get you to leave them alone. as a prime example, here's a little rundown of my day today. call it a waste of time, call it irresponsible... call it what you will but i call it an opportunity to make sure everybody i work with knows that i don't have anything to do and am proud of it. it's like wearing two different socks to school in 3rd grade, and instead of being embarrassed about it, telling all of your friends about how cool it is until they believe you.

7:50am - arrived at my desk, hit the power button on my computer. knowing full well that my computer takes over 15 minutes to actually start up, i walked one lap of my floor, rinsed out an old styrofoam cup on my desk, made some tea, carved my name into barbie's leg with a push-pin, drank my tea, then turned on the monitor.

8:10am - opened up internet explorer and read every scrap of news i could find. digg, latimes.com, buffalonews.com, theonion.com. if it says news on it, i probably read it.

8:45am - walked another lap of my floor scouting for free food. free food has become very hard to identify. i think that people are on to me. normally, i would dismiss a plate of cookies as unwanted if i could detect that they were in a place where there was a meeting where people left, help myself to as many as i could carry, and bring them back to my desk. this morning i ran across a plate of brownies sitting on a small table by a display case. what really threw me off were the number of people sitting at their desks in the area. normally, these are the kind of people who spend all day in meetings, and since they were all at their desk, i thought that they might have gotten the brownies so they could work at their desks and still have bad food nearby. there was also the factor of the small table where they were sitting. had they been sitting around the table eating and having a meeting and just stepped away for a moment? surely if i took all of their brownies and they got back, they would follow my crumb trail to my desk and fire me on the spot. this is when i invented the 10 minute rule. i decided that if i spot some loose food, i can leave it be, come back in 10 minutes, and if it still looks unwanted, it's fair game. nobody in their right mind would leave brownies/cookies/bags of chips laying around for over 10 minutes unattended.

9:30am - started drawing pictures for a little "side project" i'm working on. i think my boss ran out of stuff for me to do, came up with a concept, and asked me to further the concept. i get the distinct feeling that as soon as i clean up my desk, these drawings and my concept will be thrown away with all of the candy wrappers they find underneath my computer.

11:30am - lunchtime.

12:15pm - done with lunch, back to the desk to watch some angry beavers episodes c/o tv-links.co.uk. seriously this is going to be my new best friend on slow days of work. while i was watching these, i drew some more pictures, played with some pennies, and took another lap of the office to see if there was any work for me to do... no luck.

2:00pm - decided that it was time for a tour of one of the other buildings, called up another intern working there, and hung around her building for a while. now, when i say that i have to get creative at wasting time, i mean that i have to get creative. this other building which houses most of the electronic games design people has an entire room. yes, an entire room devoted to video games. there is a giant leather couch, lots of squishy things to sit on, a plasma hdtv, ps3, wii, xbox360, ps2, and an hd-dvd player. and a surround sound system. i don't get any work done here, but whatever scrap of work that i do get done, simply would not get done. i don't think i would even leave the room to go to the bathroom if we had one of those in my building.

3:30pm - walked around the toy store, went to the little mailroom, discovered that the stamp machine gives "change" in 1c stamps. i now have more 1c stamps than i know what to do with... i'll probably stick one to barbie and see if the folks at the post office are kind enough to mail her to sandy clause.

4:00pm - hung around some tables where people sometimes set up hot wheels tracks or other toys to "test" them and make sure that everything works, asked about a cool looking track, and got to play with it for a half hour.

4:30pm - got an email about my intern exit interview, started preparing ways to kindly say that i hated every minute of working here because it would have been more exciting to show up to 9 hours of chinese water torture every day for 3 months than it was to work here. i'm still working on the words for that...

and now, i'm typing this thing, thinking about how much time i can spend cleaning my desk tomorrow (if i do it right, possibly the entire day) and wondering if it is still hot out and how much i want to sit on the beach this entire weekend and do nothing.

i also found this article about napping at work, which really sums up everything i've thought about when daring to nap at work. it really is dangerous, but if you plan it right, nobody knows the difference. headphones are key too, you can easily pretend to be listening to music so loud that you don't notice your boss behind you asking you how the spreadsheet is coming until they tap you on the shoulder.
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Lots of people want to take naps at work. This is very dangerous and should only be attempted by the most seasoned napper. No matter how many news magazines do stories on how taking naps improve employee performance in other countries, you will never be paid to sleep here in the U.S of A. The USA work ethic hates sleep, even the good “8 hours a night” kind. If you must take a nap you might try this idea from the “Nap Play Book”. Nap #643 -- Fill a coffee mug. Find a low traffic area in the office and spill the contents of the mug on the floor. Lay down on the floor face first with your coffee mug laying on the spill. The purpose is to make it look like you fell, passed out or tripped on something. After you place yourself in position, go to sleep. If someone finds you, they’ll rush to your aide. Have an excuse ready. They’ll think you are hurt or sick, but don’t let them send you home. You don’t want to eat up sick leave, that’s your personal time. Never repeat this exercise in the same location and don’t do it too often. This nap will be less effective if you snore. If you snore while you sleep it’s tougher to pass off sleep as unconsciousness. (Naps can buy you any where from 10 minutes to several hours depending on where you take the nap)