Microstory 2202: Were Still Late

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I’m so embarrassed, I woke up late this morning. I guess my body (and my now broken alarm clock) thought it would be funny if today was the opposite of yesterday. Fortunately, Jasmine and I always go into work together, since we live in the same building. I usually meet her in the lobby, but when I didn’t show, she used her copy of my key to check in on me. She didn’t even wait very long, because she was worried that I was hurt again. I was just still in bed, none the wiser. I rushed to pull my clothes on, and brush my teeth, then we ran out of there. We normally take the bus, since I don’t drive anymore, but if we had waited for the next one to come by, we would have been really late. Jasmine, being the friendly neighbor she is with everyone, knows someone else in the building who has a car, so he gave us a ride. We were still late, but it wasn’t serious. Being the boss, I could just claim that I make the rules, so I can do whatever I want, but I don’t want to be like that. Everyone on my staff is dedicated to their jobs, so I need to be just as committed. I can’t really be fired for being a half hour late, but I still owed them an apology. They understood, of course, and didn’t give me any crap about it. I used to set multiple alarms when I was a kid for safety. I should probably look into that again, placing one in a different room to make sure that I actually get up and moving around. That’s it, bye! You don’t deserve more out of me right now.

Microstory 2077: A Break of Such Length

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I don’t want this blog to only be about my job at the nursery, but that’s really all I have going on. I don’t have any hobbies or interests, not on this world, anyway. I suppose I’ll start to get more into gardening, won’t I? It might be weird if I do the same thing in my free time that I do for work, but that may be all I really have. Someday soon, though, I’ll be able to afford my own place, and with it, my own computer. Then I can get back into writing. Until then, I can only work with what I have. Speaking of work, today I was there for only a single shift, from 06:00 to 12:00, instead of all the way to closing at 19:00. That’s the normal duration of a workday around here. People tend to work six hours a day, five days a week. That adds up to only thirty hours per week, instead of the forty where I’m from. Plus, every business in this country—no matter how small—is required to pay for a half hour lunch. A break of such length is required to avoid mistreatment of employees, so it only made sense to the legislators to make that part of the wages. Some businesses are allowed to do it differently by paying half a person’s wage for a full hour lunch break, because it makes the timekeeping easier, but others have you clock back in after your official lunch is done, but then stay on break. That sounds more annoying, and doesn’t allow you to go anywhere for the whole time. The nursery is right on the edge of town, so there aren’t a whole lot of places nearby, but one restaurant serves a particularly eclectic set of dishes, so it’s easy to go there more than once without feeling like you’re eating the same thing every time. It’s a little expensive, but I always get the cheapest thing on the menu. Once I get my own place, I won’t have to worry about borrowing my landlord’s kitchen, so I’ll really try to start making my own lunch. We’ll see how that goes. I’m lazy, so I get tired of that sort of thing.

Microstory 1836: Sleepkiller

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Sleep and I have always had a very volatile relationship. It’s constantly hiding from me, even though I try to be nice, and always treat it well. I’ve tried everything to connect with it, from not watching TV within a few hours of bedtime, to meditation, to of course pills. Nothing seemed to do me any good. The doctors I talked to said it was insomnia. No der, what do I do about it? Nothing I haven’t tried, just keep trying those things. But stay away from the pills, because they can really mess you up. So I did, and I kept failing. I was miserable, and insufferable. I was fired from my job, not just because they caught me sleeping a time or two, but because I was agitated and ill-mannered to my co-workers. I had had enough. Something had to be done, and I didn’t care any more what the consequences were. So I went back to the pills, but I’m not talking about melatonin, or a tiny little sedative. I went for the big stuff. I was going to fall unconscious every night, whether my body wanted to or not. And if that shaved time off my lifespan, then so be it. It wasn’t like I had much to live for anyway, especially if I couldn’t even function during the day. I knew it was going to be rough, particularly at the start, so I carefully prepared for it. I set three different alarms. My regular alarm clock was set to the highest volume. A friend of mine tinkered with it so it would play the noise and the radio at the same time. My smartwatch vibrated simultaneously, which I always found jarring and annoying. Five minutes later, the television in the living room was programmed to flip on, again at the highest volume. I knew this would piss off my neighbors, which would motivate me to actually get the hell out of bed to unplug it quickly before then. I thought it was a foolproof plan, but I was wrong.

A new personality sometimes took over at night. At first, I didn’t know what was going on. Things were moved around, the refrigerator was open, the floor mat was upside down. I realized that I was sleepwalking. I had heard of that being a side effect, but never thought it would happen to me. Okay, that was okay, I could deal with it. Place a lock on the bedroom door, and line the floor against the walls with pillows. I could still hurt myself, but at least I would land softly if I fell. It didn’t work, as you might imagine. I still found weird things the next morning. Nothing truly bad had happened, though. I didn’t have any stairs, and I never once got in my car, or left the house. I would wake up feeling a little weird and dizzy, but I was otherwise better rested than ever in my life. So I kept taking the drugs, careful not to overdose, and kept just cleaning up my place when I came home from work. I did go through a lot of knives, though. My sleepwalking self had a habit of throwing them away, and always on trash pick-up day, like he periodically felt that it was time to refresh the collection. Again, fortunately, I never hurt myself with them. Then it happened. After all this goofiness, I did something truly terrible, and I still can’t explain it. I did get in my car, and I did leave the house, and I drove onto the highway. Evidently, I came across a horrible car accident, a victim of which I managed to pull from the wreckage. For whatever reason, I scooped her up, drove her to an industrial park, and threw her off the roof of a two-story building. I read about it in the paper the next day, and used my GPS history to put the pieces together. She didn’t die, but she was seriously hurt, and it was all my fault. I can’t live with myself anymore. So I’m back on that roof, but by myself this time, and completely awake. Goodbye forever.

Microstory 1795: Drudgery Clock

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It wasn’t really until the day I graduated from college that I realized I had no direction in life. I had this liberal arts degree that didn’t lend itself to a particular career, and while everyone said it opened doors for me, I didn’t believe them, and I would find out later that I was right to have my doubts. I spent years, unemployed off and on, only able to find temporary work, and just hoping someone would ask me to stick around. I became so disillusioned by the whole thing that I gave up trying to be what people told me I should. I began to be more honest in interviews, and for the most part, that didn’t work out. People don’t like honesty. They want you to pretend to be perfect so they can justify hiring you, and then when you make a mistake, they have a justification for getting pissed at you for being dishonest. Completely contradictory is the resting state of middle management, and I will die on that hill, if need be. Ha-ha. I never stopped trying. I kept applying until I told one interviewer that the reason I never last long in any position is because no one has given me a real chance. That seemed to speak to him, so he accepted me for a fulltime, permanent job. I was elated and relieved. There is no such thing as a hundred percent job security, but I felt safer than ever, and that was enough to keep me from stressing out over it so much. The months ticked by, and before I knew it, I had been there for two years, which was longer than I had ever been at one place before. It felt like a huge win, but it was also incredibly depressing. I started to realize that I didn’t like being the veteran. I didn’t like it when someone who had been there for one year told the person who had been there for a week that I was the one to help them. It made me feel weird. That’s when I got a promotion that moved me to a new facility.

Ah, it was like getting a fresh start. I was the new guy again. Sure, I was still working for the same company, but it was different enough to reset my internal drudgery clock. But then two years rolled around, and I got that feeling again. People came, and they went, and it always felt like they were moving on to better things while I just stayed here as a nobody. I saw one of them again once. He had the misfortune of delivering me a sandwich, which actually proved that he didn’t move onto something better, but at least he got out. At least he reset his drudgery clock. I needed that, and I needed to feel good about myself. I quit my job. It was the first time I had ever done that, and it felt amazing. I was the one in charge of my own fate; not someone else. That was incredible. Now I just needed to find something else. It was a little frustrating, going back to the beginning of the search, but it wasn’t too hard, and my drudgery clock was at zero. It stayed there for two more years, which was clearly my limit. I was smarter this time, and applied to something new before I quit the current job. So I just kept doing this a few times, staying in one place for two years, and then getting something else. It didn’t have to be better, it just had to be new. Over time, this technique became harder to sustain. As my résumé grew, I found the interviewers to be less enchanted with me. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I hold down a job? I couldn’t rightly tell them the truth, or it would make things worse. I couldn’t warn them that I didn’t care about their organization, and that I didn’t have any ambitions. So I didn’t. I went back to lying. It didn’t matter. I didn’t look very good on paper, and before I knew it, I retired after thirty years in the same crappy job. That delivery guy I met years before? He was my boss.

Microstory 1741: The Clock

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I hate this clock. It reminds me of the worst years of my life. When I was a child, my foster parents would time everything I did. Homework, chores, umm...well, I guess there isn’t a third thing on that list, because those were the only things I did. I suppose showering isn’t a chore, but that was timed as well. They said they were getting me ready for the real world. Apparently, in their jobs, every task they completed was measured and recorded, and that was how they got paid. I asked them a few times, did they get paid more for more complicated tasks, but they said no. The rate didn’t change at all. The point was to keep track of when they were working, and when they weren’t, such as when they were walking to the location of the next task, or using the restroom. They were expected to be at work for ten hours a day, but they only get paid for their recorded time. They were so proud of themselves. Other workers recorded an average of eight and a half hours of actual work, which meant an hour for lunch, and another half hour for the in between times. My foster parents, however, averaged nine hours and forty-five minutes. They said they organized tasks so that it was easier to switch from one to the other, they literally ran when they had to, and they...well, let’s just say they weren’t too careful when it came to their bathroom breaks. They sometimes saw that as an opportunity, because even though janitorial services weren’t technically in either of their job descriptions, they could still get paid for cleaning the facilities. The word diaper was thrown around once or twice too. They actually acted like I should aspire to be as hard-working as them one day. I never bought into it. I don’t worship the clock.

My parents are dead now. They left this world with nothing, and not just to spite me. They worked so hard in their jobs that the company didn’t want to promote them, and they didn’t want to be promoted either. A promotion would mean a salary, and more freedom than they could have handled. They hated their bosses, who didn’t work hard enough, and focused too much on their personal lives. My parents didn’t have lives of their own. They were too exhausted when they got home that they ate their dinner, read something boring, then went to bed. After I came into their lives, they had to squeeze in a lot of strict overbearing criticism, so they couldn’t read as much anymore. When they were too old to work, since they didn’t have any hobbies, they had absolutely nothing to do. You can ask the professionals what killed them, and they’ll give you a scientific answer, but I contend that they died from the realization that their lives were always pointless. The company where they worked for forty-five years closed shortly before the deaths, because they too were old-fashioned, and ultimately meaningless in a world that moved on without them. So here I am with virtually nothing. My parents were in so much debt that the bank had to repossess nearly everything they owned. Fortunately, it seems to have covered it, so I won’t have to make up the difference. They even managed to leave me with one thing: this damn clock. It represents the futility in work for work’s sake. It spins around in circles, and never goes anywhere. Yeah, I hate this clock, but I also need it. For as much as it pains me to see every day, it’s also a consistent reminder of what I don’t want to be, and how I don’t want to raise my own baby boy, who’s scheduled to make his debut in three months. It shows me that time only means anything when we use it to enjoy doing the things we love, with the people we love.