This is an outtake from the initial draft of Happy Hour is for Amateurs addressing a subject with which most of us who work in offices for any length of time are quite familiar – daydreaming through your job. Most think it’s a simple reaction to boredom. I agree, but I also think it’s a defense mechanism, a healthy sign you’re normal.
I’ve worked in an office most of my adult life, but never really, fully been there. Anything I see or hear can take me from the moment, set me thinking about something entirely disconnected from everything I’m doing. Any image or sound I come across – the slightest stimulus providing a hint of a basis to start my imagination racing away from Where I’m Stuck. An advertisement for cheap plane tickets on a passing city bus will have me running a reel on what it might be like in Prague that time of year through the balance of most of the morning. A disc jockey’s joke about George Bush crackling out of a radio in the bodega where I pick up the newspaper leaves me musing on what the administration’s plan was – what the end game might have been in that seemingly mindless war, and why we can’t seem to get the oil spigots flowing. Perhaps a conspiracy’s afoot – some nasty plan between the administration and oil companies. But how would the delay help? What would their aim be?
Sometimes it’s just that random image or sound repeating over and over like some warped form of meditation – focusing the mind on an odd, innocuous distraction. And once it’s locked in my head, it’ll often stay for hours, jammed on a rerun loop. I’ll find myself humming and half-singing “Panama” under my breath in the line at the Starbucks on Market Street, unaware as to why – forgetting I’d just heard the song blasting from a car at a stoplight. And the playback’s always vivid. I’ll be standing there, salivating over the first caffeine fix of the day, moving in sync with the line, pulling the dollars out of my pocket and readying myself to pay, in every outward manifestation totally enveloped in the act of preparing for a day at the office. But in my head it’s a different story. The spoken word “solo” near the end of the song is rolling.
I reach down, between my legs… and ease the seat back… The video of the song plays in the background, as immediate and electric as it was when I was thirteen on my parents’ couch, watching it on MTV. She’s blinding, I’m flying… Right behind the rear-view mirror now… David Lee Roth’s sailing over the stage on a suspension pulley above Eddie Van Halen and Michael Anthony, and for a second I’m wondering what it was like in the dressing room after one of their shows – just how many groupies were involved in the orgies. Piston’s popping… Ain’t no stopping now…
“Sir, what size?”
“What?”
“What size?”
“Oh… Venti.”
I’d say this is the brain compensating for short term memory loss by repeating recent recollections until they’re written in the permanent code of its gray matter, the way a third grade Catholic school teacher would have you write in chalk “I will not take the Lord’s name in vain” a thousand times to cure you of using “Goddamnit.” But the information retained is rarely, if ever, useful. Most of it’s trivial, silly, as if intentionally picked to work as a counterweight in my head, to remind me that the “professional” gibberish at hand deserves to compete for my attention with something equally frivolous.
The most accurate explanation is that my mind goes into a protective dream state during the work day, operating coherently on the surface, sacrificing older neurons to the fabrication of briefs, memos and letters. Beneath that killing floor, the newer synapses relax, bathed in loops of amusing images, some old, some new, mixed from various media and experiences, subconsciously updated as I observe the world around me… A pollution screen keeping the toil away from the sharper, more animated areas of the brain I’d rather indulge with entertaining facts and figures. How many home runs Willie Stargell hit (475). Who played guitar – slide guitar – for Jethro Tull in the Rock n’ Roll Circus (Tony Iommi). The identity of the uncredited backing vocalist on “You’re So Vain” (Mick Jagger). That or kill them with vice. Either’s better than wasting those precious neurons masturbating a slop of legalese into papers no one’ll ever give a fuck about.
I already have to give up enough of my time and dignity to suck money out of this machine. It’s not getting my mind.
When are we gonna get an essay on “griefers”? I think it’d be hilarious.
Also, took a few swigs of bombay last night. You weren’t kidding, that stuff is like rubbing alcohol loaded with flavor.
PL: I want to tie that into the concept of Players and Player Haters, which I think are the same thing if you can get paid to make fun of the game. Hasn’t gelled yet. When it does, it’ll be up. Sorry for the delay, but to borrow from Orson Welles in his rotund and near bankrupt period, I’ll post no post until it’s time.
He was great in those Nostradamus specials on HBO, wasn’t he? And not too shabby in that movie about W.R. Hearst, either.
Your real gift as a writer is that you can explain, elegantly and clearly, exactly what people feel but for whatever reason can’t say themselves. I’ve been trying to explain why I never seem focused to my girlfriend for months, but she’s one of those hyper-focused types who genetically Does Not Understand daydreaming at work.
PL: Thank you. I view not being there as a positive. I like to think about shit when I feel like doing so. If that cost me in terms of climbing the ladder because as much as I could do work half-asleep, its hard to truly feign “wanting” the career, so be it.
The reason for the delay in turning on the oil and and the conspiracy behind it is, in my opinion, that the whole reason for the invasion was not so much to gain control of the oil fields as it was to create uncertainty in the oil markets, thus making all short sellers incredibly rich. It doesn’t matter if the oil is running or not, what matters is whether or not the uncertainty is there.
PL: I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree there.* Too far fetched a conspiracy, I think. The reason was to create a foothold in the Middle East. There was already going to be adequate volatility in the oil market from the increased demand in emerging economies. We took Iraq because it was the easy win that gave us a permanent foothold in a region where we had to reassert our dominance.
*Lumbergh, “Office Space.”
I’m sure that you’ve seen this, but it seemed very appropriate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0ZKH2PGA8g&feature=related
PL: That’s brilliant. And spot on. Thank you. And thank Doug.
awesome. i’ve tried to explain my general lack of interest or “career ambition” to certain friends and family forever, but it’s always difficult, especially with family. they’ve spent their whole life working the system, trying to climb the ranks, and the whole thing sorta sickens me.
Tell them its all a joke and they cant understand it. Won’t.
So many days at work I’ll just daydream about how awesome taking trains around Belgium, drinking some Rocheford at the source, will be, and wishing i could just live there
PL: Go there. Nobody will ever question a resume lapse in this economy. Don’t think. Just do it.
I still haven’t bought your book.
I feel a bit guilty. Brainwashing?
PL: Just steal the goddamn thing already. It’s not impossible to find one. If you haven’t the balls to honestly shoplift from a retailer, any law school library will have one. A person told me on Facebook he found one on the wall in a pub in London (I take that as indicator I’m hitting the right audience).
Seriously, I just reread it recently to make some corrections for the softcover version and I was surprised. I don’t read a lot of my stuff after it’s out there for consumption, but I was taken aback. It’s actually a good book. This cause my wife to reread some of it, after which she noted, “You really were an ass.” We then fought about my boorishness for a couple hours and slept in separate rooms. I must have nailed the picture of myself pretty well for a first time author.
This specifically cracked me up:
“Sir, what size?”
“What?”
As it is pretty much how the majority of my interactions go about work, huh…where am I again?
PL: “The last summer job I’d known was driving to New York City at 3:00 AM in the morning to deliver computer files around Wall Street. I’d find myself on Canal Street with a 40 lb box in my hand, wheezing as I sprinted through clouds of exhaust fumes, running myself ragged just to save a minute or two of time. But I never stopped to question why I was pushing myself, or why I took a job that only allowed me to sleep four hours a night. The sooner I did the deliveries, the sooner I got home. If I pushed myself fast enough I could be done in six hours, back home on my parents’ deck, reading the paper before noon. Work was something to be done to get as much money as possible as quickly as possible, entered grudgingly and finished furiously so I could get back to living my life. The people I worked for probably thought I had tremendous “work ethic.” And I did. But who wouldn’t? There’s no incentive on Earth stronger than the promise that the faster and harder you work, the sooner you can stop.”
That’s how I’d describe doing any work but what you like. We decided to go with that as the final comment on the concept of “toil” in the book.
im going in october, but only for two weeks, sadly. might as well ride the current cushy (albeit worthless) job i have now while i still can. its already affording me a month long stay at a gym in thailand.
PL: A month in Thailand… That can be, uh, lascivious… lecherous? You know the words I’m looking for?
The worst of it happens during conversation… I was on a date a few nights ago when my head casually sauntered to the right – where the plasma in the restaurant had a Cubs game going, while she happened to be mid-sentence, ahah.
But I think that’s the id at work. Amidst the shitstorm I was in a week ago, trying to cram a half-quarter’s worth of material into 8 or so hours of studying, I went through the usual motions… “Way to go, shithead.” “When the fuck will I need to know the merits of ‘activity-based costing’, when my immediate future entails staring at Bloomberg Terminal and 20 tabs of excel for 12 hours a day?” “Fuck this shit.” Most importantly, “Why do you put this on yourself, when even a modicum of effort throughout the quarter would put you in a much better position?”
It goes back to the bit you did about finding ‘direction’ through motion, about flying by the seat of your pants, being 15 minutes late, perpetually. Your mind–even if only subconsciously–won’t direct its full attention to the daily toil, on principle. When it does grant you all its efforts, it’s only because you’re staring down a deadline (or the clock, in your example) – when you’re in the moment, and going through the motions.
PL: It’s because we’re not wired to be bored as we must be to make money. It’s just not how humans are built to operate. We’re built to shift more often, react, change our circumstances, and the businesses we work in don’t value that. Oh, they say they do, but they value consistency above all else, and not consistency of results so much, but consistency of personality, a flatness that gets you the accolade most revered in the corporate world – dependability. The ability to be bored and accept it.
Try warping the situation, as I described, I think, in “Shiny White Shoes” (in the archive). I like to picture all kinds of strange shit happening. Picture the boss screwing the woman to his right. Hell, picture an orgy breaking out in the meeting. When you’re talking to the group, imagine what would happen if you started sprinkling coarse slurs or random rants about wild conspiracy theories through your discussion – the looks that might erupt on the faces of the people in the room. It’ll get you smirking/smiling, and that’ll make you look really interested, positive about the whole thing. They might think you’re a go-getter.
i wouldn’t say lecherous.
basically i lived at a muay thai gym hidden away in some suburb of bangkok and trained twice a day. the rest of my time was spent at the tiny internet cafe down the road or reading. it was an extremely simplistic, if grueling, lifestyle, and i was pretty homesick, but it was pretty rewarding at the same time.
i only went into bangkok proper once, and seeing all the whores and being dragged into bars by pimps and shit gets old fast.
besides, you see one dirty big city, you’ve seen them all
PL: Don’t be too hard on whores. Carradine might be alive if he’d chosen a pro over onanism.
Narcissism’ll get you every time.
Been on a Bad Co./Free kick all day… Paul Rodgers, self-indugent bastard that he was could certainly lay it down.
I’ve also found that drinking 8 or 10 beers makes the chest pains and shocks that travel up and down my right arm go away. I assume it thins my blood and makes it easier to pump it through my bloated corpse-to-be…
Oh, happy San Juan Day!
And if I haven’t mentioned this lately… PIZZA! PIZZA!
PL: Mine have moved to my shoulder blade, neck and jaw, and I’m sweating like hell. On the plus side, cheese makes me sleepy now. Much cheaper than Ambien.
I think I love spacing out as much as the next office drone, but I think the come down from spacing out is one of the worst feelings I get during the work day. That one spot where you hear the person talking to you again and you snap back to where you are. God, it’s like a shitty beer hangover compressed into three or four seconds for me.
Thanks for getting Panama stuck in my head by the way.
PL: Could be worse. I could have gone with some of the Hagar stuff.
You know what’s a great riff? “Drop Dead Legs.” Why couldn’t they write all their shit like that?
I have so much disparate shit going through my head these days that I routinely lose track of what I’m saying mid-conversation. Unless I know something I want is coming immediately if I say the right thing. I still have that ability to turn it on when I need that immediate zero to sixty burst of concentration. Kind of a surprise… “Huh, I still have a brain… How about that?” In all other regards, my wiring’s quite torn & frayed.
And I kind of like it.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. I actually enjoy that song.
I’ve seen Van Halen with Roth and with Hagar and while they were both enjoyable in their own ways, Roth blows Hagar out of the water when it comes to on-stage persona. Hagar always seems like he’s working. You’re just watching a guy try his best to make it through a two-hour shift. With Roth, it actually feels like a concert. Or, depending on the crowd and what you’ve consumed, a pretty decent party.
Good call on Drop Dead Legs. Haven’t heard that one in a while.
PL: I couldn’t take “Panama.” I was more an “And the Cradle Will Rock” and “Everybody Wants Some” kind of guy. I also liked a lot of the stuff on “Fair Warning.”
How fitting that I first opened and read this at work.
Law school libraries you say? The law school I attended (for a semester) boasted one of the top 5 (? I think) most complete libraries in the country. Part of me wants to say it is second only to Yale. I’d be interested to see if they have it. I don’t imagine it’d be on one of the prominent display racks with the law reviews. Maybe if I’m ever back in town I’ll scatter a few copies on the tables.
PL: I was surprised at how many bought it. The goofy fucks who categorize books in the publishing and retailing industries listed the thing as a law book, but the title and blurbs clearly indicate it’s a bit different than anything belonging in a law library.
I don’t know why, but I woke up this morning with John Denver stuck in my head. I figured I would just yield to it. So as soon as I got in my car, I scanned to an often overlooked corner of my iPod and put on some “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. The entire way to work I’m stop-and-go-ing on 76 with the windows down and the radio up, yelling along to “Rocky Mountain High” thinking it would clear everything from my head. But I’m here in the office and every so often I find myself drifting off thinking stuff like “I wonder if the last people to hear him do ‘leaving on a jet plane’ feel odd about about the ‘dont know if ill be back again’ part?” The worst part about it is, I’m really not even a fan or anything. Its just stuck there for some reason.
PL: Not a bad artist. And as a counterweight to the stress and annoyance of sitting on that horrible road, it does take the mind to a much better place.
The most appropriate song for a ride to work on 76 would be a Talking Heads tune. You probably know which one I mean. One of their later ones.