It Isn't Easy Doing Nothing

This is my last week here at Giant Pharmaceutical House.  Actually, I’m not even going to finish out the week since my contract ends on the 30^th and they don’t want to pay me for another day.  I’d call them cheap shits, but I can kind of understand it for accounting reasons.  Besides, it’s like having a four day July 4^th holiday … and I don’t even have to go back to work on Tuesday.  Score!

This time I was here for a little over four months after being laid off for about a month.  They had overshot on layoffs and their ace-in-the-hole employee had been unexpectedly called up by the National Guard to serve in some God-forsaken place for a year.  He wasn’t really crazy about the job , so I think he was just as happy to be assigned to a war zone rather than do this shit.

So, I was called back, because I already knew the job, and mostly because they figured that all of the nifty CEO jobs in my area were filled and I’d be available.

People ask me if I like working off and on like this, but I tell them I don’t mind.  Except for the last week of the assignment.

That’s when there’s nothing to do.  And trying to look like you’re doing something when you actually have nothing to do is almost harder than working.  This morning I have totally meaningless paperwork strewn across my desk, and I have all of my programs up on the computer.  However, I’m really just messing around on the internet.  But once I’m tired of facebook and Twitter and the newswires and the magazines and the store ads … there’s still about 6 goddamn hours left in the day.

And that’s when time really slows down.  Remember when you were in grade school and it was a sunny day in Spring and it was 2:00 in the afternoon and school didn’t let out until 3:15 and for some fucking reason they had put that Simplex clock up right over the teacher’s desk in the front of the room and it just “ticked” away the seconds and you got so bored that you kept timing yourself by it to see how long you could hold your breath, but then that got old and it was only 2:10?

Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

But, at 3:15 in the afternoon on Thursday I’ll be a free man for a while.  Thinking about that is nice …

But it doesn’t make the fucking time go any faster.

Tick … Tick … Tick …