But on the other hand, there’s nothing I hate more than a big-time slacker. Hey, you know that paycheck you’ve been getting since you got hired here? Yeah, I know, it’s great. The thing is, they don’t just hand those out for exhibiting your extensive collection of witty t-shirts and drinking coffee like a fiend.
The former is a product of under-stimulation for pretty much my entire life. Being just enough above the average intelligence of my classmates to get decent grades with very little effort has haunted me since I was old enough to have homework. Study skills? Those are for people who can’t write an A- term paper in one night. Unfortunately, those sorts of skills are employed in many other areas of life. As I have sadly discovered.
The latter is from something instilled in me since childhood, handed down from my parents, lovingly dubbed the ‘Protestant work ethic’ (not to say Protestants corner the market on getting stuff done or anything. That’s just silly.) Doing what you’ve got to do to the best of your ability, simply because you’ve been tasked with doing it. Or something like that.
Anyway, this is one of the many ways in which I’m practically schizophrenic (if such a thing is possible, which I’m inclined to believe it is. But not making light of mental illness, which is a serious thing. But I majored in Psychology, so it’s okay for me to make jokes about it.) Even now, as I write this sitting at my desk covered in expensive computing equipment, I’m completely torn between avoiding my work at all costs because it is boring and dreadful and I don’t really like doing it, and fricking getting to work because I have a lot of stuff to do and if I don’t do it then it doesn’t get done and I’m only shooting myself in the foot for tomorrow.
It’s like a cartoon. You know the ones. The shoulder angel and devil making equally ridiculous polar opposite assertions about how to proceed in any given situation.
‘Seriously, you can just come in early tomorrow and get this stuff done. You had a hard weekend, just relax. No one really expects to get a lot of work done on a Monday. It’s no big deal. I mean, at least you’re at your desk! That’s more than you can say for some of your co-workers at this moment. Plus, you’re on salary; you can just make up the time later.’ ‘What the flippin’ HMF *&#@! are you doing?! We both know you’re not going to make it in early tomorrow, and you know you didn’t get enough s*#@ done last week! Do you really want to go into this week knowing you’ve wasted half your frickin’ day on Pinterest?! Can you live with the guilt? Can you?! You’d better hope they don’t check your browsing history girl, because you are so f-ing fired if they do! In fact, you should just quit right now for being such a terrible worker. Do you think they pay you to sit there and make sure the mutha-flippin’ Internet is working?’
I know. My shoulder angel is kind of crass. I think it’s all the caffeine; she’s kind of high-strung already.
So, what to do, what to do. Buckle down and get to work? Uh…yeah…tried that. (Hello procrastination station, I seem to have been rerouted from my intended destination. Create my own meme website? Well…I guess I didn’t really need to go there.) Just live with the fact that I am going to be a horrible, inefficient , sub-par employee banking on the fact that it will take a few months before they around to firing me? Because that’s a really brilliant plan. (Hi Mom and Dad! Mind if I move back in for a while? Uh…yeah…my job…well, you see…) Give up “working” to become a nomadic goat herder who sells weird beaded jewelry on Etsy?
Actually…that doesn’t sound that bad. I wonder how one gets into goat herding?
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