Tuesday, October 07, 2003
THE GREAT DEBATE (or "An Easy Entry To Ignore"): To work or not to work, that's today's question. On the pro-work side: A full week's worth of downtime means the next paycheck is going to be a bit on the small side. To help alleviate that, the study I'm currently working on is one where nobody gets sent home, meaning I'm almost guaranteed a full seven hour day.
The cons consist mostly of the people I was working beside yesterday. A number of people at the survey job show up with the sole intent of getting sent home. The girl I was sitting next to--I'm not calling her a "woman" because that would indicate a level of maturity I wasn't seeing--was just going through the motions, and yet seemed genuinely surprised why nobody wanted to work with her over the phone, so she was wishing out loud that she was heading home. By lunchtime, I was wishing she was heading home, too. When you're sitting next to somebody who says she wants to go home once or twice, sometimes you can sympathize. When she says it over and over for seven hours, you want to strangle her.
She was also unreeling an endless stream of profanities between calls, and I wouldn't be a language Nazi about how people express themselves if it wasn't for the fact that my telephone was less than six inches away from her, so if I stopped talking, she's dropping F-bombs over my phone. I like to breathe, so occasionally I have to stop talking.
On my other side was a young guy. Since the university fall session came back, I seem to be the "buffer zone" between a guy and a girl who are intent on talking around me. On top of that, he came back from lunch smelling like a liquor store, which is a good way to get booted out of the building during business hours if you get caught. Since stale coffee breath is a hardcore distraction, you can imagine what Mister Cocktail Hour did for me.
Add it all up, and you get another day that makes me wish I'd have taken that library job after high school.
On top of all that, in spite of the fact that I called it an early night, I've been up since a little bit before 4 in the morning thanks to my goofed-up internal clock. At the moment, I'm really feeling the gears shift into neutral, which has the potential to be a bad thing. Besides having to be alert to be effective on a telephone survey job, I've almost fallen asleep at the wheel at red lights after insomnia nights, and at least once I've blacked out at the wheel while in motion...only for a second, but that's long enough to scare the hell out of me.
Should I commit or should I blow? There's a devil on my shoulder telling me to skip out, and the Masturbating Bear is filling in for the angel today, so it's not a fair fight by any means. I'll let you know how it comes out.
(UPDATE @ 11am: The devil won. Go figure.)
The cons consist mostly of the people I was working beside yesterday. A number of people at the survey job show up with the sole intent of getting sent home. The girl I was sitting next to--I'm not calling her a "woman" because that would indicate a level of maturity I wasn't seeing--was just going through the motions, and yet seemed genuinely surprised why nobody wanted to work with her over the phone, so she was wishing out loud that she was heading home. By lunchtime, I was wishing she was heading home, too. When you're sitting next to somebody who says she wants to go home once or twice, sometimes you can sympathize. When she says it over and over for seven hours, you want to strangle her.
She was also unreeling an endless stream of profanities between calls, and I wouldn't be a language Nazi about how people express themselves if it wasn't for the fact that my telephone was less than six inches away from her, so if I stopped talking, she's dropping F-bombs over my phone. I like to breathe, so occasionally I have to stop talking.
On my other side was a young guy. Since the university fall session came back, I seem to be the "buffer zone" between a guy and a girl who are intent on talking around me. On top of that, he came back from lunch smelling like a liquor store, which is a good way to get booted out of the building during business hours if you get caught. Since stale coffee breath is a hardcore distraction, you can imagine what Mister Cocktail Hour did for me.
Add it all up, and you get another day that makes me wish I'd have taken that library job after high school.
On top of all that, in spite of the fact that I called it an early night, I've been up since a little bit before 4 in the morning thanks to my goofed-up internal clock. At the moment, I'm really feeling the gears shift into neutral, which has the potential to be a bad thing. Besides having to be alert to be effective on a telephone survey job, I've almost fallen asleep at the wheel at red lights after insomnia nights, and at least once I've blacked out at the wheel while in motion...only for a second, but that's long enough to scare the hell out of me.
Should I commit or should I blow? There's a devil on my shoulder telling me to skip out, and the Masturbating Bear is filling in for the angel today, so it's not a fair fight by any means. I'll let you know how it comes out.
(UPDATE @ 11am: The devil won. Go figure.)
|| Eric 11:02 AM#
