‘Twas The Night Before The Night Before An Unspecified Holiday Of Some Sort

It’s like Christmas Eve in here. Or the last day of school before summer vacation. We’ve got a full staff, and nothing to do. We get about a call an hour per person. The company is all but shuttered and boarded up for Good Friday and only those sad workaholics who think a day off is the perfect time to come in and do some more work are calling. They have stupid questions like “How do I get that little box up there that tells me where this thing is?” or “Every time I try to log in it tells me no, can you fix it?” One would think all this free time would be great, but this is not so. All this free time means that bored Cubers will leave the safety of their dwellings and mingle.

Mingling in an office like the cube jungle here is terrible. It means that bored Cubers will want to talk to other Cubers about stuff that some of those Cubers don’t care one bit about. Tweedle Dee wants to talk about his recent “adventure” in running network cables through his parents’ house. Sith Lord wants to talk about something his brother’s friend’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend said. Stonehenge Mouth wants to talk about how much he hates something or another. I honestly stop listening the moment he walks up. My mouse screams in agony as I squeeze its life from it every time Stonehenge Mouth makes his way over, but I figure it’s better than hitting a coworker.

Something else that becomes apparent during long periods of downtime is how little my co-workers know about the computers supposedly support. Tweedle Dee had planned ahead for the downtime and brought in some movies to watch (the Matrix trilogy, ugh) only to find that his DVD drive doesn’t work. Instead of troubleshooting the issue like he’s paid to do, he instantly loses hope and starts looking around for a rescue. The Gimp spends the entire day trying to figure out how to override the company’s screensaver so he can have a series of revolving pictures of redneck and mullet to display. Even I actually took the time to try, and fail, to fix some ongoing issues with my own work computer. It’s one of those things where the mechanic’s car needs work, the plumber’s pipes leak, and the IT guy’s computer doesn’t work.

Slow days also seem to be when people test out new, completely untrue rumors. Like that Sith Lord and Stalker Bait are dating, obviously to Stalker Bait’s boyfriend’s chagrin. Or how about how me and Hot Sounding Girl On Phone #142 are having a long distance relationship and my last vacation was to go see her. Maybe it’s that Loafers, our previous manager, quit to move to the Virgin Islands where he has a boyfriend. Or how about Momma and The Professor are having an affair. Or that Serial Killer is a serial killer (that one’s mine, by the way.)

It’s a good thing that slow days of this magnitude only happen a few times a year. Just imagine how bad it was 2 years ago when half of the company’s employees were on a paid vacation for almost 3 months during a huge overhaul of one of the facilities. I can only hope I never see another drought like that. A new week is upon us though, and I can only imagine what new fun awaits.