16 Tons

8:30 a.m.

I arrive at work with heady enthusiasm ready to take on another day. Carpe diem.

8:31 a.m.

I’m bored.

8:33 a.m.

The soul-crushing thought of another 8 hours trapped in the cubicle farm has sapped my will to live.

8:39 a.m.

I have turned my computer on, hoping the light from the monitor will brighten my mood and allow me to go on.

8:43 a.m.

Our morning meeting has begun. My mind is wandering to my days as tugboat captain in New York harbor: Me and Tony “The Big Toe” Canoli pulling the cargo freighters into port during the day and prowling the streets at night for an underground tetherball club. We had . . . wait, did someone just ask me a question? Shit, I have to answer . . .

“Yeah, I took care of that yesterday.”

Wow, that was close. I have to pay more attention in these meetings. Hmm. Everyone else is back at their desks. The meeting must have ended.

9:50 a.m.

I have a request open in front of me, but instead of working it I’m staring out the window. There’s something in the middle of the alley that I can’t make out. What is that? I stand up and press close to the glass. Yep, I was right. It’s an ear.

11:08 a.m.

I did some work for the last hour. I feel a small sense of accomplishment, but not enough to energize me to do more.

11:17 a.m.

Curiosity got the better of me. I went out into the alley for a closer look at the ear. It’s human with a three gold hoop earrings in it. I was trying to decide what to do with it when a dog came out of nowhere and snatched it away. The last I saw he was trotting down Queen Street chewing on it like a rawhide toy.

12:04 p.m.

Lunch!

12:35 p.m.

Lunch is over. Back to work. Not much going on outside.

2:14 p.m.

There is so much dirt under my nails. Was I sleep coal mining again? Was I buried alive and had to dig my way out of the grave? Where did all this dirt come from?

3:45 p.m.

I took apart my watch because there must be something wrong with it: It can’t not be quitting time. I was only supposed to be here 8 hours; I must be going on a hundred and six.

I put the watch back together again but I did something wrong. It says the time is 3A76 Greenwich Mean Time. I don’t know what that means.

4:23 p.m.

The dog is back. He’s dropped the ear at the base of my window as some sort of gift. He’s eaten about half of it, the rest looks like regurgitated cheap ground beef. I thank the pup anyway. It’s the thought that counts.

5:00 p.m.

Oh sweet merciful God it’s finally time to go home. I don’t know how one day can feel like a century but it managed.

Huh. My watch says it’s next Tuesday.

Bored at Work

I was bored at work one day this week so I wrote my name down and assigned each letter a number. I ended up with:

3, 7, 17, 8, 18

I added them together for 53. I multiplied them for a total of 51,408. When I subtracted each digit I got -47 and when using division ended up with .000024. I then added all the numbers together for a total of 51414.000024. Using my assigned number system and the word “zero” to stand in for the 4 zeroes I gave myself a new identity: Eadad Zerobd. Don’t ask me how to pronounce my new last name because I don’t know. I then proceeded to create a back story for the new me:

Eadad Zerobd, originally born in Lithuania, left his home country when he was thirteen as a member of the Lithuanian National Circus. Starting out as an acrobat, after a ruptured spleen and a large bruise in the shape of the Strait of Hormuz, he was transferred to toe nail clipper for the elephants. He formed a quick friendship with “Peanut”, a 12 ton Asian bull elephant. One evening in Brussels at a pub called “A Place to Get Drunk” after too many Belgian Blam Blams, Eadad and Peanut went on a rampage through the city streets, destroying cars, buildings and killing two Finnish tourists.

Afraid to go to jail, Eadad disguised himself as a Frenchman by carrying a loaf of bread everywhere he went and smelling like cheese. After a few months he stowed away on a ship carrying scrap metal to New York harbor in the United States. Unfortunately the ship’s name was Harbinger of Doom and Eadad was found hiding in a sack of potatoes in the kitchen. He was thrown overboard. It looked like the end of the line for Eadad until he was taken in by a pod of humpback whales.

The whales created a blowhole in Eadad’s back, taught him to breech and how to consume a ton of krill every day. It was an amazing life in the water. Eadad was sorry to leave his cetacean friends but he had ballooned to 456 pounds from all the krill and could barely breathe much less swim. He came ashore and started walking on the beach to lose weight while living in the burned out body of an ’87 Impala and eating discarded tacos from the dumpster at Loco Flacco’s Taco Hell.

Even after he had lost the extra weight, Eadad continued walking, finally ending up in Pennsylvania. He took a job as a state representative and lives comfortably off of kickbacks from the bagel, croissant and muffin consortium.

Yep, sure was boring that day at work.