Things at work are still boring, stale, and dry. Irritating. Annoying. The other day I was talking with a coworker in passing, chit-chat kind of stuff. She was complaining about being on the tail-end of a chest cold, congestion problems. I remarked that there were some weeks I felt OK on monday morning, but by the time Friday came around, my chest was tight and my breathing was kinda rough. I mused about it either being fumes, falling insulation fiber, whatever. Doesn’t happen all the time. We shrugged our shoulders, I walked on to continue working, and that was that.
Around 4:30pm the bosslady calls me into her office. I hate when that happens, because she’s always got a serious look when she does it, and she’s called coworkers into her office quite a bit for no pleasant reason. So I was cringing, at best, and angry at worst, about what I could’ve possibly done to deserve punishment. So, I get in there, she pulls the door closed, and she begins asking me about a rumor from an unnamed source that’s floating around that I’m talking about possible health problems from the work environment, that she wants to “nip this in the bud”, and so on. I remembered thinking to myself, “Well, I know better than to trust that coworker again with chit-chat.” Either she relayed the chat, or the bosslady overheard, I don’t know. But I’m being asked about what I meant when I stated that. I told her it was only an observation, not a claim, not a fact. Whether it was environmental, or mental, I knew not. And now that I am living more healthily, it’ll be a span of time before I can make another assessment about it. Give my chest time to heal, then if it happens again, we’ll talk.
Talk about butterflies under the magnifying glass.
So, she’s got that “nipped”, and the conversation leads on to my attitude, my demeanor when I’m at work, my goal, what I’m trying to get out of working there. I’m there to earn a paycheck. That job facilitates my lifestyle, plain and simple. It’s not a career. Printing isn’t a career choice. It’s a job. Anything I do is just a job. But I can’t tell her that. She has a hand on the company pursestrings. I tell her that yes I enjoy working there, that yes my gruff and distant attitude is just a trait of my personality, and that as of late I’ve been having a mindset change, a slump. She tried to sum up my flat answers as best as she could, and she came up, rather accurately, with a flatline. And that’s exactly how I feel about life, about everything. Especially that job. It’s just, bleh. I have no ten-year plan. No five-year plan. No plans at all. She stated that I was smart, productive, and an odd fit for the job, and she started to question why I was there at all. I had no answers for her, simply because I didn’t want to paint myself into a corner. I didn’t want to provide ammunition, to hand her the pen to write my pink slip. She’s the bosslady. I tell her what will keep me earning pay. You can’t expect any other kind of honesty.
Flatline. I’m not happy there. Haven’t been in a while. She says she can’t imagine living a life where she’s not excited about what’s going on at work, about what she’s able to contribute to. If you ask me, I can see that people like that do exist, but I can’t, for my life, imagine what that position in life is like. I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t get excited about work. I rarely get excited about things these days. There are expectations there, everywhere, and I hate performing. Simple as that. Give me a task, show me a corner, hand me a machine, and leave me the hell alone. That’s when I’ll work. That’s where I work best.
But now, it appears I’m working under that magnifying glass.
Butterflies and wind.