I have never been more excited to go into the office than I was this week. By “the office,” I mean the brick-and-mortar TobacCo HQ (though it’s really more lap-siding-and-nails), and not my groovy basement space.
This sudden longing for the urban sprawl of Janesville might seem out of character. And before you ask, no, TobacCo did not install a cocktail bar or convert the conference room into a video arcade or hire a roaming masseuse to provide daily back rubs. It’s just that I’d been cooped up at home for almost three weeks and was starting to go a little stir-crazy. Even us introverts need a little social interaction, I s’pose.
I’d been stuck at home because Tara’s truck started acting up a few weeks ago. By “acting up,” I mean, it literally died while she was driving through an intersection. Kind of like that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when Richard Dreyfuss’s pickup starts acting wonky and loses power because there’s a freakin’ UFO flying overhead. Sadly, alien spacecraft weren’t to blame in my wife’s case, just a faulty crankshaft sensor. But we didn’t know that at the time, and when she drove to work the next day, the truck was jerking and stuttering and she had trouble getting it started. Rather than chance having her get stuck somewhere, I let her drive my Kona until she could get a mechanic to look at her truck. My employer is extremely flexible when it comes to working from home and Tara’s only been there a few weeks, so it made sense.
We were hoping for a quick turnaround, but it took two weeks just to get an appointment because all the auto repair shops she reached out to were either booked solid or never returned her calls. In the end, we were happy the repair only set us back $234, because we suspected it was the fuel pump, which would have cost at least $1,500 to fix.
Still kinda bummed we didn’t get to see any extraterrestrials, though.
Tara asked me yesterday morning whether I was planning on going into the office again, even though Tuesday is a WFH day, to make up for my extended absence.
“Nah,” I replied. “I’m already over it.” I missed it but I didn’t miss it that much, apparently.
Truth is, the main reason I wanted to put in some face time was so management didn’t forget I was still on the payroll. Out of sight, out of mind, you know? Which can actually be a smart career strategy under the right circumstances.
I once worked in marketing for a manufacturing company in Camas, WA, when rumors of layoffs started flying. Then, one day when we arrived to work, the entire accounting department were packing up their belongings, having been downsized right out of their jobs.
Naturally, this created all sorts of paranoia for the rest of us. We all expected to lose our jobs at some point. But then I had a sudden realization: They couldn’t fire me if they couldn’t find me!
From that moment on, I took great pains to make myself invisible. I’d wear beige clothing to blend in with the cubicle walls, let piles of paperwork grow to enormous heights on my desk so I could hide behind them, that sort of thing. Survival of the fittest, you know? And while I’ve always been a bit bummed ’cause I’m only 5’8″, my lack of height paid off during this stretch; we had a group of tech support guys who were all tall and liked to travel in a pack, so I’d slip in behind them whenever they walked by and nobody ever knew I was back there. Occasionally I’d end up in weird places, like meetings I wasn’t invited to, but hey: I was still collecting a paycheck!
Short stature: it’s the ultimate camouflage.
Whenever I heard the authoritative footsteps of my superiors marching down the hall with anything resembling purpose, I’d initiate an emergency escape plan. This might mean ducking into a bathroom stall, taking an early 8:27 a.m. lunch break, even hiding out in the storage closet. As more and more staff were let go, I patted myself on the back (very hard to do, btw) for this clever strategy. It worked for a few months, but one day I let my guard down and gasped in surprise when my boss popped into my cubicle. He must have been tiptoeing, because I never heard him coming. That damn office carpeting turned out to be my undoing.
“Hey, Mark,” he said. “Got a minute to chat?”
If it’s about the weather or football or last night’s episode of Lost, sure, I thought.
It was not about the weather or football or the previous night’s episode of Lost.
(How very 2010, I know.)
Just as I’d feared, I was handed my marching papers. Ultimately, the company moved all their operations to Aurora, Colorado, a few years later. They put the building up for sale and people were given the option to transfer or leave. Some took a chance on Colorado, but most ended up in the unemployment line. I just got there a little sooner than the others.
When I opened the front door at 5:20 this morning for my daily walk, it was like stepping into a sauna. One with a broken lightbulb, because it was still dark out.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, these early morning strolls are pleasant. Today, it was 77° with 98% humidity…before the sun ever rose. There is nothing even remotely pleasant about that.
That’s literally our forecast today.
Luckily, TobacCo’s A/C is running full blast and I’ve got a Dunkin’ iced coffee that I’m half-tempted to dump down my pants, but that would be a waste of perfectly good caffeine.
Stay cool, folks!
Mark My Words 
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