Office Weather

As a human male in his early twenties, fresh out of college and drowning in debt and greed, I needed to get  a job. Because of my upper middle class white upbringing, the military and manual labor were not options for me. Being a waiter had been fine for a while, but after you are legally obligated to stop hitting on the hostess, it stops being that fun.

So I took to the one thing that a college-educated, articulate, aloof almost-hipster can comfortably do in this country without actually fulfilling his dreams: I became an office worker. I have talked about this job before. But all of those times I was struggling with the moral and psychological implications of this work. What I would like to touch on today is something a little bit more obscure.

It all begins with a basic human desire: Comfort. From the moment man kind first stepped out into the sun and said "Ugh, how about this heat?" we've been looking for a way to beat it. The heat that is, not the sun.

Anyway, we also always look for a way to destroy the cold. That was easier than beating the heat, because we could make fire. The only problem with fire is that it has its own level of intensity that we can't really control. So when we began to harness the intellect that allowed us to build machines, the first thing we looked for was control. So we knew fire was an uncontrollable form of heat, and that cold was hard to maintain during the warm spells. What was the answer?

Air conditioning and furnaces. Complex (maybe, I don't honestly know how they work) systems of ducts and stuff that make hot and cold air flush into a space so that we can maintain a fair constant temperature. Its beautiful.

So what does this have to do with work? Why did I begin talking about the death of dreams and limited options and yet segue into air conditioning?

Because even at work, air conditioning becomes one of a number of things that we simply cannot control.

Its been insanely warm in DC this summer. 100-plus degree days, warm inescapable nights. The world seems to be trying to drive everyone indoors. And yet, when fully 1/3 of my day is spend in my office, I find myself wishing that I could be outside just to even out.

Why?

Because my office is set at a continuous sub-comfort level of frigidity. It puts me in the sometimes uncomfortable position of having to walk into my building on a 90 degree morning while toting a sweater. This is even stranger when the man sharing the elevator with me is dressed in a button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, sweating profusely. He gives me a look like I am secretly trying to mess with his mind. What he doesn't understand is that my office seems to think that the only suitable rebuttle to the inferno of summer is the pre-Raphealite hell of endless winter.

And yet today, while shivering and triyng to keep my mind on work, I noticed a strange new weather pattern in my office.

You see, the last two days have been pleasant. 70ish degrees. Sometimes a little bit of a chill in the air. And yet, the sun still shines brightly, and it is still August, technically summer. So what is the extremity-loving A/C in an office to do about this sudden level of non-mechanical comfort?

Its still freezing cold, but every so often there is... prepare yourselves... a burst of hot wind.

Wind. In my office. Warm, burning wind like that which scorges the arid planes of the Gobi desert. My skin is confused. My mind snaps, and suddenly I have to write a blog post for the first time in almost a year.

Jesus.

I'm Not Who I Was.

So here's my third post about the place I work (I'm counting the password one) and my second post that has to do with logging in to things (I'm counting the password one... again. Obviously.)

When I go to work everyday, I have to clock in, as many people with part-time jobs must. So I walk over to a little computer terminal, enter in my four digit Employee Identification Number, and then walk over to my desk to get down to work.
That's a lie. First I have to pretend I am James Bond and scan my fingerprint so that the computer will accept that I am who I am. My number isn't good enough for the computer, it needs some real hard evidence.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. "The future is here! Finally, my dreams of working in a place where I get to use television-like science can be combined with my reality of working a middle-class job where I sit at a desk all day!"
And I will admit, the idea of scanning my fingerprint every day to clock in and clock out was novel at first. It doesn't take more than a second, and really what do I care? So they have my print on file and can probably frame me for an assassination attempt, I at least get to say that I worked in a place with such high security that they needed me to scan my fingerprint to get in.

Then... then I started to look down while scanning my print.
You see there's this readout on the digital screen that happens to tell me how well my print matches the original print I gave them when I first began working here. It's like giving my fingerprint a report card based on its ability to be exactly the goddamned same.

What was unsettling, then, was my finger's seeming inability to score above a 72.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my finger is a C student at being itself. Every time I have to scan it I try something new. More pressure, less pressure, tilted to the right, the left, up, down, freshly cut with a razor blade. No matter what I do to try to help him along, my poor right index finger just can't get a B.
For a while this didn't bother me, except that for the past week or two something even more fiendishly bizarre had been happening.

My finger has actually been failing the test.

Instead of the reassuring Beep of success (or at least not sucking too badly) my fingerprint has been getting the unholy BeepBeep of failure.
It's like if Babe Ruth not only failed to hit a home run, but walked up to the plate with a loaf of French bread instead of a baseball bat.

Now this all links in with the first post I ever made, about the Existential Crisis that comes from working in a cubicle.
I've watched enough X-Files and Law and Order and Homicide to know that fingerprints are pretty much one and done. I have mine, you have yours, and you can always tell who I am by my fingerprint.
So what happens when my fingerprint ceases to be able to perform its sole task of being itself. Perhaps this little terminal with its fingerprint reader is some sort of Mexican Magical Realism device. Maybe its not reading my fingerprint, but my own self.
For instance, maybe I am really only 72% of who I was when I first got this job. Maybe my fundamental personality has shifted, and less than three thirds of my original characteristics are still in place.

This then raises an interesting question. Is it a good or a bad thing that I seem to be losing rather than gaining compatibility with my old self?
Maybe I was a terrible human being back then, and now I am slowly redeeming myself. Maybe back then I was suicidal and depressed, but now I am coming back into the light.

Maybe they just need to dust that damn thing so it will finally get a true reading and I can stop thinking about it.

Only time will tell.

Cubicle Culture

There is a certain amount of otherworldly strangeness that comes from working in a cubicle.
There you sit, doing your best to do you work. The confines around you have been designed to make this easier. Bare walls to reduce distraction. Small desk space making clutter almost physically impossible because why the hell would you even think you could fit a book on the desk in the first place, let alone a drink or your mobile? You can't see anyone, they can't see you, and for all intents and purposes the world doesn't exist.
Perfect for keeping your mind sharply attuned to the work at hand - editing, writing, managing, accounting, all sorts of -ings.
Sadly, there are those among us - notably myself - for whom this collection of supposedly streamlining criterion creates an environment ripe for...

The Existential Crisis.

No, I am not talking about the intense desire to go out and stab an Arab (before the ACLU contacts me about a hate crime, might I suggest you kindly fuck-off and read a book). I am referring to a horrifying period lasting no less than five seconds but not to exceed one lifetime during which the entirety of your existence is up for debate.
Allow me to illustrate:
Currently I am sitting in a box that could not accommodate two of me. All around me I sense the telltale signs of other intelligent life. The sound of tapping keyboards, of errant sneezes and coughs, muffled conversations. The smell of some exotic food freshly cooked in the office microwave. Other people are out there... the clues to their existence are faint and insubstantial yet tantalizing.
However, I cannot see them. From my lowly perch I can just see the walls of my cube, the screen of my PC, the single notepad that I have never used.
But there is writing on it! And my God, I think I just heard footsteps, and if I crane my neck just a bit I think I can see someone standing on the other side of the room! I am not alone! Like the great pyramids, like the face on mars, like the Tunguska event, these are the signs that my little world is just the beginning of a great expanse of other life with which to interact and learn and grow!
Invert this argument. If the cubicle was all I ever knew, I would be skeptical of other people existing. But they do. So even though this world is all we know, and we think we have it all figured out, maybe those above mentioned wonders are the sounds of alien keyboards tapping.

Or...
I could just be imagining all these things. Creating them in my mind. Solitude and the realization of my own infinitesimally minuscule place in the world has forced me to create these myths to allow myself the small glimmer of hope that will buoy me up.

See what I mean? I shouldn't be thinking about this while I am writing profiles and editing poorly written documents and otherwise trying to make a living. Either I am a sick, sick man, or something needs to change.

In short... I wish my cubicle were closer to the window, and that I hadn't forgotten my iPod today.