Lately I have been working from home. I mean I always work from home because I’m a mom, right, but lately I’ve been working from home, for a company, for money.
This has led me to thinking about co-workers. I work from home, so obviously I don’t have any real contact with my co-workers. I’ve been imagining Miss 1 and Miss 4 (she had a birthday!) as my co-workers. Can you imagine them in an office setting?
Picture this:
Morning meeting. Your coworkers show up with breakfast smeared across their faces, no shoes, and total bedhead. They refuse to accept any assignments and if anyone talks to them they run in a circle yelling, “Can’t! Can’t! Can’t!” Occasionally one of them will burst into spontaneous laughter or crying with no apparent reason.
Throughout the day, one of your coworkers refuses to keep their clothes on. They run around in only a shirt, only underwear, or nothing at all. Security guards and HR People are seen chasing them around the building but can never apprehend them before everyone has been flashed.
You walk into the break room for lunch. There is at least 5 pounds of wasted food on the floor. Your coworkers have gone through the fridge taking one bite out of every single item and tossing the rest away. They run in circles, frantically calling out that they are hungry, but will not consent to actually sating their hunger with anything that is edible. You do notice, however, that there are large amounts of shredded (chewed) paper under their desks, so you know they are surviving on something inedible.
Sometimes they repeatedly chant, “Chocolate Milk! Chocolate Milk!” instead of doing inventory or quarterly reports.
No matter how routinely the work day progresses, your coworkers are always surprised and usually unhappy about anything they are scheduled to do. They tear through the halls, hiding in corners, or in the bathroom where they wash their hands until the soap is gone and the sinks are flooded. There are rumors that they eat the paper towels to survive.
One of your coworkers wanders through the day, stealing other people’s shoes. She will often be seen by the water cooler, talking fashion, and seeking new victims for her thefts.
Other than fashion comments, this same worker generally refuses to speak, although some people swear they can hear her muttering, “oh man, angry birds!” under her breath when the bosses walk by.
When it is time to go home, suddenly your co-workers are very engaged in their work and refuse to leave their desks. It seems that when the work day is over they suddenly love their jobs more than life. They have to be manipulated, coerced, and dragged away, screaming, but as soon as they see the outdoors, their moods instantly change to gleeful and they cheerfully wave good bye to everyone.
Each and every day, your co-workers act out these same scenarios, without fail, in a relentless attempt to drive you crazy.
You think about quitting this job, but for some inexplicable reason, you actually like these twisted co-workers. Every now and again, when one of them runs up behind you and yells, “tickle bug!” you actually like it.
