Working in an Office is Mad Boring
September 24, 2008 Carson City, NV – Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for the past seven years, I do the exact same thing. I wake up at 8:45am, shower, get dressed and hit the freeway. I work at a corporate office in the corporate office part of town. I show up at 9:05am and leave at 5:59pm.
In between then there is a lot of staring at a computer. There’s not a lot of variation. Actually, it’s always the same, except that on Fridays I do it wearing jeans.
Yes, there is truly no excitement in the three-walled cell of a cubicle, and tedious data entry or writing or coding or whatever it is you pretend to do while actually on gchat, is the shackle you wear.
Daily highlights are few and far between with "lunch break” topping the charts, followed by "getting mail,” "taking needlessly long bathroom breaks,” "talking to your one half-intelligent co-worker.” The rest is just checking celebrity blogs and plotting how I’d kill myself if I didn’t have a cat. Last night I had a dream that I came in to work with a fish I just caught and gutted it right there on my desk, then I realized I had fallen asleep watching Office Space.
So yeah, what else can I say about how insanely boring my life is without falling asleep at the computer.
When I was young, I thought I would have an interesting life. I would be an astronaut, or an artist, or a waiter. Now here I am, twenty-eight years old, wasting what’s left of my youth by writing this article while I am supposed to be inputting last month’s numbers. Even if I had a spouse, or kids, or a hobby – which I don’t – I’d still spend eight hours of every day pretending to be busy so I can eat food and buy drugs. So what good is my life? I guess all I can hope for now is to be a cautionary tale for our impressionable youth. Listen up kids:
Now, I know there are a lot of movies and music videos out there that make working in an office look real cool (The Firm anyone?) but I just want children to know, working in a office is not cool. It’s not cool at all. The only way it would be cool is if the definition of cool changed to become "soul-crushing, mindless, utter and total boredom, apathetic despair with no sense of hope for anything better, uninteresting and dead.”
Moral of the story: When considering what career path you are going to tread, do not listen to the lies of yesteryear: "You should be so lucky to dig ditches.” Seriously, manual labor gets a bad rap. Think about it: you could be outside, in the sun, breathing fresh air, building something, or destroying something, or rebuilding something. Whatever, you would see some sort of progress, know your life was worth something, believe that maybe good will win over evil. Or come find me in a few years, under the flourescent lights, in the AC, and I’ll offer you a job, and pretend to type something, while actually on gchat.
· Read the text above and find in it the English equivalent to the following:
1. Выезжать на автостраду
2. To come =to appear =
3. Небольшое помещение, отсек =
4. Яркий, запоминающийся момент =
5. Впечатлительный =
6. Бессмысленный, глупый =
7. Следовать карьерному пути =
8. Прошлый год =
9. Получать критику в свой адрес, быть поруганным =
10. Сидеть в чате =
· Retell the story in about 15 sentences.
· Tell about your typical day:
-When do you hit the road?
-When do you show up at work \ school?
-What are typical highlights of your working day?
-What do you feel at work?
-What would you like to do as an alternative?
· Make up the following dialogue:
The elder sister is talking her younger one out of going for an office job carrier.
Use the information of the text as well as:
-to be out for trouble = искать приключения на свою голову
-to do smth worthy for the world -≈ office drudge, pen pusher, pencil pusher = канцелярская крыса
- You had better not V1 = Лучше бы ты не….
- I’d rather you V2 =Я бы предпочла, чтобы ты… - What on earth could I do? = Что вообще я могла бы делать?