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An End Table… A Countertop… For Crissakes, a Milk Crate — Gimme Something Over Here!

(Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m backdating this post by about sixteen hours to slip it in the Tuesday slot. You caught me. Bitches.

And here it is. Be careful what you wish for.)

Well, that was unceremonious.

I had just assumed — I may have even been told, though it’s just as likely that I made that part up — that all the pieces would come together at once. That there would be an orderly progression of events, a synchronization, a process. How wrong I was.

(And maybe lied to; I really can’t remember. So I’m not sure who to be pissed at. Dammit!)

Anyway, I thought it would happen like this:

• 11/3: The big transition planned at my end-of-the-week workplace occurs. Champagne is poured, bulls are rung, and babies are kissed. I miss out, because I’m at beginning-of-the-week workplace. But that’s okay, because:
• 11/3 – 11/4: The group that’s moving out of end-of-the-week office into new quarters gets their shit together and gets the hell out. Desks are freed up, space is available, and more champagne is poured. (Damn, these people love their champagne. Of course, most of my imagined fantasies are like that. Speaking of which, I’m surprised Heather Graham hasn’t shown up in this one yet.)
• 11/3: The guy whose desk I’ve been sitting at comes back from vacation. He’s welcomed back with a party, where cake is eaten, and hurrahs are… um, hurrahed, and champagne is poured. Only later does he find that his desk drawers are superglued shut, all of his passwords are now ‘WANKMUFFIN’, and all of his pens have been meticulously, painstakingly drained of ink and returned. (Ain’t I a stinker?)
• 11/5: I return for end-of-the-week working. I have my pick of the myriad of empty desks and offices. I set up shop in a roomy corner affair, with plenty of leg room and a view of the Boston skyline. It comes with its own private bathroom, or maybe an antechamber. Or an antechamber that I pee in, to protest the fact that it’s not, in fact, a bathroom. I’m assigned a secretary. It’s Heather Graham. She pours champagne for us in the antechamber. Life is good.

So. That’s more or less how I thought it would go. And lest you think me overoptimistic or unreasonably expectatious, let me assure you that I was ready to settle for something a bit less extravagant. A one-room office, for instance. Sparkling wine. Drew Barrymore. I’m not demanding, folks. I’m willing to do with less.

But I was unprepared for what I actually did get. Which was, basically, evicted. You see, in the four-part list above, number three (i.e., having people who are irrelevant to me get the hell out of my way) failed to happen.

(As it almost always does. Oooooh!)

But number two — Mr. Desk Man returning from his vacation to reclaim his spot — did not fail to happen. And he was there first. He’s got papers and shit in those glued-shut desk drawers to prove it.

And so, I was out of luck. The music stopped, and I was the dumb bastard without a chair to park my ass in. So here I am, in an open, semi-public ‘shared’ computer area, firing off emails and studying the intranet (and blogging) in front of anyone who wants to walk out of their office and laugh and point at the monkey-man in the middle. And that’s the way it’ll be for the next two weeks.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s demeaning.

It’s preposterous.

(But most of all — it’s putting a pretty goddamned heavy damper on surfing for porn at work. And that’s just not right. How the hell am I supposed to stay awake now?)

Anyway, there’s not much I can do about it, apparently. I tried saying, ‘Well, if you don’t have a place for me, why don’t I just take a few days off, then? I can stop by after Thanksgiving to see how things look.‘ That didn’t fly, of course. But I don’t see why the hell not. If a class is full, they don’t make you show up for it anyway. When a bar is at capacity, they have you wait outside until there’s space. When a flight is booked solid, they… well, um, actually, they usually sell twenty or thirty more tickets, ‘just in case’. The bastards. Screw the airlines. Bad example. Forget I mentioned it.

Still, I think the least these people could do is to let me have a couple of days of paid vacation, right? Look, it’s not my fault they’re unprepared. I’m here, I’m (almost) sober, and I’m ready to work.

(As ready as I get, anyway. All that really means is that I’ve managed to glom contact lenses onto my eyes, and put on some pants. Not my own pants, necessarily; just pants. I’m not so picky about the pants.)

So here I am — freakshow public computer boy, typing and surfing and clicking for these fools’ entertainment. Screw this, man. I didn’t sign up for this shit. I’m taking my laptop, and I’m going to the can. I don’t know how much work I’ll get done on the toilet, but at least no one will be watching. Or listening, or seeing me walk out of the john with my laptop under my arm. That might come across as a little bit eccentric. People might even think that I took the thing in there to surf for porn in privacy. That wouldn’t be good.

Hey, just because they’re right doesn’t mean it’s good. And if they’d gimme a damned desk, we wouldn’t have to do this little dance, now, would we? Clearly, it’s all their fault. Now, if you’ll excuse me… I’ve got some (ahem!) work to get done. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Or when my legs fall asleep. You know, whichever comes first.