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Dude, Are the Roosters Even Up at That Hour?

Is there anything worse than being at work when you don’t especially need to be?

Don’t get me wrong — I like my job. The people are nice, the work is interesting, I’ve got flexible hours, and — short of a pink ruffled tutu — I can wear whatever the hell I want.

(Yes, it’s true — I’ll never be a pretty, pretty ballerina. Not at the office, at least. But I’m coping. Thanks for your concern, there, sparky.)

Still, if I don’t need to be at work — particularly early in the morning, when I often feel I don’t really need to be alive — then I’d rather not. There’s plenty to do, of course — and I’m fairly confident that it can be done most appropriately between eleven in the morning and seven at night. If I’m the one doing the ‘doing’, that is.

But I’m a standup guy, too. I’ve got certain ‘ponsibilites at work, and you might say I take them ‘in stride’.

(You might say that, at least, if you’ve forgotten that the phrase ‘like a big fat whiny baby’ exists. Frankly, I prefer the former, but I can’t tell you people what to think.)

Anyway, last week I was asked to be at work at nine this morning — that’s nine, people. In the a.m. Nine. N. Ine. Somebody had to be around to meet the new hire, and he is going to be working with me, so that apparently dealt me the short straw. And I’ve got somewhere the rest of the office can shove that short straw, and a few thousand of its closest friends… but did I say that? No.

No, I kept my trap shut, hit the sack early last night, set the alarm, and tried to go to sleep before midnight, for once. Which is crazy! It was still fricking daylight outside, I think. Who does that?

One fitful night later, I awoke to the lilting, lyrical ‘ENH! ENH! ENH! ENH! ENH!‘ of the alarm. It was a quarter till eight. I’ll sometimes wake up around that time, on a regular day. And on those mornings, I’ll roll over, look at the clock… and laugh, laugh, laugh myself back to sleep. Quarter till eight. Whatever.

But today, I dumped my draggy ass over the side of the bed, fell into the shower, and eventually made it to work. I think I dressed in between, somewhere. Tutus were not involved. Thanks so much.

Anyway, long story ever-so-slightly-less-long, I made it to work, right at nine, expecting a phone call that the new guy was there. No call. So I waited. And waited, and waited. Finally, at nine thirty, I went to the lobby to check on him… and found that he was scheduled for training all morning. Until noon. Nine thirty till noon. See how ‘nine a.m.’ doesn’t come into that sentence anywhere? And how I could’ve spent another hour or more in my bed, drooling and twitching? Maybe even sleeping. Bitches.

Eh, that’s all right. I hit the wall around five, and slipped out a few minutes afterward. And I can always mosey in around three in the afternoon tomorrow, to make up for the ‘early morning that wasn’t’. Plus, there’s sort of a silver lining — by actually leaving the office before dark today, I didn’t have to go through the drama of getting my car out of the new garage.

See, we moved our office a few weeks ago, and also switched garages. The old one was nice — six levels above ground, attached to a movie theater and serving an office block. They had car washes and a daycare next door — there were always people coming and going and having a good time.

The new garage… well, not so much. The new garage is a couple of blocks away; a single underground level beneath a building that — as far as anyone can tell — the contractors have given up on actually building. There’s a bunch of chain-link fencing at street level, and some nasty-looking first-level steel supports, but that’s it. And the garage below isn’t creepy, exactly — it’s well-lit, and clean and all — but it’s eerily deserted most of the time. Few cars and fewer people, and your footsteps echo around the whole place. It’s the sort of garage you usually see somebody getting whacked in at the beginning of a Law and Order episode. Which tells me that I either need a new place to park, or I need to stop watching so damned much Law and Order. Probably both.

Anyway, that was my Monday. Not the most exciting day in the world, but we got a few paragraphs out of it, no? And you got to picture me in a pink tutu, drooling and twitching, and getting whacked in a parking garage.

Well, not all at the same time, of course. Not until just now, anyway. You can thank me for the mental image later. And now your Monday feels just as icky as mine was. Welcome to the party, folks.