Were ya born in a barn?

No, but I work in one.

(Note: When I started writing for this blog, I truly wanted to adhere to the rule of "no discussing work [except in the vaguest of terms]," so I hope this is vague enough. But seriously, who can help it? For 10 hours a day, I'm bound to The Company by either work or commuting to work. That's a good chunk of time, considering the next biggest chunk involves me unconscious and drooling on a pillow. Work has become such a main part of my life that the creeping majority of who I call friends are also co-workers or former co-workers. How can I not write about this place when it consumes a healthy fraction of my day and therefore my daydreams?)

I was born one of those fortunate girls who doesn't have a horse face. I don't gather in gossipy hen parties. Nor am I a cow (well, hopefully not too much of one). I was born in a hospital, not a drafty barn. I drive a car, not pull a wagon. I take showers in a bathroom, instead of getting hosed down 'round back. I eat with a knife and fork, not my face.

And yet The Company treats me and my colleagues like cattle. Well-liked cattle, but still...we're not even free range.

First of all, the main feature (Gasp! Not our personalities?) is the Barn Door. Our ex-Big Wig had it installed to muffle the sound from the rest of the office, but really it's a toy he swings open and shut like a two-year-old when he takes guests around for the grand tour. No one simply calls it "a door" anyway; it's the Barn Door. How demeaning.

And not long ago, an epiphany sprung up and hit me: the whole room is feng-shui'd like a stable. Desks lined up against the longest walls of the room; each pen, er, work station separated by a partition; the floor, were it a few shades lighter, would almost look like 2-D hay. And maybe I've been in this room too long, but it's starting to look good in the yummy sense.

We even work on a regimented schedule, like farm critters do:

08:00 Work begins
10:00 First 15-minute break begins
12:00 Lunch

Lunch at noon is when they herd us out to the lunchroom to graze, chew the cud, and cluck around.

12:30 Resume work

We head back to our pens so The Company can keep milking the effort out of us.

15:00 Second 15-minute break begins

But every now and then, we're given a treat, like a birthday cake, barbeque, or bonbons, and we all hoof it down to the lunchroom to collect our prize. The Company loves us! we exclaim. But in another 15 minutes, it's back to work. No grazing here for long.

17:00 End of the work day

After a few more hours pass, The Company quits milking and riding us for the day. The pigs, cows, cocks, chickens, sheep, asses, and mother hens all ride off into the sunset.

But we're not unruly animals. We're people—with families, not herds; homes, not coops; kids, not offspring. We'll eat our dinner off fine china, not out of a trough. So why is it that for eight hours a day, five days a week, we're treated like animals? Is it that human beings as a group are untamable, unpredictable, and unkempt? Do we really require dress codes, regimented break and meal times, and memos to keep us civil in the corporate barnyard? Does The Company, and others like it have so little faith in us working responsibly between 8 am and 5 pm that they use the laws of the animal kingdom to "behaviourly modify" us?

Cakes and sugar cubes can only satisfy the beasts for so long before the beasts get restless in their pens. Acknowledge us as humans, damn it!

If Jane Schmo needs a smoke break 14 times a day, let her have it—a good person will make up that missed time. If John Doe needs to get to a non-work appointment, let 'em. If my stomach growls and my work is caught up to a reasonable point, let me head out for lunch at 11:37 (because I'm hungry) instead of 12 noon (because The Company says so). I don't want a parking lot anally ordered into who-gets-what-spot or segregated from the "outer lot beasts"—it makes me feel fenced in and claustrophobic. Let us flow freely, yet safely through each other's lives.

The human world is calm and in order, but we can't find out what exactly that is or how it works unless we give up this barnyard society.

I am not an animal.

- Ewe/Girl on the Corner (I wrote this during my sanctioned lunch hour!)

I have nothing to say

I've never written for a blog before. I've read them though, so I feel like I'm an expert on what is and what isn't a blogworthy subject. All the same, I have spent the last two weeks trying to decide what to write. I've come up with hundreds of ideas (well, tens of ideas, but that doesn't have the same ring to it). And all I've ended up with is a list of subjects that I think are unblogworthy. Subjects that nobody in their right mind would ever want to read about. Naturally, I've made a list of some of the subjects I won't be blogging about.

1. Recipes.
My aunt's brother-in-law's wife's great-grandmother once made some peanut butter cookies that my uncle's father's friend Tom really, really liked. I know you're all thinking that you must have this recipe. I mean, Tom really loved these cookies and so it's pretty much guaranteed that these are the best peanut butter cookies that you'll ever taste. Seriously? Is there anyone out there who needs this recipe? Doesn’t everybody already have a peanut butter cookie recipe, and is anyone really thinking, “I’ve always loved my own peanut butter cookie recipe, but Tom has never raved about my cookies. Maybe I better try this random blogger’s aunt’s brother-in-law’s wife’s great grandmother’s recipe that random blogger’s uncle’s father’s friend Tom really liked?” Don’t worry I won’t be blogging about recipes.

2. My fifth birthday party.
I wore a yellow dress with a green satin ribbon belt. I don’t actually remember, but I’ve seen pictures. Ironically I seem to be pretty happy, despite the fact that my mom went and got all my hair cut off so that the only way you can actually tell that it’s a girl in the picture is the yellow dress with the green satin ribbon belt.

3. Mustaches.
Mustaches don’t really lend themselves to good blogging fodder. Besides listing off different kinds of mustaches, what else is there to write about them. Sure I could tell you about how you can tell what kind of man someone is by how he dresses his upper lip, but that could just become a bitter diatribe about stupid people I’ve met in my lifetime and who really wants to hear that. Mustaches are not something I’ll be blogging about.

4. Work.
I have some great work stories. And great work gossip that very few people know. I could go on and on about things I’ve heard about certain disliked people in the office, but…alas…blogging about work is off limits. Shoot. I really wanted to share.

5. Music.
If you google “music blogs,” you will get over 71 million hits. I’m guessing (because the first sentence took all of my research skills) that most of these blogs speak somewhat intelligently about the subject of music. I do not. I am not at all sophisticated in the way of music. I can’t discuss the riff in the fifth stanza; I do not know the difference between a violin and a viola (besides the obvious fact that one of them has more letters than the other). I don’t know everything there is to know about any genre of music; I don’t even know the names of most of the bands that play songs on my current radio station. I do know all the lyrics to the songs on the RENT soundtrack. I can sing and play drums with all the songs in RockBand (I can’t play the guitar, though; it hurts my thumb). All I’m trying to say is that I won’t be blogging about music.

That’s why I don’t blog. I have nothing to say. I’ll keep thinking though; you’ll be the first to know as soon as I think of something blogworthy. Promise.

The day I called in sick

The day I called in sick was a day spent outside of time. My beard did not grow. No hairs fell from my head. My house was silent in the absence of the tick-tocking of the clocks. All the numbers disappeared from my wristwatch. Deprived of their usual purpose, the minute hand turned into a compass and pointed north, while the hour hand always pointed in the direction of the nearest washroom.

I travelled northerly that day and wanted not for clean facilities and liquid soap wherever I went. The world, so harsh and cruel at times, seemed to soften and yield to my will. I hungered, and there was food. Thirsted, and there was drink. If I had struck a Faustian bargain with this day, I had come out with the better half of the deal. Instead of losing my soul, I seemed to have regained it.

The day I called in sick stop signs bowed their faces at my approach. Yield signs laughed, embarrassed at themselves and strangely shy in my presence, and waved me on through every intersection.

The day I called in sick I saw Jesus eating lunch at Tasty Tom’s. “Why aren’t you at work?” he asked. “Why aren’t you?” I replied. He shrugged and returned to eating his garlic mushroom burger. There’s something so relaxed about a man who can confidently wear a dress in public.

The day I called in sick the street lamps lit up whenever I walked beneath them. Their eyes twinkled with envy.

The day I called in sick I went golfing, and I hate golfing. On this day, I could do anything, even the things I hate. And surely there is nothing quite so hateable as golfing.

Perhaps it is the groomed landscapes, which remind me not so much of walking through nature but a museum of nature, preserving the real through the fake. When all humanity is confined to 100-storey apartment towers and “green space” refers to the chair under the palm tree in the lobby, there will still be golf courses. When everyone has to wear external mechanical lungs that distil breathable oxygen from the poisoned atmosphere, people will still go out and hit a few rounds. “Apparently, that’s what they called a tree,” a man will casually remark as he readies his shot, pointing to a nearby plastic poplar. “But what does it do?” his partner will ask, adjusting the metal carapace strapped to his back, wheezing in irritation. “Nothing, apparently,” the man replies after he swings. The ball arcs magnificently, its whiteness blazing against the black sky. “The things primitives come up with. Well, even Stonehenge must have seemed practical and useful once upon a time.” The man’s partner squirms uncomfortably as he tries to find his stance at the tee. “God, it’s impossible to play with this thing on my back….”

But beyond that, I’m haunted by visions of hordes of managers and executives descending upon me, golf clubs held aloft, wielding their upper middle class privilege like the truncheon it is. As the nine-irons descend upon my bloodless face, all I hear is the nonsensical chant, “Hole-in-one! Hole-in-one!” The words blur together until they lose all form, becoming an arcane mystical incantation buried beneath my shrieks. Cold-sweat, waking up screaming, blanket wrapped around my leg like a serpent. No, it’s okay. Just a dream. They haven’t found me--not yet, anyway.

The day I called in sick the magpies developed laryngitis. They swooped from tree to tree in agitation, heads bobbing in mute fury as children did mocking imitations of their bird songs.

The day I called in sick I did not have to wait in line anywhere, not once. “Can’t you people see, today is the day I called in sick?” I would declare, and upon ascertaining my vigour, the people would gasp in awe and terror, dispersing like dandelion fuzz scattered to the wind. They intuitively grasped that if I could call in sick in this state of health, then I was surely capable of anything. I became god-like. They understood that I had vaulted out of the realms of mortality into a higher plane of existence that was beyond earthly concerns. I was immortal, if only for a day. Will they believe it years from now when I tell them? On my death-bed, will they laugh when I say I was immortal for a day? Will they scoff? Will the priest roll his eyes? “Hey, how did he get in here?” I’ll say hoarsely, pointing my pale finger at the man in the black cassock, who chomps on a cigar while fiddling with his Groucho moustache. “Yoink!” he’ll shout as he throws a balloon filled with holy water at me and jumps out the window.

The day I called in sick I wrote this.

The day I called in sick absolutely fucking rocked.