Believing in very little, I reach for a clear plastic cup. First the ice. Diet Dr. Pepper. In my opinion, the single greatest soda ever invented. Free soda is one of those dumb little “perks” that’s supposed to make employees feel like management cares. Many employees look down on this type of hollow tactic. So do I, when it comes to most of them, but not for the soda. Free soda doesn’t make the list of things I think should be human rights. But it’s close. My job would be considerably worse without the free soda.
On my walk back to my desk, I pass a woman who works on the finance team. I’ve walked past her dozens of times during the past year. She’s always looking at the ground. The first few times we passed, I smiled at her. But I’ve given up trying. When I’m in a reasonable mood, I assume she’s shy, busy, that her boss is giving her a hard time and she can’t waste any extra emotional energy on people who she doesn’t work with directly. When I’m in an unreasonable mood, I assume she hates me. Maybe she has a special sense of people’s natures and she can tell who is rotten inside just by being near them. I might be rotten, I don’t know. She’s probably picking up on some gross lack of maturity that radiates off my bones. Maybe. Hopefully not.
So many empty cubes. I see a person hunched over in about one out of every eight. Most people work from home now. Which is good I suppose. They’re not missing much. I came back to the office as soon as we could though. Too distracted at home. And the office is better now in its current eerie form. Thankfully, our company doesn’t have a return mandate. Everybody who is here wants to be here. I mean, they don’t want to be here. They want to be independently wealthy, working on things that matter to them. Of course.