Calling In Sick
I’d called in sick today and I slept in until ten - which was pretty shameful considering my best reputation as an eighteen-hour sleeper. I actually prided myself on that fact. It was the strangest feeling of all - as I kept sneaking a look at the digital clock on my stereo and realized that it was only ten and thus I decided to finish off ‘Anyone Out There’, my latest purchase novel from Marian Keyes, my favorite author.
Though drowned in the fictional heaven as I was, I couldn’t help thinking that if I went to work today, around this time of the day I would be swamped with specifications to make or proof prints to check, and daily report to be filled in, clicking away on my computer, mails swarming in all the time to my inbox, Corel Draw keep doing the recovery wizard thing every three hours or so because my computer has shameful standard specs and various Open-sourced programs all opened (can you imagine how stingy big corporate companies have become that they actually force their employees to use free cacky open-sourced data processing programs that keep fucking up instead of nice, versatile Microsoft ones?), clothed in my recently replaced black-area uniform which felt a bit stiff and smelt weird, complete with rubber-soled shoes and head covering. Working in that R&D department made it ten times more isolated as it was located in a covered-up level of the building in which no one would have guessed it was in there - aside from the fact that you had to change clothes and shoes before you went inside.
As agonizing as it was, the day goes so eerily slowly when I’m not at work, even though it should have been the exact opposite. I should have been happy staying at home, reading my books and not worrying about work but it kind of pissed me off knowing that I was still thinking about it, somewhere at the back of my messy, bed-headed head. Work has become something bigger than it used to be. Now I have much more responsibility, as it is no surprise, probably because I’ve been there for over a year, and so work projects gradually built up and I got to do more challenging things like designing and creating a manual for a new packaging look and a corporate logo for the new bimolecular laboratories center about to set in August.
But it wasn’t just that - a lot of things were depended on me, and a day’s off from work makes a lot of difference and that was not all, as there were bitchy senior staffs to deal with and ditzy blabber mouthed managers to put a lot of patience in to prevent me from clobbing their heads over with a legal-sized Bantex. If you have seen Dilbert, trust me, all of it is true. All of it - the characters, the crazy corporate policies, the spying of employees’ activities and the disgusting ways corporate companies think of to increase even more profit and decrease more salary. As outrageous as they are, the caricature seem to have nailed down my office environment down to the nearest zero.
So every month or so, whenever I get lucky, I have the reason to call in sick. No, I really am sick. My body hurts and my nerves are shot to shit - it’s probably due to the fact that I’ve been taking home work and continuing until almost midnight and the weather’s all weird and improper; heavy rain in the middle of sunny June? I’m starting to think that this whole global warming thing is closer than we all think.
But time slowing down is probably not the only reason why I keep sneaking a look at the clock - I miss my man badly and I can’t wait for him to get home. And it’s not because - well, not only - he offered earlier on the phone to get me anything from the shops (’Snacks? or perhaps pizza for dinner? You need to eat a lot to get well soon’).
When time sets still and I feel blissfully content just lying around the couch with a thick novel at hand, I feel like I should have been doing this with my boyfriend too.
I can just imagine him at work, briefing his assistants to analyze chemical stuff and creating protocols (God knows what they are, he’s way too smart for me), feeling bored as hell because he has no one to chat to on the instant messenger (because I’m not at work) and always finishing work before lunch time, and especially during lunch time when we would march down the canteen together and sat across each other, just talking and discussing about things (mostly design stuff).
It’s raining heavily, and I bet if anything, that traffic back from work to here will be hell, and that just prolongs the time that I’m not with him. And just as I’m writing this, I hear the gate clanking open. Joy leaps up from inside and instinctively I know - he’s home.
And I feel a lot better already.
