My Mumbling Thoughts

It was a little after 7:30 last night when I pulled into the garage.

Long day. Long week. Long life.

When will it be over with?

After I washed my face and changed into my jammies, I went upstairs to the kitchen and finished making my mashed potatoes for dinner. That's all I wanted, all I needed.

Give me mashed potatoes. Life will be complete and I can carry on so long as I get some mashed potatoes in my dying body.

Nothing else would do. I didn't want bread or meat to go with it. I just needed my comforting mashed potatoes to soothe my insides and give me that familiar feeling that lets me know even though things were hard this week, even though I'm on the verge of throwing up my hands and saying, "fuck you all and your goddamned problems!" eventually things will clear up and get easier.

Eventually.

I ate my mashed potatoes, drank my Capri Sun (it doesn't matter how old you are, those are awesome), and tried to remember the past few days. It was all mashed together though just like my potatoes. I could barely remember anything.

My new micro manager (aka Le Bitch) had another issue with me this week and apparently I'm not doing so well in her eyes. I'm the little fucktard that doesn't do anything except prance around and distract others from their very important jobs with the important tasks that do much more important things than me. Everything I do is wrong, everything I say is wrong, and I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter what I do or how I do it, I'll never be good enough in her eyes.

And that's okay. I never wanted to work for her in the first place.

Word has spread around the office; there are new rules that everyone must follow now that we are under the watchful eyes of Human Resources. I thought it was just me (oh, what an attention whore I am) but it's the entire program. I guess they weren't just moving all of HR under one roof. There were other intentions.

Now that I'm no longer confined just to my desk and have the ability to go upstairs where all of the Big Dogs roam around I'm beginning to understand why people complain so much. With each passing day I've been learning something new, I witness different things, and I'm seeing with naked eyes just how cut throat the Corporate World is. They're vicious and don't give a damn about you, your feelings, your work, or how much time you spend at the office. Who cares that you have a family that misses you and you've long forgotten what a social life is. So long as you produce the results that they need, then they'll let you stay an extra day, earn an extra buck.

I've had my small glimpse into this world, stuck my tongue out, tasted the very tip and got nothing but a sour taste.

Last night as I sat with my mashed potatoes I thought about all of my co-workers who have been living this life for years. My own mother who has dedicated herself to keeping The Machine afloat. What for? Everybody I talk to tell me the same thing over and over. I can't seem to understand though as to why somebody would want to stay in a job that makes the rest of their life miserable. They get to the point where they aren't even human anymore, they don't have feelings. They simply work and work and work until there's nothing left to work for. The only problem is that they've been working for so long that they don't even notice that everything has gone to shit.

I wonder how many of them really belong here too. I can see in a lot of my fellow co-worker's eyes a dream that they've either given up on or had to stop in order to jump on the Corporate Wagon for whatever reasons. I know they don't want to be here but are tied down. And it's sad.

I'm not an engineer, a business major, or a politician. I don't belong here playing this game without knowing the rules, without wanting to learn the rules. I don't fit in. I don't understand. I just don't.

But they're trying to make me fit in. They want me to understand. They would love for me to crunch numbers out to them all day long, put in 60-plus hours a week, juggle four different jobs while only being paid for one, and still manage to keep a smile upon my face. That's how they have some of these other people trained.

It's like those blocks that little kids play with. You've got the triangle, the square, a circle, maybe a star too, and you need to put the right blocks in the corresponding spaces. It seems really simple. We all know that you can't try and put the circle block into the triangle space. It won't fit. It doesn't matter if you take a hammer to the circle and try to force it in, the two simply don't match.

And yet they're still trying to force me into a space where I don't belong.

I tell myself that I don't want to be here anymore. I need a change, a place where I'm not always wrong, a place where I do fit. Not this business corporate bullshit. It just isn't me and I can easily see myself sinking lower and lower into the sand. Where I do need to go or wherever I do belong, I'm not too sure of yet. All I know is that at the end of the day, I don't want to come home and eat nothing but mashed potatoes again.