American Workplace

Upon my return from a brief unpaid vacation, I was told that my desk had been moved. To the other side of the floor, the windowless side, near the construction. Just follow that fellow with the tool belt and the surgical mask. They showed me a desk that apparently had last belonged to Miss Havisham, all cobwebs and thick with dust and grime it was. Littered with magazines and catalogues from well before the start of the first gulf war. The red light on the desk phone flashed with messages that will never be cleared because no one has the password anymore. The one saving grace was that my new desk was next to another freelancer, a really great awesome person with whom I'd struck up a nice friendship. In the last days of my assignment, she would be my solace.

I have now been informed that she is moving, too - to the other side of the floor, from whence I have been banished. The clean side, with all the light and the people.

First they took my stapler, and then they took my friend. And the space bar on the keyboard barely functions, and the keys are sticky. It's a good excuse to type hard and angrily.

It shouldn't bother me. I am a freelancer after all, and the assignment ends in ten days. And when I began this job, my private mantra was "I'm here to help." I wanted to have no needs or expectations. I wanted to engage in the work and with my co-workers in a zen sort of way, with as little ego as possible, with service as my primary objective (okay - getting paid is the actual primary objective). As a freelancer, you get money in exchange for your time and that is all. You're a commodity. There is $xx in the budget for you, and that is all you get. You can't hope for more than a thank you at the end of the day, but you must know that you probably won't even get that.

But it didn't work. I found myself craving approval. I wanted a job offer - not a job, just the offer - or a medal; or at least a bottle of something expensive because they just can't thank me enough. They would just have to find more money in the budget to keep me on after the assignment ends because, well, I'm just that good. And they need me. Please don't leave; we can't go on without you.

And so it is with every relationship. And every guy I ever dated, no matter how unappealing. That smelly, un-manscaped humunculus with the mullet? The one with nothing to talk about but mortgage securities and The Hobbit? The one who tried to seduce me with the theme from The Godfather? Why didn't he call me, dammit??

Soren Kierkegaard said, "You have absolutely nothing to do with what others do to you. ...you have only to do with yourself." Oh, Soren. How right you were. As always.