cubeLand vexations

My aspiring beard itches occasionally. It is a welcome “fuck you”, I think, to the corporate acceptability standards. I have reached the point, once again, at which I can truly say I am no longer vested in the company.
I have reached and passed the point of caring, of truly giving a shit about my job. I continue to perform as professionally as I have in the past, perhaps more so, but do so with the underlying resolve, the underlying knowledge that my time at the company is limited. A dozen emails sit in the inbox, two reminders from the calendar telling me to harass someone else about this or that project. Emails go back out, detailed inquiries flit away to different departments, but only following an accurate, brief file-check of the hardcopy.
I’m on top of it. Wait, what is the problem? Oh, send me the information and I’ll sort everything out for you. I know, I got it together. Come on, we’re Operations!
Can’t stand that guy. Not that he’s a bad person or anything, it’s just that I always feel like he’s talking down to me. Your basic schoolboy bitch: all growns up and ready to wield his meager superior status over me, convinced he is my equal or better because his fucking title is longer. But that is just me fluffing me. Maybe he’s the next Oppenheimer.
The walls run red with the blood of younglings. My vision hazes over, quickly, from the edges inward, redness encroaching in a narrowing corona, while little triangular adrenaline glands atop my kidneys start pumping.
Bloodlust rises in my gut, in the cupola of my imagination, and I grab the neck of the nearest gamer-nerd, one of about a half dozen motherfuckers who have been grabassing and discussing strategy about the game currently underway, right next to my cube. I have asked them to be quiet in the past, in more of less kind ways, but this is enough. My voice reaches a shout before the last and most oblivious gamer-nerd realizes he should shut the fuck up.
“Guys, I’m trying to work here. Do you think you could maybe,” I talk louder, straining to keep my voice calm, from letting the violence seep through, brought on my one of them turning to resume his redundant discussion, ”keep it down, I can’t concentrate on my work because of the volume. So, please, keep it down.”
What I wanted to say: ”Yo! G-Pat, Shut the fuck up. No, really, dude, you have both excruciatingly poor delivery and think that you’re one funny motherfucker, laughing at your own jokes about some intricate detail you discovered that can win you games. I’ve been grinding away for the past six hours on four different projects, and for four of those hours, you guys have been standing around switching between jerking off and backstabbing each other. Could you take your stupid fucking game and take it somewhere else?”
But NO! Not in corporate America, fucking cubeLand. Besides, that’s just what those fucker want. Someone to point their finger at and say “he’s not a team player, we were doing something work related!” Turn things right around on you they would. Great fear you have. Fear leads to the dark side of the force. Failed I have.

What really happens is that I force the disturbance to the back of my mind, burying it under layers of classical music streaming realtime from DR Klassisk (upper right hand corner NETRADIO), which brings the added bonus of news broadcasts entirely in Danish, a fascinating language that runs at times foreign, at times familiar to ye olde language processors in the prefrontal cortex, or wherever those wily bastards choose to populate.

Worse is a boss who wants to make everyone happy, and who reiterates the need for good interoffice relations, the need for our team to appear approachable to everyone. Of course I understand the necessity of this, and people don’t seem to hesitate approaching me with questions, the answers to which can be found in the forty-page manual I wrote to keep track of everything our team does throughout any given week. However I don’t see the need to tiptoe all the time.
Sometimes the easiest and most efficient solution is to tell someone what they are doing wrong and suggest alternative methods for doing it right. Fuck, everyone in the fucking company says hi to me, and I’ve spoken with all four hundred on at least one occasion, if only exchanging hellos. I am confidant to a dozen, pest to departments, befriender of the ninety eight pound weakling, chest thumping and chick scoping buddy to the jock.

I am everyone’s friend, and friend to none. He who can disappear, without a trace, by time you’ve turned around from ordering the next round. He who has no objection to sleeping with female coworkers.
Ah, self-inflated narcissism. It feels good to look at yourself from that angle, and is surprisingly addicting. I wonder if that’s why I see it every day, especially at home. :)