Silent Treatment
Sep. 10th, 2002 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferenMy boss and several members of my department's upper management vacated the office yesterday around 2:00 PM or so, taking my supervisor with them. I am told they had an invitation from one of our vendors (the one that hired my obnoxious ex-manager as our account representative after he was released from employment with us) to go out to Santa Clara, CA and do... something. I'm not sure if they're attending sales seminars, receiving a tour of the Network Operations Center or being locked in rooms with a horde of horny and depraved hookers. Regardless, I wasn't invited -- and wouldn't have gone even if I had been -- so I'm here in the office pretty much alone. With another coworker out on leave of absence and my supervisor gone the Network Engineering team has been reduced to 50% of its force. Since I'm the most senior of the engineers I guess the mantle of "leadership" has fallen on me. Or, perhaps more accurately, fallen past me -- I sidestepped it at the last section and let it crash to the floor. I'm not paid enough to make important decisions here.
Further hindering the creation of noisy productivity is that one of our UNIX engineers is out for training this week as well. With him gone the cube immediately adjacent to me is curiously silent. Most everyone around the department has been quiet this week since the manager left. I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing -- it's sort of hard to tell, but it is definitely ominous. I've found myself turning the speakers up louder and louder in an effort to combat the silence. As weird as it may sound I'm finding myself feeling sort of lonely. I'm not getting a lot of interaction with people and I feel somewhat, well, left out. How's that for weird? I feel left out at work, the place I usually couldn't care less about.
Perhaps some of this sense of frustration and alienation is due to withdrawal. About two weeks ago I went on my second attempt to kick the cigarette habit to the curb. I've been meeting with pretty good success so far, mostly because I positively do NOT go out with the smoking crowd anymore. If I'm standing around, surrounded by a bunch of smokers, the urge ends up overwhelming me. As near as I can tell I'm more mentally addicted to the act of smoking than I am to the actual chemicals I ingest by smoking. Maybe I can clarify that a little: I need to smoke more than I need the smoke. Does that make things a little more understandable? I hope so. In addition to losing the cigarette addiction I'm also slowly putting myself onto a healthier diet when it comes to what I drink. I've been successful in completely eliminating my coffee intake, which wasn't a particularly difficult task since I only drank coffee at work and the coffee in the office is butt-ass nasty to begin with. It's not hard to give up something that sucks, you know? Along with the loss off caffeine through coffee I'm also trying to remove my soda intake. I still have soda now and then, but by and large I'm only drinking water these days. I was paying $1 per bottle to get water from the vending machine upstairs, but then I found I could buy 1 pint bottles of water 36 at a time from Costco or Sam's Club for about $6.50. That was a tough decision to make, let me tell you (heavy sarcasm). By cutting my soda intake and moving to the cheap bottled (and decent tasting!) water I've removed Yet More sugar and caffeine from my daily intake. This is the first step towards keeping my sedentary lifestyle at the office from making me gain any more weight. Next step, eat just a little less. It's so easy to just say "supersize it" when the price looks so appealing, but that way lies madness. Simple moderation along with cutting the sugar and caffeine intake should put me well on the road to weight management.
I'll just stay here locked behind the door
Further hindering the creation of noisy productivity is that one of our UNIX engineers is out for training this week as well. With him gone the cube immediately adjacent to me is curiously silent. Most everyone around the department has been quiet this week since the manager left. I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing -- it's sort of hard to tell, but it is definitely ominous. I've found myself turning the speakers up louder and louder in an effort to combat the silence. As weird as it may sound I'm finding myself feeling sort of lonely. I'm not getting a lot of interaction with people and I feel somewhat, well, left out. How's that for weird? I feel left out at work, the place I usually couldn't care less about.
Perhaps some of this sense of frustration and alienation is due to withdrawal. About two weeks ago I went on my second attempt to kick the cigarette habit to the curb. I've been meeting with pretty good success so far, mostly because I positively do NOT go out with the smoking crowd anymore. If I'm standing around, surrounded by a bunch of smokers, the urge ends up overwhelming me. As near as I can tell I'm more mentally addicted to the act of smoking than I am to the actual chemicals I ingest by smoking. Maybe I can clarify that a little: I need to smoke more than I need the smoke. Does that make things a little more understandable? I hope so. In addition to losing the cigarette addiction I'm also slowly putting myself onto a healthier diet when it comes to what I drink. I've been successful in completely eliminating my coffee intake, which wasn't a particularly difficult task since I only drank coffee at work and the coffee in the office is butt-ass nasty to begin with. It's not hard to give up something that sucks, you know? Along with the loss off caffeine through coffee I'm also trying to remove my soda intake. I still have soda now and then, but by and large I'm only drinking water these days. I was paying $1 per bottle to get water from the vending machine upstairs, but then I found I could buy 1 pint bottles of water 36 at a time from Costco or Sam's Club for about $6.50. That was a tough decision to make, let me tell you (heavy sarcasm). By cutting my soda intake and moving to the cheap bottled (and decent tasting!) water I've removed Yet More sugar and caffeine from my daily intake. This is the first step towards keeping my sedentary lifestyle at the office from making me gain any more weight. Next step, eat just a little less. It's so easy to just say "supersize it" when the price looks so appealing, but that way lies madness. Simple moderation along with cutting the sugar and caffeine intake should put me well on the road to weight management.
I'll just stay here locked behind the door
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Pffft.
Date: 2002-09-10 07:59 pm (UTC)Tolerance my left tit. Like you said, some of these people will have wild, kinky unprotected sex with anything that has a pulse (human or otherwise) but when they find out you enjoy the occasional pull off a cigar you're the scum of the earth and deserve to be put down like a rabid dog.
If somebody is allergic to smoke, I can understand their being vehemently against it. My loved ones and close friends have the right to give feedback, input or advice. But these other people cross a line when they, as a perfect stranger or passing acquaintance, try to tell me how to live my life or start judging me. They're just as fucked up and fallible a creature as I am.
Re: Pffft.
Date: 2002-09-10 08:19 pm (UTC)Re: Pffft.
Date: 2002-09-10 08:24 pm (UTC)Re: Pffft.
Date: 2002-09-11 12:46 am (UTC)Likewise, I saw the Flayrah post about Angel Bear's webcomic. I thought to myself, it doesn't sound like something I'd be interested in reading (sure enough, I took a look out of curiosity and thought "eww, sappy") but I'm not gonna give him guff for it.
I disapprove of smoking, and I disagree with Christianity... but I disapprove of starting fights and bickering and pissing people off even more.
And the trouble with that is... the smokers and the Christians don't hear from me because my quiet pacifist thoughts are drowned out by the obnoxious jerks who'd rather yell and taunt them.