old.filthy
Ed. note: this is yet another post pulled from the archives of a web place long since left to rot.
Some years ago, I worked in a semi-corporate capacity, but it was “semi” enough that I was free to ignore the pall of corporate social dynamics. Essentially, I arrived, punched in, worked, punched out, and went about my way with little residual concern for the workday’s happenings.
Two years ago, at the behest of [someone else], I joined an advertising research firm. I’d finally made it…though, really, I hadn’t ever wanted to have made it quite like that. When epilogue becomes prologue, when the path of your life forks, all options are tantalizingly novel, fresh. You hover in the superposition of all choices, your gray matter overwhelmed with the potential before you. You might be excited to pull levers and work cranks in a fat rendering plant. “I’ll learn so much!” you think. “I’ve always wondered what fat rendering really was.”
After you’ve thrown away the fifth work shirt so saturated you smell like a corpse, life isn’t all happy fat rendering and cherries. It sucks. The quantum superposition has collapsed, and you’re stuck. You could, and sometimes do, smack your head with blunt objects. What the hell were you thinking?
That’s where I am now. Around my crew, and within the sphere of what I actually do, I’m happy. Over the past two years, though, the filth of our corporate culture has seeped into my bones. They’re creaking more every day, so I hobble around a 31-year-old grumpy old man, snapping at whippersnappers. And it’s going to get worse, soon.
July 1, my boss exits the company to clean herself of all the residue. Her superposition includes thoughts of becoming a bookseller; a physical therapist; a rental car manager-in-training; or a partner in a scrapbooking store venture. I’m sure she’s got some wilder stuff swirling. When she dumps her residue, though, a goodly portion of it’s comin’ my way.
Maybe I could learn about rendering fat for fun and profit.
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