Tales from the Grind #2

“I’m particularly fond of the ones that take a while to find out you’re a loser”

The alarm sounds at 7:30am and the daily routine begins. To get out of bed, I have to fight my way out of this feeling that’s hard to explain. A friend calls it ‘the ineffable dread’: the crippling anxiety you get where you’d rather be dead than do some task. The task in question is going to work.

I am in my mid-20s, and share a tiny office with two menopausal women. One of them, who we’ll call Patty, is constantly complaining about the temperature in the room. “Oh love, you know how women of a certain age are”, she’ll say. Patty regularly asks me how old my wife is, and I have to keep reminding her that I’m single. She then proceeds to chill the room to arctic levels, even to the point of disturbing the other woman, who we’ll call Sasha.

Patty and Sasha often take on ‘good cop / bad cop’ roles. Patty turns the office into an ice box, complains about being a “woman of a certain age” to which Sasha responds, “what do you think Dave. Do you think it’s because Patty’s going through her menopause, or just because she’s really fat?” I hang my head in shame; this is not what was promised to me when I left university.

I have my nightly routine down like clockwork now. First is physically getting out of work. My office is on the sixth floor of a massive high-rise downtown that has an attached parking garage. The traffic downtown is absolutely appalling. I live roughly ten miles from the office, but travelling that first mile, until I hit the freeway, takes as long as travelling the other nine. I exit from the freeway, stop at the off-license, buy a six-pack of the cheapest swill they have and five scratch-off lotto tickets. And of course, if it’s Monday I’ll stop over at my dealer’s house and buy an ounce of the shittiest pot he’s got lying around.

My room is covered in losing scratch-off tickets. Scratch-off tickets and scratch-off ticket dust everywhere. I’m particularly fond of the ones that take a while to find out you’re a loser. I know I’m a loser, I see it in every other aspect of my life. Most of my friends are getting married and starting families, and I’m getting stoned every night and listening to Futurama DVD commentary to feel like I actually have friends.

I’m never sure what to do with all these losing scratch-off tickets. One or two in the garbage is fine, but what do you do with a hundred of them? My sensibilities are conflicted; I can’t just throw all this paper in the trash, but I’m mortified by the idea of putting it in with the recycling. I just imagine the asshole across the street, walking from his perfectly manicured lawn through my tangled jungle, and looking in my recycling bin to see this recyclable glimpse into my filthy life. Empty beer cans, small ziplock bags that clearly held drugs, and thousands of losing scratch-off tickets with accompanying scratch off dust.

I have a system now for all the embarrassing stuff my life produces. The crew that comes by to empty the recycling bins is different than the one that carries off regular trash, and they come a little later in the day. Let’s say you want to get rid of pair of panties you found at the launderette and brought home because you’re pathetic and this is the closest you’ve gotten to a woman in God knows how long. Put it in with the recyclables. I called in sick one day to watch the recycling guys when they come on Thursday afternoon: they just dump it in with the rest and move on, taking my shame with them.

You would think that the weekends would provide some kind of respite to this misery, but I’ve never been able to fully enjoy my weekends since I started working five days a week. Saturdays are usually spent in bed recovering from the trauma of previous five days, and Sundays are spent crippled with anxiety about going back to work – a full 24-hour dose of ineffable dread. My family keeps saying that I should be thankful that I have a job that pays well, even if it makes me miserable. “Better than being one of those unemployed losers that hangs out at the park all day,” says my sister. Little does she know that my life makes those losers look like the most accomplished and vibrant specimens of human existence.

By Dave Wilkinson (@mikedolsx)

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