I Don't Get Paid Enough For This

I suppose I will go ahead and go with a blog.  Why not?  There’s a teeny, tiny chance I might make a little cash on it.  Though I doubt it.  You readers may notice a slight inconsistency in my writing style.  Actually it’s not the writing that’s inconsistent, or rather my mood.  I also do not speak in the same manner of that which I write.  No course not.  Who does that anyway?

My job.  Naturally, everyone hates their job.  Most days, mine isn’t so bad, and it wouldn’t suck so much if it weren’t for all the poop.  See, I’m a dry cleaner.  You may think it’s fun to play with chemicals all day…until you get a chemical burn or inhale the fumes of something you shouldn’t have.

My job is redundant and monotonous.  That entire sentence is redundant.  I’ve removed pen marks from white cotton shirt pockets so many times, I could do it in my sleep.  And yes, I have done it in my sleep.  The problem with having a job is that you spend most of your waking life there and once free and in the warm safe comforts of home, alone in bed dreaming….

Dreaming of work.  All day I strive to get out of that building.  I gobble up the sweet scent of freedom wafting through my car window as I plow through all the soccer moms on the interstate.  At night I curl up into a tight ball because I’m a stress-case and hug the blankets because the heater will only go up to seventy degrees.  But I’m home, in my bed that does not smell like a cologne bath or dog urine.

And I dream.  I have strange dreams that would bore you to death if I told them.  They are nothing more than random thoughts and memories picked up over the day or last week, or even over the last few years.  Then, as if by some cruel joke, I dream I am at my job.  The events may be strange or unorganized, but alas, I am at work.

It doesn’t seem fair.  I was there already today!  Oddly enough, because my job requires me to do the same mundane tasks, day after day, week after week, I have plenty of time to allow my mind to wander.  I daydream.

I think about what I could sell on eBay to avoid any more voluntary overtime.  What could I buy cheaply, out of a huge box and sell over and over for a tidy profit?  I think about all kinds of things really, but this one comes up the most because it will save me from wasting my life away.  The problem with making barely more that minimum wage is that everything equals an hour of overtime.  I’d like to see one of those fancy IMAX 3-D movies.  However, the nearest IMAX theater is an hour’s drive so for my husband and I to both go would cost roughly, three hours of overtime.

This is how my mind rationally calculates whether or not something is worth the cost.

The other thing that comes up most often is what I could’ve done with myself.  I should have gone to college.  I should have begun to eat more healthy years and years ago.  I should have done something--anything with myself.  I do find myself wondering what I could have done, what I would’ve become.

And that, dear readers, is what I really do all day at work.