Glad you could join us. You’ve been eyeing the clock for how long now? You work Graveyard, you work Swing, you Get Up with the Chickens.

“But I went to art school specifically to avoid the use of adding machines!” Too bad, Comrade. Like crime in many ways, it Does Not Pay. So grit your teeth and pack your lunch.

You’ve had every job there is, short-circuiting your short-term memory, a resume of sound and fury. You filed claims, filled orders, ran registers, cold-called and called back and looked out back. You swept up and put together and opened and closed and came back in the morning and opened again. You picked up and dropped off. You booked sessions and got quotes and took notes. You’ve managed. You managed. Leave messages, take messages. Highlight this, white out that. You’re not allowed to read, drink, nap, or swear. Anything, in short, that makes life worth living.

So instead you sharpen pencils, you pull staples, you put things away. You daydream flamethrowers. Paper cuts go right to the heart. You’re getting wrinkles from fake-smiling. Birthday cupcakes out of petty cash and people calling you by the wrong name. That grim, shallow camaraderie of prisoners o’ war. A state in which happiness is a vending machine and a magazine.
Twenty-two thousand, nine hundred and fifty hours on the clock, give or take. Something like two thousand, eight hundred and five pots of coffee.

“But I don’t wanna be like everybody else!” you wail.

You whine, whinge, cringe. Indignant indentured servant. Indolent indigent. Irate ingrate. Someone has to answer the calls. Someone has to un-jam the copier. Someone has to alphabetize, to itemize, to serve the fries. The president doesn’t care if you lives or dies.

You think, “I’m going to die someday; I don’t have time for this!”

There was a poster in my junior high social studies class, “Attention clock-watchers: time passes, but will you?”

Besides, what makes you special, entitled to anything different? No time off for good behavior, no deferment. Do you need a project? Do you know what time it is? Would you get to work?