Do You Work With Someone Who Moves Slower Than A Goldfish In An Icecube?

I always smile and look at the sky when I carry
heavy shit. Don't you? YAY, WORK!

           Working is great. I love working. I love practicing my instrument. I love writing. Well, actually – I hate writing, but I love that I can do it by myself. I believe the biggest problem I have with work is when I have to do it at a workplace, with other people, but who DOESN’T have that problem. As musicians, we get a bit spoiled with the amount of time we’re expected to actually collaborate with others. Rehearsals and concerts are generally not longer than two to three hours, as opposed to your usual eight or nine hour work day.

            They attempt to prepare you for a real world work environment by giving you “group projects” in school. Those would be the ones where one kid thinks he knows how to do everything (but doesn’t) and tries to guide the project. Then there are the kids who don’t have any idea what’s going on and drool drips out their mouths while they listen to the kid who thinks he knows what’s going on as he has arguments with the nerdy hardworking kid who doesn’t want to fail the project and hates group projects even more than he hates the letter F. Inevitably the one kid who knows what’s going on does the entire project, builds up enormous amounts of resentment towards the other kids for letting him do all the work, enormous amounts of resentment towards the obnoxious kid who thinks he knows everything and will take all the credit, and enormous amounts of resentment towards the teacher for assigning the group project in the first place. I think this aligns fairly well with your average work environment. You have your know-it-all(s) who do nothing and pretend they're busy, your slow people who don’t get anything done, your bosses, and the people who get stuck doing all the work and cleaning up the messes.

            I find it really interesting how many different interpretations there are of the word “work” at work. I generally find that when I go to “work” I assume I am supposed to be “working,” as in not reading my personal email, not looking at porn, not on Facebook, not going for meandering walks around the building, not on the phone with my Great Aunt Hilda’s dog psychiatrist, and not hanging out in the bathroom. I was surprised when I learned that this was not a universally agreed upon thought. There are also several different speeds for getting things done at work. While a rational person might think the most desirable speed for completing a task would be as fast as efficiently possible, that rational person might be wrong! Other speeds for accomplishing tasks I have encountered in the work force are slow, constipated whale shit, stop, and dead grandma. And then there’s this really odd interpretation of who owns company property. I used to think that things bought for your store or company, such as office supplies, toilet paper, and Creamer for the coffee were for the office and taking them home would be the equivalent of stealing product. I didn’t know that I was wrong about that too. At least the majority opinion seems to imply that I’m wrong about that.

            On the Internet I found a definition of the word “work” to be, “Be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a purpose or result.” I Googled it. I suppose if you use that definition, the "purpose or result" could encompass quite a wide variety of goals. So really, all your coworkers have to do to actually be doing “work” at your job to fulfill this definition is killing brain cells…..