A Fork in the Road

The worst half hour of my week has got to be waking up, showering, changing, and driving to work on Monday mornings. Not so much from my entire body shaking and my hangover from Saturday night being on day two, but the feeling of dread that arises from thinking about how long until it's Friday at 5pm. Every other morning I awake with a sense of, 'well at least it's not Monday morning'.

This particular morning I entered work to find out that our email will be down most of the day. Great, less work for me. I decide to take a little stroll 'round the office, to get my mind away from dirty Monday thoughts, and start trying to salvage whatever I can from this horrid day. Whenever I take this stroll there is a gut-check decision that must be made beforehand, as there are two paths through the office I can take, each leading me through different rooms and offices on my journey.

PATH 1:

The mailroom - The first stop along Path1 leads directly past the mailroom. You are almost guaranteed to see someone you don't feel like seeing, since it's usually the nutso's in the office that love to keep a paper trail of meaningless memo's in a cabinet at their desk. I'll never understand this, it's why we have these computer things.

Arnold - Immediately following the mailroom, I'll have to pass the office of Arnold, the Boston native who will always want to have obligatory sports chatter with everyone. This is so freaking irritating. I love sports, they consume 85% of what I care about in the world, but I do not want to discuss how the Celtics blew game three on Saturday and will most likely be in the finals anyway because Garnett is the Messiah. I usually lie by telling Arnie that I was out of town this weekend in some foreign land that has no TV's or Internet and thus am not caught up on the goings ons of the sports world. Still doesn't work though.

Linda - A 40-something year old woman in Accounting who is somehow very in tune to my generation and can keep me entertained for hours on end. She's mildly attractive, enough to the point where her hipness tips her scale to the 'I'd hit it' range, although her husband is an incredibly large man.

Kitchen - Usually pretty decent people in here, especially in the morning. It doesn't matter how much I don't like someone personally, when I'm drinking coffee in their company I can somehow inherently stand them. The opposite happens while drinking alcohol.

PATH 2:

Laurie - One of the VP's secretaries. She's 27, gorgeous, cool, dates professional athletes, and flirts with me despite the fact that no amount of steroids could ever make me look like the kind of guy she would hook up with. But the ten minutes I spend talking with her will give me the confidence I need to talk to any girl for the rest of the week. Unless, of course, they're as hot as she is.

Lauren - The opposite end of the spectrum. Lauren is also extremely attractive, but harbors a resentment of everyone she's ever met the likes of which I've never seen. Quite simply, she's a bitch. But for some reason I have a feeling that I could crack into that tough exterior and figure out what makes her tick. It's been 18 months of going through this futile attempt, and I'm pretty sure she still doesn't even know my name. Needless to say, she doesn't like Laurie too much.

Bathrooms - As I stated last week, I have some issues when using a bathroom at work, or just in public really. I never know what to say to co-workers while we're both urinating, and hate if I'm combing my hair and someone walks in on me. I also find it repulsive when an employee is brushing their teeth at the sink, can't you just wait until you get home? Is your dentist Mussolini? And it drives me nuts when people use a paper towel to open the door when they're leaving, it just seems like their one step away from stitching gloves to their hands and sleeping in a bubble.

Boss - 90% of my day is spent doing things to avoid a possible run-in with this man. No matter what's going on in the world or even in the office, I am quite certain that he just wants to intimidate me. Great guy, but I'm not sure what I ever did to make him hate me. Oh right, I'm a terrible employee, almost forgot.

Enjoy Monday...I'm going with Path 2