Office work
There's something oddly profound about office jobs. It's something that I wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't taken an office job. It doesn't revolve around me feeling like a cog plugged into some infernal entity endlessly assimilating my being into its nefarious plots of... well, what do libraries plot? World enlightenment? Free expression and access to media? Cookies? I don't feel like some peddler of dark tomes, pulsing with the harvested souls of demon kin and dripping with the blood of the damned. I LIKE my job. I raise money for the fucking BRANCH libraries. I can go into one of the local libraries here, look at a small child reading Where The Wild Things Are, and know that his enjoyment of that book is a direct effect of what I do to pay the rent. Instead, it's the MACHINES involved with the process. The machines and their mindblowing CONSUMPTION.
Perhaps I should put this into some context. I just sent a 1000 page document to print. It's for a mailing going out on Monday. Now, said document is LARGE. The shitty little 500mb RAM computer that sent the print job could BARELY RUN THE DOCUMENT. It took 5 minutes just to SEND it to print. Mind you, it's almost 7PM, with NO ONE in the office but me, so it's not exactly peak hours. Even at this time, this lost hour usually sandwiched between actual, productive, compensated work hours and actual, restful, home hours, my computer had to sit, digital maw agape, and contemplate the magnitude of my command. At least its ignorance spares it the knowledge of the 3000 page attachment print-job coming on Monday.
Now, the only sound in the office is the steady drone of the copier/printer contentedly tending to its dark task, metal mandibles constantly drawing in what I only assume to be the remains of the Ent-wives. And I can only stand in awe as it devours ream after ream, moving only to place more offerings of tree folk in its waiting maw.
If there are Jedi out there, this print job must sound like a death metal concert to them.
Perhaps I should put this into some context. I just sent a 1000 page document to print. It's for a mailing going out on Monday. Now, said document is LARGE. The shitty little 500mb RAM computer that sent the print job could BARELY RUN THE DOCUMENT. It took 5 minutes just to SEND it to print. Mind you, it's almost 7PM, with NO ONE in the office but me, so it's not exactly peak hours. Even at this time, this lost hour usually sandwiched between actual, productive, compensated work hours and actual, restful, home hours, my computer had to sit, digital maw agape, and contemplate the magnitude of my command. At least its ignorance spares it the knowledge of the 3000 page attachment print-job coming on Monday.
Now, the only sound in the office is the steady drone of the copier/printer contentedly tending to its dark task, metal mandibles constantly drawing in what I only assume to be the remains of the Ent-wives. And I can only stand in awe as it devours ream after ream, moving only to place more offerings of tree folk in its waiting maw.
If there are Jedi out there, this print job must sound like a death metal concert to them.