It's been almost a week now since I left my trusty dining room table work station to take up typing in a real office. During this time, I have discovered and uncovered certain things:
1) I love having an access card. I like to fling it about with the zealousness of a newly engaged girl using hand gestures. I'm not sure why this is: my access card is, after all, nothing more than a tatty piece of plastic that is probably coated in E.Coli from the other people who have taken it with them to the bathroom. But there you go: Forget Porsches, this is my ultimate status symbol.
2) Actually, I take that back. There is nothing - NOTHING - that embodies the strange glamour of working of in an office, quite like the canteen. Oh, I could spend hours here. You see servers and buffets full of gloopy beef and stir fry that tastes exactly like the pasta alfredo; but I see an exotic and tantalising array of culinary possibilities. You have no idea what it's like to leave the sweaty cheese and stale bread at home and instead walk up to a counter and decide what flavour wrap I'll have - or, better still, order a capuccino!
If my fascination with these corporate commonplaces sounds bizarre, consider that for the past 10 years I have been tucked away in someone's house, with absolutely no connection to the outside world save for the occasional email or phone call. Oftentimes, I used to wonder if the Rapture had taken place and everyone else had moved on to a better place, leaving me grappling with a deadline that really didn't matter any more.
So that's the good when it comes to office life - but there is also the bad and the ugly:
3) Lifts. The silver lining here is that summonsing a lift gives me the chance to flash my access card around a bit. But on the other hand, I am not a person who goes in for frottage (look it up), and close contact with others makes me squirm. Especially when they have conversations like this: "Does that tonic work?" "Yes, especially for mucus." "And increased energy?" "No, just mucus." Ahem, Ms Mucus, do you either know or care that you have just confessed to us all that you are a heaving Snot Monster?
4) The toilets. I look around at the women in my office, all of them writing for upmarket magazines, and all of them bearing the trappings of a well to do life - neon accessories and summer scarves, for example - and I can't imagine what these females have done to make it necessary to post notices saying "PLEASE FLUSH!" Also, why must they be reminded to wash their hands? Just an aside here: my lavatorial loathing has probably been deepened by two factors. The first is that, unfortunately, my thighs touch the SHE bin when I sit down. Doesn't bear thinking about - except to say that there is probably no clearer message that it's time to lose the pregnancy weight. The second is that, in a state of nervous distraction on my first day, I dropped the toilet roll down the bowl, resulting in an unplesant bout of fishing around to retrieve it because I felt bad for the next person who would try to use that cubicle.
So that's it: my first week, in a nutshell.
1) I love having an access card. I like to fling it about with the zealousness of a newly engaged girl using hand gestures. I'm not sure why this is: my access card is, after all, nothing more than a tatty piece of plastic that is probably coated in E.Coli from the other people who have taken it with them to the bathroom. But there you go: Forget Porsches, this is my ultimate status symbol.
2) Actually, I take that back. There is nothing - NOTHING - that embodies the strange glamour of working of in an office, quite like the canteen. Oh, I could spend hours here. You see servers and buffets full of gloopy beef and stir fry that tastes exactly like the pasta alfredo; but I see an exotic and tantalising array of culinary possibilities. You have no idea what it's like to leave the sweaty cheese and stale bread at home and instead walk up to a counter and decide what flavour wrap I'll have - or, better still, order a capuccino!
If my fascination with these corporate commonplaces sounds bizarre, consider that for the past 10 years I have been tucked away in someone's house, with absolutely no connection to the outside world save for the occasional email or phone call. Oftentimes, I used to wonder if the Rapture had taken place and everyone else had moved on to a better place, leaving me grappling with a deadline that really didn't matter any more.
So that's the good when it comes to office life - but there is also the bad and the ugly:
3) Lifts. The silver lining here is that summonsing a lift gives me the chance to flash my access card around a bit. But on the other hand, I am not a person who goes in for frottage (look it up), and close contact with others makes me squirm. Especially when they have conversations like this: "Does that tonic work?" "Yes, especially for mucus." "And increased energy?" "No, just mucus." Ahem, Ms Mucus, do you either know or care that you have just confessed to us all that you are a heaving Snot Monster?
4) The toilets. I look around at the women in my office, all of them writing for upmarket magazines, and all of them bearing the trappings of a well to do life - neon accessories and summer scarves, for example - and I can't imagine what these females have done to make it necessary to post notices saying "PLEASE FLUSH!" Also, why must they be reminded to wash their hands? Just an aside here: my lavatorial loathing has probably been deepened by two factors. The first is that, unfortunately, my thighs touch the SHE bin when I sit down. Doesn't bear thinking about - except to say that there is probably no clearer message that it's time to lose the pregnancy weight. The second is that, in a state of nervous distraction on my first day, I dropped the toilet roll down the bowl, resulting in an unplesant bout of fishing around to retrieve it because I felt bad for the next person who would try to use that cubicle.
So that's it: my first week, in a nutshell.
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