work is dead

On Wednesday I came back from lunch with my shirt covered in brown stains. ‘It’s balsamic vinegar’, I assured everyone, haughtily. ‘And besides, it’s not as if I work with the public.’ Not at the moment anyway: it has been dead as the deadest day in the heart of Midsummer. I’ve been reduced to writing joke stories for the new monthly newsletter (June Is Stick Biscuits In Your Ears Month At Ottakars’!) After announcing a joint visit to the shop by the Pope and Jodie Marsh, I described the new Bernard (Sharpe) Cornwell novel as ‘his first venture into lesbian science fiction’. Then I reported back on the last instore book group meeting, which ‘erupted into a full-scale brawl, with several group members being hospitalized.’ None of this will see the light of day of course. Except here.

The newsletter has been reactivated because our assistant manager went on a marketing course and came back with a terrifying gleam of motivation in her eye. She’s been encouraging us to come up with ‘fun’ ideas that ‘involve the community’. ‘The community’ is the entire reason why I am not a librarian. And as for enthusiasm, I demonstrate mine by getting up in the morning to go to work: there really is none left over.

Sometimes I think I’d be better off working from home. Then I look at Mat. The other day he was obsessing about the thin line between genius and insanity, which to him is actually quite a thick line. He wanted to make his company website ‘insane’ so that equally insane people with lots of money would think he was a genius. The next day, he was wondering about a career shelf-stacking (by night) in Sainsbury’s. He imagined himself doing it on drugs with headphones clamped to his ears playing happy hardcore; he honestly couldn’t see a downside. When I tried to point out that it perhaps wouldn’t be the earthly paradise he envisaged, he just laughed. Madly. Come to think of it, maybe he should have my job: this is exactly the kind of positive mental attitude they need.