the shrewdness of apes

the woman at the desk behind me has recently started playing a lot of solitaire in order to occupy her non-socializing work time (don't worry - her department is about to hire someone else to help ease the workload). t.s.o.a. lacks the necessary chutzpah to admonish her for slacking, but solitaire? there's no skill involved, as you're pretty much a slave to however the cards fall. they invented the internet so no one would ever have to play that game anymore. and the internet offers so many valuable ways to fill your time: e-mail, news, games, sex chat, shopping, blog entries. you could fill the better part of a year just Googling people.

back in 1996, at some horrible temp job and with the internet in its nascent stages, i would play some freecell (which actually employs strategy), while trying to anticipate when the higher-ups would be passing by my desk. that didn't work so well, so a new time waster was needed. i moved on to folding the sports page and putting it in my lap, but that just made it look i was staring at my crotch a lot. eventually i got jobs that didn't tie me to a desk all day, enabling work sloughing to take place unabated.

t.s.o.a.'s favorite stories of work as a temp slave:

1. locking myself in a conference room that only i had a key to and napping for a couple hours.
2. going to a friend's apartment on my lunch break and drinking a 40 of OE 800 while playing NHL '94 on Sega Genesis for an hour, then going back to the office and attempting to avoid exhaling for the next 4 hours.
3. meeting 3 other friends (also temping) in an alley one afternoon to pass the dutchie.
4. staying all night alone in an office one night to finish some important reports. i was rewarded with hours of uninterrupted porn surfing and the next day, my boss went to the ATM and gave me $100 out of his own account to thank me for my dedication. this on top of the time-and-a-half i earned for the overtime.
5. getting my own office for 2 months, while the person i worked for sat outside in a cubicle.
6. flirting with the girls in Boston who transferred callers to us so we could help them sort out their insurance problems.
7. picking up my paycheck every week while politely declining the repeated offers from clarence the receptionist to join him in the pool at his apartment complex.
8. scoring free lunches from conference rooms after meetings let out.