A lonely day
Posted on
Today I had the office to myself. The rest of my team managed to get roped into a meeting in London with our chairman and some of his colleagues at one of the other firms he's involved with. From experience (at my last company), being invited to meetings like that is often a dubious honour. Sometimes they're not the most exciting things and you invariably end up coming out with more work to do. Being left to entertain myself for the day wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to, but I consider anything that involves me not having to travel to London on business to be a perk.
The first hour on my own wasn't too bad. I often arrive before everyone else anyway, so coming into an empty office and turning on the lights is not unusual. On any other day, it gives me chance to get my computer started up and plan what I have to do for the day before anyone else arrives. Today I just had longer to do that, and as my plan mostly involved staring at a screen and listening to rock music, I didn't mind.
After about an hour, it did start to feel a bit odd. I've normally at least said hi to somebody and made the usual 'nice evening'/'glad to be back (not)' small talk by this point. By the end of the second hour, I'd gotten used to it. I managed to get engrossed in what I was working on and it was nice to get on with it without interruptions. Sometimes I welcome the occasional distraction. It helps to take a break and refocus. Today, however, I didn't have anything to distract me. The positive outcome of this is that I got a fair bit done. On the down side, I nearly missed lunch.
By the afternoon I was flagging. I could feel my concentration waning and I was ready to do something else. I'd already considered swapping my colleagues' desks around, or perhaps using them to build a fort, but in the end I decided against it on the grounds that it required more effort than I was prepared to put in and I'd only have to help them put it all back again tomorrow. After dealing with a couple of customer enquiries and solving a Rubik's Cube, I was ready to do something else.
Somewhere around verse one hundred and twenty eight of 'One Thousand Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall', I began to question how sensible it was to hang anything on a wall that clearly wasn't fit for purpose. It was around this time I realised I'd spent too much time by myself and started to seek contact with the outside world. Realising my email inbox had nothing new, I checked my spam folder to find I'd been invited to a casino and had been offered some discounted 'enlargement' pills and a cheap Rolex. I assume these were from very different companies, but just in case I decided not to reply to any of them and to avoid that casino.
When home time came, it was a welcome reprieve. My bus journey home had people on it, but as none of them spoke to me, I chose to think of it as a way of easing my way back into society. Arriving home, I had dinner and went straight to my room to do some writing. It had been a long day and frankly I needed some time to myself.