“This is the worst day of your life … so far.”
— Homer Simpson, after Bart complains he has just experienced the worst day of his life

10:10 a.m.: An employee who always acts like she’s the most overworked person in the office is going on and on about how she just needs a break when marketing guy blurts out, “ ‘Wah, wah, wah!’ Stop your whining. You’re so full of it. Do the math.”
10:11 a.m.: “What math?” she asks. “I don’t do math.”
10:11:15 a.m.: “There are 52 weeks in a year, so that means 52 weekends,” marketing guy says. “That’s 104 days off right there.”
10:11:34 a.m.: “I worked a weekend once,” she says.
10:11:40 a.m.: “You did a story at the Hard Rock on a Saturday night, and you drank for free and ended up getting laid,” marketing guys says. “That doesn’t count.”
10:12 a.m.: “But anyway,” he continues, “then, you have your two weeks’ vacation and, like, four personal days? Then, throw in the usual seven or eight national holidays a year. Plus, you’re Jewish, so toss in a few of those Rosh Hashana things and right off the bat, you’re up to more than 135 days a year that you do absolutely no work. And that’s not even deducting hours for how many days you come in late or leave early.”
10:13 a.m.: “I work late, too,” she says. “Once, and that was because … ”
10:13:12 a.m.: “Never mind.”
10:50 a.m.: Since our last staff meeting got a little heated, the boss has hung a new slogan over his office window just in case anyone still has any misconception of how things operate around here. Sign reads: “I may not be right, but I’m never wrong.”
11:12 a.m.: New guy is upset with all the places that ask if he’d like to donate a dollar. “It started at Publix,” he says. “After they ring you up, they say, ‘Would you like to donate a dollar to help children with cystic fibrosis?’ or whatever. So yeah, of course you do. But now, every place is doing it. Wendy’s did it to me last night. I can’t donate a dollar at Wendy’s. I’m there for the Super Value Menu to begin with. I’m living on 99-cent chili. When are people going to give me a dollar?”
11:14 a.m.: Everyone gives new guy a dollar.
11:33 a.m.: Music guy comes over to me all excited about a “brilliant” idea he has. “We take existing biographies of famous people and insert your name, whoever you are,” he says. “So when you’re reading it, it’s all about you, only you’re, like, Alexander the Great or somebody.”
11:34 a.m.: Terry the Great?
11:34:34 a.m.: “Maybe that’s a bad example,” he says. “But say it’s Keith Richards’ biography and a chapter begins, ‘Shine sat in the shadows on a wobbly crate looking like a vampire, a needle still hanging from his left arm.’ ”
11:35 a.m.: I see where you’re going with this, I say, but I don’t know if I want to come. Let me ponder it over lunch.
12:50 p.m.: Head to lunch to eat alone.
12:52 p.m.: As I pass the temp lady at the front desk, she sighs and says, “There’s so little reward in life.”
12:52:11 p.m.: Amen, I reply.
1:05 p.m.: At the park where I eat my tuna kit, a baseball field is under construction, and several workers are putting the finishing touches on the dugouts. I have zero interest in baseball, but I like everything about dugouts. I like dropping beneath ground level, the dirt and the sudden coolness.
1:22 p.m.: Before I finish eating, the workers disperse on a break of their own, so I go sit in the home team’s dugout. The earth smells fresh, and the prairie dog view is relaxing. I think about the nights in ninth grade I spent in the dugout at Randall Field lazily talking to Sue Martelli about how we’d have a horse farm one day and a soda machine in our bedroom.
1:26 p.m.: Dugouts are always best at night, when baseball is the furthest thing from your mind.
2:05 p.m.: When I get back from lunch, all the employees are being herded into the conference room for another corporate meeting. The same honcho who came in last week to scare us with film clips from 300 — to illustrate how we’re being massacred in the industry — is standing in the front of the room.
2:07 p.m.: “First off, I want to apologize,” he begins. “Last week got a little bloody, and I guess I said something about someone’s baby having to strip her way through vocational school if profits don’t pick up. And my assistant tells me the part about children being smothered by a circus tent was a bit disturbing to some of you. Anyway, I’m here tomake amends.”
2:08 p.m.: He pauses, leaving us with deadly silence, and then yells, “Penguins!”
2:08:22 p.m.: “We’re switching to a penguin analogy. Everybody loves penguins, right?” he asks.
2:08:41 p.m.: We all look at one another.
2:09 p.m.: “You’re not offended by penguins, are you?” he asks the same sales rep who last week had to imagine 4-month-old baby Emily and her chubby little arms swinging on a stripper pole.
2:09:22 p.m.: “No, penguins are cute,” she says.
2:10 p.m.: “Exactly,” he says, opening up his dress shirt to reveal a T-shirt that reads: EMPEROR PENGUIN. “The future is now, and I’m ready to lead you on the march to success.”
2:10:12 p.m.: “The iceberg is melting, people!” he bellows. “Who’s with me?”
2:11 p.m.: Our boss, who has been standing quietly next to the penguin emperor, takes his dress shirt off to reveal a Kellie Pickler T-shirt.
2:12 p.m.: Emperor Penguin just looks at boss oddly, shrugs and says, “That’s not part of the new program. But this is!”
2:12:18 p.m.: Emperor Penguin’s assistant jumps up and spills a large bag of ice across the conference table. There’s a collective gasp, several people lift their coffee cups off the table, and the new lady from marketing gets hit in the tooth with an ice cube. “I’m OK,” she says.
2:13 p.m.: Emperor Penguin is beaming as if he just blew up a bounce house for us to romp in. “Who’s first?” he shouts.
2:13:30 p.m.: We all look at one another: First for what?
2:14 p.m.: “Come on, you folks in the back. Slide on your bellies across the table. Come to me. Join me on this quest.”
2:15 p.m.: One by one, several employees start sliding on their bellies across the conference table. A few have pretty good form with their feet up in the air and chunky stomachs rolling them along. But many can only move awkwardly in stops and starts and fits and farts.
2:21 p.m.: The ice is turning to water, and everyone is kind of just puddle-jumping now. The last employees in line either throw a leg up on the table in a gesture of camaraderie or stick their fingers in the water and halfheartedly flick it at their faces in sort of a sloppy, holy-water blessing.
2:23 p.m.: I feign a coughing fit and excuse myself from the room … and the future.