Working in an office: a survival guide (kinda)

This article was originally meant as a strategy-guide in surviving around the office. But then I realized that it's not a topic worth an article on CoN and that I'm sure we all have good, well paying, soul satisfying office jobs, right? The article that replaces this one needs another name. I was thinking of "Vibrations through the night", so here goes:

Vibrations through the night
by Leandro

I have the bad reputation of being a bad caller. People call me, I don't call them back. One day I get a phone call from Bell, the phone company which I am hooked up with. They ask me if I'd like to try any of their services, the first month being free. Since I had no answering machine, and I keep my line busy most of the time when I am connected to the Internet or I'm simply not at home, I told the guy to set me up for their CallAnswer service, basically a voicemail that answers the phone when I don't pick it up. Or if I am on the line it will take a message just like an ordinary answering machine.

When people called, I thought, they can leave a message and I would call them back. Unfortunately I never checked the voicemail, leading to a buildup of messages. Apparentely you cannot have more than 25 messages stored and those poor souls that dared to call me would hear a "this answering machine has exceeded it's maximum amount of allowed messages. Please call back at another time". This pissed off quite a few people, especially when I would return their calls a week later with "Hi! I just heard your message and..."

By e-mail I was still fairly reachable, so those that were "online" would get in touch with me that way. That was until I started to receive a lot of e-mails through my several accounts. Then I started to receive a lot of mail because of Capital of Nasty. E-mails accumulated until I had a good 60 or 70 in my inbox waiting for a reply. A reply that by the time I actually wrote it, it was a little too late. More people were getting pissed off.

On my 21st birthday, my friends gave me a little box as a present. I opened it up and found inside a pager. An innocent pager, of a dark cranberry colour and cute little buttons that I could push. As I was playing with it, I heard Betty make comments about "unanswered e-mails" and "full voicemails" but I pretended not to hear. The message was clear however, and so for the first few months I actually carried the pager around and when it beeped, I would call people back. Then of course the toy lost its fascination, and once in a while I would forget the pager in my room, only to find it vibrating on the floor.

The other day I was leaving for work in a rush and left the little guy on top of one of my metal cabinets. As usual I had set the pager on vibrate, so that it doesn't disturb anyone when it goes off in the middle of the night. When I came back, four hours later, the pager was gone. I look for it in my bag, on my other pair of pants, I even ask my sister thinking she might've took it to play with it, as she often does. Nobody has seen it, nobody knows where it is and my searches prove to be unsuccessful.

The noise in the house is slowly dyeing down and my ear catches a sound, similar to the drone of a bee. Not even a second, then it's gone. A minute later I hear it again. And 60 seconds after that again. I finally figure out it's the pager. Someone must've paged me, and the pager probably fell off the cabinet due to the vibrations. "Good," I think, "it's in here somewhere. I'll find it tomorrow".

It got quieter in the house. The vibration got louder. Wood, for those that don't know, has the effect of increasing the volume of any sound. I have a wooden floor, the pager was taking full advantage of it every 60 seconds, in it's 1 and a half second dance.

Sleeping became impossible. I found myself turning all the lights on, and kneeling down on the floor trying to determine from where exactly the sound was coming from. One and a half second of vibration must not be enough for the human ear to catch the correct location of a small object vibrating on the floor. I was so sure at one time that I knew where it was, that I took everything sitting under the last shelf of the library out. The sound felt like it was coming now from the left, now from the right. And I had to wait 60 precious frustrating torturing seconds for the next little buzz.

Eventually I found the pager. It had travelled 16 feet from it's original location. It fell from the cabinet, went under the library, and found a final resting place against the wall under the chair. It was now 4 o'clock in the morning, and I had to be up in less than four hours. I turned the pager off, and it felt as if I had just put my head down on the pillow, since the alarm went off.

I guess I have learned my lesson, and this is a warning to you all. If you don't call people, start doing it now before they give you a pager as a birthday gift. If you have a room "organized" like mine, you are going to spend many hours finding the little fucker, and you will realize for the first time in your life how long 60 seconds can be.