Office Schizophrenia

I find myself increasingly in the grip of some kind of office schizophrenia.  In the mornings I discharge my duties with an almost overbearing chirpiness.  Telephone callers are greeted with a sing-song Geordie salutation ('Good Morning, X Corporation, Jonathan speaking') and their enquiries, no matter how dreary, inconsequential or plain laughable, are dealt with in the most breezy and efficient manner imaginable.  Sometimes at around 10 o'clock I catch myself almost enjoying the gathering momentum of the working day; I'm in command of my environment- 'in the zone', even, like Michael Jordan on those magical nights when the basket seemed the size of the court and all he had to do was send the ball up there and it would miraculously drop into place.  I am multitasking effortlessly; processing an order on the computer while talking to a man in Sheffield about flanges, and simultaneously scrawling down on a scrap of paper the number 53, to let Janine, who is getting a round in at the vending machine, know that I'll be having a tea with extra sugar.  As the plastic cups of subsidised hot drinks flow at our four-berth workstation, the sun is shining on the Mancunian Way flyover outside my window, and all is well with this office life.

So the mornings, no problem.  The afternoons, though, are a different matter altogether.  Yesterday was fairly typical.  I slouched back to my workstation at 1:55 with dead eyes and the enthusiasm of a man approaching the gallows, and, unable to face the mental exertion of remembering my password, instead put my head down on the desk for something like 30 seconds, emitting a series of barely audible groans.  And that was pretty much the high point of my post-lunchtime productivity.  Here is a breakdown of how the afternoon progressed:   

2:15.... balance a juggling ball on my forehead while studiously ignoring the ringing of the telephone.

2:37.... write a long and impassioned email to my friend Skipsey arguing that Newcastle are bound to suffer an ignominous defeat at Cheltenham on Saturday given that we always get knocked out of the FA Cup by lowly opposition in years when Parka coats are fashionable (really, it's true, I've researched the matter with some diligence,  You can go and put your bets on right now).

3:02 .... The phone is ringing again.  But I can't answer because I am busy inserting a ruler into my mouth, gripping the end between my front teeth and waving it about, before allowing it to drop onto the desk in the manner of a dog letting go of a juicy bone. After the regulation amount of rings, the phone call 'bounces' to Janine, who answers it while looking at me slightly quizzically.

3:58.... stand up with the vague intention of getting some coffees in, but, overcome with the sheer tedium of it all, instead allow my head to fall forwards in a slow bowing motion, eventually coming to rest on the desk, where I leave it for a minute or so, humming some unrecognisable tune to myself in a quiet, haunting falsetto.

4:02.... get the coffees in. 

4:24.......... in effort to entertain myself, have taken to inserting array of low, meaningless sounds into telephone conversations, hoping to pass them off as verbal tics:  'Yes that item would be available on a herrrurrurururur seven week lead time.  Your nett price would be four pounds harragharraugh sixty-three per box.  Yes that's four ooroaarrrgh pounds sixty-herrarrgh-three.  Thank's for your call now.  Hooraugh!'    

5:00... hometime.  Almost too overcome with inertia to turn the computer off, get up and leave the desk. 

5:06... have somehow managed to rouse myself from paralytic deskbound torpor; emerge blinking into gathering dusk to begin bike-ride home.

So as you can see, afternoons are not really my strong point.  And so I am taking drastic action.  Today I decided to try and fool myself into thinking that the afternoon was just another morning, by eschewing the delights of the Deansgate Hot Food Bar at lunchtime in favour of retiring to the first-floor first-aid room and having a 30 minute lie down in the dark.  I might even have dropped off to sleep for ten minutes or so, and woken up just in time to head back up to the desks, looking somewhat bedraggled if slightly more bright-eyed than usual, at 2:00 sharp.

The result?  Well I would like to say I was straight back into that Michael Jordanesque zone again, firing enquiries, orders and phone calls straight into a massive imaginary basket.  But the truth is I was still just a little bit on the grouchy side.  I didn't feel the need to put my head down on the desk, though, or indulge in those other other episodes of odd attention-seeking behaviour that you might associate more with bored animals at the zoo than office workers. 

So it is a start, the siesta thing.  Probably I need just to get the amount of sleep right, so tomorrow I plan to take to the dark of the first-aid room for some worthwhile length of time, like an hour and a half.  Maybe that way my afternoon callers will get to hear those dulcet tones the morning people have grown so fond of.   Hell, I may soon be able to say 'Good afternoon' with the same effortless cheeriness as I seem to be able to say 'Good Morning'.  If I can continue the conversation without resorting to a chorus of 'hoorarruagh's and 'arraugharrooarr's, then I will really be winning this strange nine-to-five fight I seem to have gotten into with myself.   

Comments

[looby]

That sounds vey much like some afternoons I had at uni, when I just could not drag myself round to actually writing anything. I still can't do anything in the afternoons, which is unfortunate, because then I come over all tired at around 5-8pm, so unless I can find a job which allows you a break from midday until 8pm, I'm a bit stuck. At midnight of course, I'm firing on all cylinders.

[abby]

eeee, wor jonathan, what a vigorous piece of writing -- perhaps the benefits of sloth in the workplace are being reaped in your art.

I am pretty sure there is a character in Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener who has your problem, although it turns out that it is from a lunchtime indulgence in whisky or something of the sort. His boss has learned to live with it:

"Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o’clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easy to be matched..."

I once read something on an aeroplane that said a scientist had found out that we are only designed to work 3 hours a day.

[jonathan]

Aye I know the Melville character you are on about Abby- and I often think of him in the long, almost unbearable afternoons, such as the one just about to start. I believe it was flaggons of ale that were the cause of his post-meridian discomfort, and who can blame him? I don't suppose they had first-aid rooms to go and lie down in in those days.