The Mother of All Boredom
Keeping entertained while at work can be a mother
I’d been staring at the dime for over 20 minutes. After three dozen attempts, I managed to balance it on edge and was struggling to move it across the countertop through a mishmash of telekinesis and sheer willpower. I was bored.
I have no idea why the bank hired me in the first place. Besides having a pulse, I had virtually no marketable skills in the finance industry. I didn’t even want to work there. But, I did need the money and Elephant Butte Savings was the only place willing to give me a job, so I leaped at the opportunity.
It took me less than a week to discover the true meaning of tedium. Actually, it was closer to three days. Besides myself, there were twelve other bank tellers who sat staring into space from 8 to 5. Unlike our counterparts in the 1950s who actually worked for a living, we sat there nearly comatose, put out to pasture through a lethal combination of online banking, electronic deposits, and ATMs. If I was lucky, a waitress might come in to personally deposit the $716 in loose change she’d collected as tips. And that was only because our ATMs wouldn’t accept coins. After she left, I fidgeted on my hi-rise stool, searching for creative ways to make the time go by while keeping under the radar of management. If it weren’t for all the robberies, it might have been a boring job.
We were forbidden to read in between customers, surf the Internet or talk on our cell phones — that lent the air that we had nothing to do. Nevertheless, I was able to come up with a number of creative ways to entertain myself while appearing to be busy. I started by imagining that everyone who came into the bank was nude. I learned the technique when I attended an Anthony Robbins seminar. Then I tried to see how long I could hold my breath without passing out. I gradually extended my record until the customers started complaining about the colors I was turning. After counting the number of hairs on my forearms, I’d push my index finger up my nose to see if I could touch my brain.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been bored. My struggle with tedium went all the way back to when I was an infant lying in my crib. For the first six months, my only entertainment was making ca-ca in my Huggies. When I discovered that I could use the crap for finger painting on the walls, the world of free form art opened up to me — at least until the beatings started and my mother rolled the crib to the center of my room. Fortunately, by that time I had learned to crawl and pick my nose, so it was some time before I’d find myself bored again.
During college, I found temp agencies to be a low-stress if not boring, way to pay my tuition. Their expectations were even lower than mine, so it worked out perfectly. After counting ball bearings, collecting tolls, and inspecting condoms, I was convinced that temp agencies had the market cornered on low-paying, worthless jobs that never lead anywhere. But even good jobs have downtime when there’s nothing to do. You still need to look busy.
I found that as long as I had access to a computer I could look like I was embroiled in some high-level marketing analysis. By cradling the telephone receiver against my ear, I could convince anyone that I was up to my eyeballs in deadlines and final project approvals, so even my supervisors left me alone. It was even easier when telephone headsets came into vogue. There’s no little red light that goes on like the outside of an occupied confessional, so my co-workers never really knew if I was talking on the telephone or just staring into space. The minute someone walked into my office and opened their mouth, I’d feign resignation and point to the headset as if to say, “Hey, I’d love to talk but I’m on the phone and this guy just won’t shut up.”
Later, I discovered I could fill hours just by walking down the hall glaring at a clipboard. People automatically assumed that I was swamped with work and barely had time to get to the restroom, let alone take the time to say hello. A friend of mine told me when he wanted to look busy he’d walk around with a bucket of paint and a paintbrush. After all, who would carry around a gallon of paint if they weren’t in the middle of doing something important?
Of course, the mother of all boredom is the practical joke. You’ll never find anyone gluing down the receiver of your phone or covering everything in your cubicle with aluminum foil if they’re genuinely buried in work. The trick is to pull them off without your boss catching wind that you have nothing better to do with your time than filling your office mate’s cubicle with packing peanuts.
Still looking for creative ways to defray my endless indifference, I happened upon a proven technique while watching reruns of “NYPD Blue.” In the popular crime drama, Dennis Franz is always pissed off and jumps down everyone’s throat. The technique works so well, it’s been adopted by virtually every cop, medical and CSI show on television and the big screen. Beginning the next day, I started coming to work ticked off.
Finally, I found that I could combine all of the techniques for maximum effect. On any given day, I could instantly morph from my jovial self to a pissed-off bank teller who was constantly yelling at someone on the phone while glaring at something on his clipboard.
After several weeks, the bank manager called me into his office to discuss my struggling performance. “Mr. Smith, we’ve had a number of complaints about your performance. The other tellers have complained that you appear to be under tremendous stress — yelling at the customers, excoriating people on the telephone, and pacing the halls with a clipboard and a bucket of paint. For God’s sake, man. You’re just an entry-level teller. Maybe we expected too much from you.”
He was right. I just couldn’t deal with the stress of having nothing to do. So, we both agreed that the best place for me would be validating parking tickets in the basement parking garage. While I’d still be bored, at least I wouldn’t have to pretend to be busy and I could continue working on my finger painting. At least until I got bored again.
