I don’t usually give up so easily

Well, my computer is starting to act up, and it’s almost time for me to depart for the weekend.

This is my new desk. Sit at the intersection of two desks, monitor stacked on computer. False light

from above, nowhere near a window. They give me a headache. Along with the fax machine that is taking up desk space right now, sitting to my left. At random points throughout the day the thing chimes on, and runs for about two minutes at a time. Four times something actually was printed out; and three out of four times it’s some kind of fax-spam. Today is jeans day, and people walk around in dressed down mindsets. They discuss their apartments instead of sit at their desk, hover over the copier (stopped working this morning), and peek up over cube walls. It’s hard not to hear their discussions sometimes, below the churning of the fax machine and the hum of the light.

The woman in the cube behind me, who has frighteningly mannish features, narrates her day.

Before she eats something she tells herself about eating it. Before she prints something out she debates the waste of paper. When her phone rings she responds with, “I’ll need to answer that now.” On the board before entering her cube maps out her plan for work. Right before being phased out, that is. For the past two days she’s answered emails from home, and won’t return to the office until the 28. With the first being her last day. I wonder if they’ll through a party. Purchase a pre-made cake from Tom Thumb or Kroger to bring it in for her. Upon receiving it she will appear happy, but she’s not. Her demeanor suggests that she hasn’t accepted that she’s leave. She still trudges away, when here, answering calls like the rest of the call-center staff that surround me with white noise never would. She hammers on her keys, subconsciously disappointed that she couldn’t stay.

Water from the tap here tastes funny, and the filter on the dispenser they have downstairs seems out

of date with caked dust. The other day one of the staff scientists, whose name I can’t recall, complained about it. He stood in front of the machine with a cup, showing everyone the contents. “See how cloudy it is,” he explains, “water shouldn’t be like that.” That it’s “unhealthy,” and that he is going to make “calls about it.” No one who hears him gets water, including me, and walk back to our cubes downtrodden that we can’t have our water. He’s right though. We shouldn’t drink it, but what else do we have. The vending machines downstairs are proof that price gouging exists, and that pop shouldn’t cost a dollar-fifty. The next day I’m downstairs pouring water into my bottle from the dispenser.