When I was a kid I used to watch "Cheers" with my mom because, as an elementary schooler, I really responded to bar humor. I don't know. Anyway, one of the standout moments of television hilarity from all of my youth (and I'm including "Mash", "Roseanne", AND "America's Funniest Home Videos") was in that bar where everyone knows your name. Carla showed up to work late, and Becky (whom I certainly accepted, but never felt could replace Diane) taught Carla a little trick to help with punctuality: Set your watch half an hour ahead. Carla- that sassy spitfire- seemed surprisingly on board. From my memory- which is totally reliable 20 years later and not at all clouded by the passage of time or the usage of alcohol- their exchange went like this:
Carla: Oh. So if I set my watch an hour ahead that would be twice as good, right?
Becky: That's a great idea, Carla!
Carla changes her watch
Carla: Well look at that- It's time for my lunch break!
Carla Exits, Rebecca is speechless, third-grade me cracks the eff up
I don't bring this up because I want to leave work as soon as I get here (let me clarify- I want to leave work as soon as I get here, but that's not why I bring this up). No. I was thinking about Carla Tortelli and her early lunch break because lately from the minute I get to work all I can think about is eating my lunch. And my snacks. And potentially some really delicious stuff from the vending machine. And maybe something that someone is kind enough to put on the table by the microwave to share with the office. Because I am a child.
I basically spend the whole day playing both the role of Augustus Gloop and his mother (had she been an actual responsible mother, the kind who says, "You can have that left over burrito once you've done two things for work and Facebook doesn't count). Yes, as a grown-up who hasn't even counted as a "recent college graduate" for years, I have to set a schedule for when I can eat whatever food I bring from home/find around the office because if I didn't I would eat it all at once, ten minutes after my breakfast, with no relationship to actual hunger, but seemingly just because I can, and it's here, and I would certainly always rather be unwrapping a Cinnabon bar (put it int he microwave for seven seconds, you'll thank me) than typing an e-mail to a coworker, and can easily picture a world in which I catapult myself to a crazy sugar high and then am discovered sleeping it off under my desk. So yeah. If I stop thinking of work as a life-sucking fun-drain, I can always think of it as that thing I do to earn more/space out the consumption of roasted salted almonds from my drawer. Success.
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