Cast of Characters

Every Office is different.  For 5 years I got up at 4:31 AM (there was something psychological about that extra minute which made the early hour bearable), drove an hour and 45 minutes so I could sit down in an 8x10 cell, I mean office, with no windows and bad lighting doing work which gave me the same satisfaction as translating Webster's Dictionary into Pig Latin.  Oot-shay Ee-may Ease-play.  What made it bearable was the supporting cast of characters who kept me sane talking about anything OTHER than work.  It's amazing how much time could pass discussing the latest Harry Potter novel, sports, the Simpsons, or swapping home improvement horror stories.

My new office is bright, airy, as close to home as you can get, and comes with it's own cast of characters, who keep me from ever having to worry about my routine getting dull.  In fact, one might even say that they take pride in ensuring a routine is never actually established.

As I mentioned previously, I have three computers in my home office with routers, peripherals etc.  The result is a Siren's song of flashing lights, hanging chords and clicking buttons to tempt even the most indifferent rugrat.  Now as a responsible parent/employee, my office has been declared "Off Limits" which translated into Munchkinese means "Playland of Forbidden Fruit."

I don't enforce the domestic No-Fly-Zone very well, which means that about 90% of my office interruptions are self-inflicted.  My 2-year-old, my office's social butterfly, is fun-loving, curious, and cute as can be.  He regularly comes in to check on me and ensure my productivity levels don't peak too early in the day.  Often I'm greeted with an "Oh, Hi Daddy!" said as though his wandering into the work zone was either a completely accidental occurrence, or the idea that I might actually be sitting at my desk, like I do every day, never occurred to him.  Very rarely do I usher him to the door, even when I'm on the phone.  Since he no longer feels the need to be picked up all the time and can usually play quietly in the background, once he's convinced I'm not on the phone with, and depriving him of a conversation with, Grandma, he's usually pretty quiet.  Instead, he occupies himself by either showing me the toy cars that are the favorite of the day, or turning the A/C on and off.  Occasionally he'll stand on the easy chair in my office, looking out the window giving me a play-by-play of every car that passes by.  Evidently one can never be TOO informed of the local traffic patterns.

Assuming the role of the office gossip is my oldest.  The 'Town Crier' of the family, he has figured out that when Daddy is sitting at his desk, things need to be addressed quietly.  For a while, I tried to explain that when Daddy is working, he and his brothers need to stay out.  Eventually I learned that his nose for news and his unquenchable need to report it, can come in handy.
tug tug (whispered) "Dad"
*ignore*
(whispered) "Dad!"
*ignore*
"Um, excuse me, Daddy?"
(annoyed) "Daddy is on the phone for work!  What is it?"
"The baby is climbing the stairs"
*sigh* "Thanks Champ."  "Jim, I'll call you back in a minute."

The biggest character in my new office environment comes in the form of the 10-month-old, who is the unwitting practical joker of the group.  He can crawl with ninja-like skill, unobserved, into the room and then uses his highly-tuned 6th sense to choose the most distraction-provoking cord or cable to pull.  So while discussing the latest report changes with a client and trying to type the changes while still fresh in my mind, the keyboard slowly starts getting pulled out of my lap, or the scanner starts a deliberate lemming-march towards the edge of the desk.  The trick at this point is not whether or not I can catch the potentially expensive piece of hardware pre-swan dive or before the baby completes the gravity-check using the printer, but finding a way to coax the cable, cord or other instrument of distraction out of his pudgy little fist, removing him from the room, and finding a quiet distraction for him all before he lets out an ear-piercing screech and announcing his presence to whoever I'm talking to.  Of course, when I'm not on the phone, I'll usually catch him before he entrenches himself under my desk, which inevitably leads to me picking him up and taking a quick Daddy Time Out that, up until that point, I wasn't aware that I needed.

My cast is rounded out by my wife who reprises her role as the hot brunette in the office for whom I've had a crush for years (it's tough being type-cast).  Of course the other three 'men' in the office are constantly trying to get her attention but I have it on good authority that she has a thing for me too.

Like my office mates at my old job, the people at my new office keep me smiling, and help me keep perspective on the occasional days that make you want to hurl your computer through the nearest window then find the highest balcony possible and stand au natural, yelling obscenities at the world, while doing shots of Cuervo.  (Ok, that only allegedly happened on New Years Eve 1999, and no one can prove it,  but you've had those days...admit it.)