Clinically fed up
In relation to earlier posts, in which I mentioned livening up the day by doing class A's I thought I should explain why it got that bad.

I should point out it was a 45K+ job, in a very nice office, in a technical environment with lots of nice clever people who i didnt really know. I'd worked in the southern office for years but transferred to the northern one when I moved house.

I looked after some pretty serious shit. We ran a system for various telco's that made them a lot of money. To those who understand these things, we usually exceeded 5 9's availability. In the 0.001% of downtime or less, we lost a lot of money for the client, so we bought some serious kit.

And unlike a lot of IT systems, it was bleddy good. And it never went wrong. In fact, I had nothing to do. The management believed that it was fantastically complex (it must do, it cost a million quid to implement) but in reality it was 3 very high end servers and one application. It just worked.

I worked with Spotty and Fatty. My desk was in a corner, in the middle of the office. That is, an artifical corner formed by 2 large grey partitions. We formed an island in the room.

One day, something was bothering me on the way home. I realised, that for the first time ever, my phone had not rung once. Also, I had not recieved ONE work related email.

I had found the perfect job.

The next day, I paid attention closely. Not one call. Not one work email.

This continued for 5 days. My mind started playing tricks. I decided that next week, I was going to do something else.

On monday, I decided that I would do nothing for one hour. I would sit still. It was frighteningly difficult.

After about 2 weeks of this, and almost 4 weeks of doing nothing, I could sit still for an entire morning, and not touch keyboard, pen, phone, anything.

My only respite was the toilets, I perfected going in with a nice big coat on. I used it as a pillow. I once slept for 2.5 hours and woke up in pitch black, as the lights had timed out.

On the way home one day, I realised something was wrong. I was going mad. Or at least I thought I might be. I realise you cant *know* you're mad. But I was defintitely a bit a mental. In retrospect, I was becoming depressed I think. Alan Partridge would call it "clinically fed-up". I was so bored, it was actually making me ill.

I decided to introduce my weekend habit to the workplace. ie taking coke to the office, stashing it and using it throughout the day. I did this for about a month.

My job came up for interview in one of those "lets all interview for our own jobs" things. Not once person applied for mine. Except me. I did the interview off my tits and god knows how they didnt spot me jabbering on endlessly, sweating, twitching, chewing the non existant chewy,drumming fingers, talking about football for 5 minutes.

I got the job. Which sucked, because i already had it, and it was shit.

I handed my notice in. Worked a week and phoned in sick for three. I stopped doing drugs and have never touched them since. (Ok thats a small lie but not very often).

Dont go mental kids, its not that great.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Fri 9 Jan 2009, 11:32, 5 replies)

why didn't you..
find something else that was of interest to you to do instead of work, at work? that way you would still be paid while doing something for yourself.

like i don't know, develop some sort of game, or do a PhD, or take up knitting
(bucsie, Fri 9 Jan 2009, 12:17, closed)

normally
i would have. In retrospect, i wasnt quite right at the time.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Fri 9 Jan 2009, 12:20, closed)

May I have that job, pretty please?

I'd happily be that bored for £45k. Hell, I'd take that job for half that.
(Musuko, Fri 9 Jan 2009, 18:15, closed)

You think that
But trust me I'm in a similar boat and the clinically fed up bit is spot on.

Its great to do nothing for a couple of days... and then the madness sets in.
(Wooden meal is. Or is he?, Mon 12 Jan 2009, 13:24, closed)

Mentalist?
Did you drive to Dundee in your bare feet?
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 8:09, closed)