I HAVE A JOB! I'M SO BUSY! WOE IS ME!

Those of you outside of my close social circle may not have known that until about two months ago my professional occupation aside from angry blogging was: Living The Dream. For those of you not privy to common folk talk I was what the world technically labels "unemployed." I know this probably comes as a shock to most of you. I mean you would assume from my writing that I was a succesful member of the US workforce who easily balanced my six figure 9-5 with a side career as a prolific angry blogger. Or perhaps from my rants on law students, Facebook, and law students on facebook, you thought: "This is certainly a world class multi-tasker who hits the books and writes 10 page legal memos by day, while writing rants about shitty rock bands at night." Alas, both of you were wrong. I was actually a casualty of this economic recession that is either entirely George W. Bush's fault or entirely Barack Obama's fault depending on which party's rhetoric you are blindly overzealous about.

Now however, I am thankfully back to being a productive member of society who works in an office five days a week and collects paychecks to cover the bills. Which means of course that it's time I do the logical thing and bitch about how much it sucks to return to a life in the professional world. I now present to you the Lawn's Top Five Reasons Working Sucks.

1. Waking up Early

Lets get the most obvious perk of unemployed life out of the way. You know what rules about your mornings as a jobless bum? They don't exist. Mornings? The only motivation I had to even get out of bed each "morning" was the fact the sportscenter marathon each day ended at 1pm. So as long as I got up by 1145am, giving me enough time to stand up, put my sweatpants on, take the dog out, and boil ramen noodles for "brunch" my day was on schedule. Now of course this is not the case. Not only do I have to wake up before 1145, I have to wake up at an ungodly hour that allows me to reach the office by Seven O'clock. Jesus fucking Christ. I haven't had to wake up to regularly do something at 7am since...never. I mean in college I had one semester of 8am classes, but that entailed rolling out of bed, throwing on a hoodie and walking five minutes to go sleep off my hangover in the back of an auditorium. I didn't have to actually shower, look presentable and then drive in Texas traffic to go sit in the same place and be productive for eight consecutive hours. I have no idea what asshole in a corporate office setting thinks that the workday should start at 7am. The only people who should have to be working at 7am are day-laborers like construction workers and those employed by landscaping businesses. (You thought I was gonna say "Mexicans" didn't you? Fucking racist.)

2. Drinking is now limited to the weekends.

Those of you who know me well "LOLed" at the ridiculous claim I just made above. Ok ok. Lets not exaggerate here. Clearly a stressful job at a lower level corporate support position didn't lead me to magically curtail my weekly drinking days from seven to two. Then again my definition of "drinking" is not the same as yours. If I go out to dinner and drink a bottle of wine, I can muster the strength to get up the next morning to face the workday without too much of a struggle. If I go out to happy hour with a bunch of hard partying law students who think happy hour should literally last...an hour...those three to four moderately paced Miller Lites are not gonna give me a massive AM migraine. If I want to actually "drink" though...by my definition, life the next day is eight hours of hell. Going to work hungover is absolutely miserable.

Those of you who just need your morning coffee to overcome a hangover must drink like pussies. Anybody who actually drinks knows coffee just dehydrates you further, so if one AM Cup O' Joe makes you chipper for the rest of the day you didn't have a real hangover. Generally a job like mine doesn't involve too much physical movement, but for some reason anytime you are hungover, your asshole supervisor will make you do some sort of manual labor. Put up these boxes. Take these carts away. Carry these 500 folders somewhere. Climb a ladder. Goddamnit. Every other day of the week you made me sit at my desk for eight straight hours mindlessly staring at a computer why clicking my mouse. Today I'm the office box carrying serf randomly? What a load of shit. Go to any office workroom on a Friday morning to witness Rad Bro abuse at its worst.

3. Small Talk

Ideally we would all go to work each day and only be forced to verbally interact with people when work projects needed to be discussed. "What should I do today boss man?" followed by prompt response of "You should do this." End of convo. Resume jamming out to Rad jams on Ipod while slowly completing neverending pointless, mundane project. We do not however, live in a perfect world of worker bees. Of course being an outgoing individual who doesn't lack for social skills, I don't have a problem talking to co-workers about subjects other than the job at hand. We all need a couple breaks a day to bullshit about sports, send funny e-mail links, and discuss how awesome Charlie Sheen is. What I hate however, is small talk. You know those mindless conversations where people make small talk and feign interest in how your life outside of work is going? These convos can never end soon enough.

Usually small talk takes place in the break room/office pantry with some socially awkward individual outside of your section that you somehow run into on a daily basis. He usually has a go-to convo starter like "is it Friday yet?" or "Surviving another day of fun?," or "Am I the only one ready for lunch already?" These at least can be brushed off with a brief response and quiet chuckle before quickly exiting. God forbid you get asked "How was your weekend?" though. You are now stuck for at least 10 minutes. Since I am fucking Rad I obviously can't give an honest answer as to what I did over the weekend. So I answer "Good...yours?" I really could give a fuck about their weekend but the "yours?" part is common courtesy that leads you down the road to the most boring story ever. They'll tell you about taking their kids to a museum, their dog, their visiting family and tell some endless story about how much fun they had from Friday through Sunday. God. Just once I'd like to scare the shit out of these people with a long-winded overexaggerated account of how fun my weekend was:

Office Dork: "Heyyy! How was your weekend buddy?"

Me: "Pretty fucking crazy. Had some college buddies come into town so naturally we were pretty much blacked out on a coke bender for 48 straight hours. Saturday night was really a disaster. We had to leave the bar early cus one of my bros was wasted on tequilla and started loudly yelling racial slurs at the bartender who cut him off. So we headed back to my place and ended up partying there for the rest of the evening. Naturally neighbors called the cops at 3am on a noise violation after they'd heard enough of Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" on repeat at max volume. Suffice to say when that knock at the door came, cleaning up all the blow, and hiding the passed out hooker in the closet was no easy task!"

(Responds with blank stare..never talks to me in pantry again)

4. "Hello?..Nah it's cool I'm at work but I can talk..what's up?"

It's about 1pm. I've gotten through the morning hangover by crushing two gatorades and eating a jumbo burrito for lunch. The boss has given me a break from doing laps around the workroom hauling boxes like some glorified post office worker in a suit. I managed to survive pantry small talk guy's story about his barbeque with the in-laws. Even the workroom radio's easy listening station has ceased to annoy me (Though if I hear Bryan Adams "Everything I do..I do it for You" one more time tomorrow I may go batshit). I've settled into a nice afternoon of relaxed database entry, while g-chatting and perusing an ESPN article. Then...the phone rings. Not an office phone mind you. No...a cell phone. One that most likely has a loud obnoxious ring tone of the latest club jam. Completely ignoring the company's "no personal phone calls during work hours" policy, some stupid bitch answers their phone. Then they proceed to talk LOUDLY on the phone to the point where everyone in the office can hear every detail of their ear-splitting convo. I HATE these people.

What the hell is wrong with you? First of all, the conversation never seems like an emergency that needed immediate attention. Either you're chit-chatting with your gal-pal about the latest neighborhood/family gossip or you're bitching about some annoying relationship drama that half the time doesn't even involve you directly. We know you "Told your girl that fool was no good." No reason to reiterate it to the rest of us who give less than a fuck. We actually live in a very advanced technological age where you can discuss your personal bullshit over a variety of mediums that don't involve loudly sharing your business with the world. E-mail. IM. Text. Whatever. Anything that doesn't involve us hearing your Jay Sean ringtone and your loud debate over whether some ho deserves better. Shut the fuck up.

5. Hearing people bitch about work

Funny enough, my number one complaint about work..is hearing people complain about work. I mean yeah I just spent eight paragraphs ranting about things that piss me off about my work day. In reality however, these things are really minor everyday obstacles that every person encounters in their weekly quest to survive another 40 hours of minimal stress that pays the bills and makes you appreciate the weekend. Assuming you're not a member of the secret service is not really THAT stressful. Some people however, make their lives in an office seem SOOOO hard. They tell you how unreasonable their boss's request is. Yeah well he graduated law school. You're a paper pusher. You get paid to ask "how high" when he fucking says jump. They whine about working late. OH NO. Are you gonna miss an episode of "Modern Family?" What a fucking tragedy :(. They bitch about getting a project RIGHT when they're about to go to lunch. Pretty sure you can survive another 30 minutes without your double cheeseburger, fries, apple pie...and diet soda. Might actually do you some good you fat bitch.

With the advent of the aforementioned age of technology and social networks/internet forums this is even worse. You get to not only hear the complaints of the co-workers in your cubicle section, you get to SEE the complaints of every person you know across the nation that works in an equally low stress career. I've of course covered this ad nauseum in my facebook posts, but now that i have an easy 9-5 (err..7-4) job again it's become even more annoying to see people complain about their easy jobs. Yeah working at a job sucks in comparison to slamming SoCo and lime shots at the club and tanning at the beach. In comparison to being...unemployed however, trust me it's pretty fucking Rad. So stop crying about how miserable it is to get paid to surf the web and chat on the phone while doing 3 hours of work everyday. Work sucks...suck it up.