Past Office Hours

Past Office Hours

 

I am an office rat. That is my personal slang for people who like to stay in the office, even when it’s not absolutely needed. I arrive a few minutes after Tita Daisy, our secretary, opens it in the morning, and I stay until it is open. I do this even if we don’t have a bundy clock to punch in and I can’t claim all the overtime hours I’ve logged in. I do it at the risk of being ostracized by people whose reputations I unconsciously impugn because my needless visibility contrasts with their conspicuous invisibility. But this is not for personal glory, and there is no holier-than-thou mentality behind my strange fixation with the office. It’s an addiction I can’t shake.

 

            Ever since I set foot in an office, I’ve always been attracted to them. In movies, I often am drawn to office scenes. I like office paraphernalia and furniture, such as filing cabinets and computers. I like the sound of printers at work, of phones ringing, and of papers being shuffled. I also love the lunchtime smell when everyone’s lunch aroma mixes with the cold, recycled air. Oh, I also love the free air-conditioning.

 

            My first memories of an office were of my mother’s. She worked in accounting, and when I was in early elementary I would tag along on overtime-weekends so that I could lure her into the comics store at the nearby mall and convince her that I needed that new issue of The Uncanny X-Men. Later on though, I noticed that I also went with my mother so that I could be in her office.

 

            I was fascinated with cubicles, or how three and a half short walls gave you your own personal space in such a wide, nearly depersonalized environment. I was amused at how people took off their dress shoes and wore bedroom slippers while at their desks. I smiled when I noticed that gossip and personal counseling do happen around the water dispenser, as the movies depicted.

 

            What captured my attention further, aside from the sights, sounds, smells, and textures that the office offered, was the important concept on which the physical existence of an office rests. This was a place where people worked. This was a place where adults made important decisions and earned money. People dressed differently in this place, their faces looked differently as well. All of these came to me as manifestations that the office, much like the church or the gym, was a special place. This was not a place to lounge around in; you had to have a purpose to be there, even if it was something mundane such as filing letters or taking out the trash. All this purposiveness fascinated me, but it also frightened me a bit.

 

            Unless you work in some office on the brink of foreclosure, or you simply have not understood that you have to work when you get there, time passes unnoticeably at the office. People are in a hurry, and people who aren’t are labeled and talked about derisively. People just can’t wait till the next paycheck. Cooperatives are drawn up and goods and merchandises are sold and traded during “downtimes.” People have to do something, even if it means having to gossip about one lady officemate’s surprising cosmetic makeover or how so and so is not worthy of that promotion.

 

            This is why, as I have earlier mentioned, I love cubicles. Unfortunately, I haven’t shown my own much love, but that is another essay. Anyway, cubicles offer you shelter from all the craziness (peripheral or otherwise) that offices cultivate. The conventional office desk tells you a lot about the person using it. Somebody should seriously study this. Why do people have all these family pictures under their glass tops? Is it because they need something to look at to remove their minds temporarily from the drudgery they call work? Is it to remind them the reason why swallowing one’s pride and not talking back to the obnoxious boss is of extreme importance? Or is it, as Seinfeld once suggested, because we are in constant danger of forgetting that we do have families and we might unwittingly blow our entire salary on hookers and booze on closing time?

 

            Lately I’ve been having one of those spells when I seriously contemplate on why I have this office fixation. Or, rather, my addiction to the office is temporarily waning. But, just like any office rat, I’m able to convince myself that the weekend is near. Two days away from the office, or two days spent doing something meaningful besides staring at computers and crunching numbers, will cure me and by Monday I would be itching to get back to my desk.

 

            I forgot to tell you that my work means I don’t have to be in the office every single working day. I teach, so office time takes second place to lecturing and classroom discussions. Also, we have the option not to teach in the summer, and we are allowed not to report to the office during the summer break. Some of you reading this might already be convinced what a nutter I am, and let me persuade you further. I actually look forward to the summer term because it gives me more time to stay in the office. An officemate frankly asked me if I still had a life. For a while I wanted to throw the photocopier at her. After a few more minutes I was asking myself the same thing.

 

            All this obsession with going to the office can be negative as well. If you’re always at the office, people will definitely notice your absence. You can spend days and days going to the office, doing your own personal work such as reading up on backlog lessons or typing an updated syllabus, and nobody looks for you in your little cubicle in the massive office complex. But the one freak of a day that you say to yourself “I’m not needed that much in the office today, might as well stay home so the office can save on electricity and I can watch the NBA Playoffs” is the day they need your signature for some important document or you have to report directly to the Dean for some urgent impromptu matter. Then you go to the office the following day, so guilty of your negligence that you hope somebody asks you to do something important to redeem yourself. Sometimes, this thought is enough to drive me to the office every single day. Or I could just be over-reacting. Some of my officemates have developed a sixth sense that tells them when they are needed in our office and only then do they go. I haven’t mastered it, and I envy them.

 

            Some people dread the thought of working in an office. They say it deadens their imagination, that they feel “boxed,” or it’s the corporate nightmare to their counter-culture dreams, that it “cramps their style,” and so on. I do not have a problem with their opinions. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always wanted to work in an office. I’m not a workaholic, but I finish my tasks and try to be as helpful as possible—that’s as un-self-gratifying as I can put it. But I do love the office.