8:00
Alarm goes off. Turn it off and immediately go back to sleep.
8:15
Frantically check the oven clock to make sure that it isn’t actually 10:45. At this point I’m relieved that I’ve defeated the inevitable, at least for today. I know that my future holds a time when I glance at that damnable clock and see that it’s 7:45 the next day. At this point I turn on the television and watch a children’s show about animals.
8:30
In the short time I’ve spent in Britain, I’ve developed a theory about British television. At any time of the day the BBC will be broadcasting at least one program that will make your head liquefy out of complete boredom. It doesn’t matter if it’s prime time on a Thursday or 4:45 on a Saturday morning, it’s almost guaranteed that at least one channel will be playing a show about maintaining your garden or a series about what herbs the ancient Britons ate before the Norman invasion. Regardless, morning television does not break from this formula. The English version of Good Morning America or The Today Show is even duller, less interesting, and generally more torturous than their American counterparts. So I watch Will and Grace instead. Jesus, I don’t know which is worse.
9:15
After getting dressed, eating a piece of toast, and having to re-tie my tie four or five times I leave during the first commercial break during Fraiser (Hello, 1994. How are you?). As I’m walking out the door, I check to see if the mail has come in the three spots where it may show up: crammed into the mail slot but not pushed all the way through (nope), left in a pile on my doorstep (nope), or left in a box in the lobby of my apartment complex (and nope). I have not gotten mail in weeks. I’m not entirely sure if mail even exists in this country.
9:30
British public transportation seems to be the only thing that works in this country, except when there’s a tube strike; or when bus lines close down for no reason; or when someone jumps in front of a train and closes down the line for the rest of the day as rail workers try to pry their mangled corpse from under its wheels. Okay, so British public transportation doesn’t work either but it still isn’t as bad as the fucking Royal Mail.
A set of unwritten rules exists for riding the London Underground that becomes immediately evident to anyone who steps foot upon a train (with the exception of, of course, Americans). The rules are as follows:
Rule #1: No talking. If there is to be any talking it must be of a mild topic and spoken in a near whisper.
Rule #2: No eye contact with anyone. Ever.
Rule #3: No eating on the tube. If you eat anything on the tube people will look at you like you are a pig that they want nothing more than to slaughter and leave to rot.
Rule #4: No cell phones. Don’t even fucking think about it.
In fact, the only things you are allowed to do on the London underground is sit quietly and read. Oh, and drink. You can openly drink an oversized bottle of grain alcohol on the train. That’s perfectly okay. But god forbid someone hear what song you’re playing on your iPod.
10:00
Jesus, work. I work for a relatively unknown telecommunications company answering phones all day. So in a sense I’m living out my nightmare job. But since I constantly have a computer in front of me the internet always comforts me when my brain begins to eat itself out of boredom. Thank you, internet.
Unlike most jobs that require a person to answer the phone constantly throughout the day, I usually take about thirty calls that take about 4 minutes to get through. Other than that I have absolutely nothing to do in between those calls. So let’s do some math. I work between 10 and 7 with one hour for lunch. That’s eight hours of work time with only two hours of doing what I was actually hired to do. Let the fun begin.
11:00
By this time I’ve checked every site of interest on the internet only to realize that they won’t update for another three hours because the UK is in the future. So I go about reading yesterdays news and take maybe four calls until noon. At times I stare at my desk and cry on the inside, and when I’m not doing that I try to pretend that I’m not bored. This never works.
Judging by the design of the room where I work, I think that it was originally a storage space as the ceilings are unreasonably high and the walls are completely devoid of those things called “windows.” In essence I work in a torture chamber. The room has an utter deprivation of natural sunlight. The brick even shows indications that at one point windows did, in fact, exist in the room only to be bricked up, no doubt as an attempt to give me a massive headache.
12:00
Half of the people I work with leave for lunch which means that the load of calls doubles. This period is usually the busiest time of the day when I will take four or five calls in a row. Regardless of actually doing work in this period, I still can’t shake the feeling of doing absolutely nothing of value. The most gratifying moment at this point of the day is when the clock strikes 1:00 and I can turn my phone off and leave for lunch.
1:00
If it isn’t raining (please God, please don’t be raining, please please pl-SHIT) I tend to spend this time in a nearby park eating painfully mediocre food from the corner deli. This, by far, represents my favorite part of the day. The rustling leaves drown out the sounds of the city, and dogs always run about and play while their owners keep a distant watch. In fact, the only sign that the park rests in the heart of a major metropolis is the slight rumble of the ground caused by an underground train. But by the time I finish my lunch and become engaged in my book I have to go back into that sunless hell. That chamber lit by four bright florescent lights and the pale blue of computer screens.
2:00
The time right after lunch is by far as the most horrible part of the day. I can no longer look forward to lunch in the park, and I can only cling to pale hope of going home. Too bad that hope is a solid five hours away. That’s half of the Lord of the Rings movies. That is almost the entire original Star Wars trilogy. That is Das fucking Boot. After roughly an hour of reading contracts to people who barely speak English and surfing every corner of the internet that has nothing to do with downloading music, playing Tetris, or pornography (Note: After removing illegal downloads, games, and pornography from the internet only %12 remains) I retreat into my personal fortress of solitude within the office: The bathroom.
The bathroom, in a way, is like the park for me. The open windows bring in a cool breeze of fresh air and the high stall doors bring about complete privacy. Barring the distinct smell of urine I would say it’s the most pleasant room in the entire office, if not all of London. But I’ve begun to notice that those who work near the bathroom shoot me inquisitive looks as I march into my keep for the sixth time in three hours. Apparently, near constant trips to the bathroom does not exactly work wonders for my image, as I can tell that my co-workers don’t view me as a bright, young, up-and-coming American waltzing into the bathroom, but rather a bizarre foreigner suffering from either a disturbing digestive disorder, or a crushingly anti-social addiction to masturbation. These aren’t exactly the traits I want listed on a letter of recommendation.
4:30
By this time of the day I’ve gone into a complete trance of apathy, depression, and a complete lack of motivation. Sadly, it’s also the time when I have to deal with the Indian telemarketers the most. The best part about working with Indian sales agents is that they sound like living caricatures of themselves. It’s as if someone taught them English with the distinct purpose of making their accent sound like my great uncle’s most insulting impersonation of an Indian person. To make things worse people in these call centers assume Westerners won’t be able to handle being on the phone with someone named Raj Ranchampolujar, so in order to solve the problem they give themselves fake English names. Playing it safe is one thing, but it sometimes it feels a bit ridiculous talking to someone who sounds like Apu but calls himself Mark Twain or Brian Williams. How does a person living in Kashmir know who Brian Williams is anyway?
5:30
Holy FUCK when can I get the shit out of here?! By this time of the day the calls have started to dwindle away and I’ve lost almost all semblances of sanity and self respect; I’ve simply become a crumpled ball of flesh that stares longingly at the clock on the computer. Nothing can relieve me of my boredom. I’ll try reading only to give up after a sentence. I’ll try to look up articles of interest on Wikipedia but find that reading about Hitler’s career as a painter or the early childhood of Charles J. Guiteau can only hold a person’s interest for so long. Phone calls become increasingly more irritating since the ringing of the phone breaks me from my trance and forces me to do actual work. So by this point of the day it has finally reached the point where I’ve entered a horrible loop not wanting to do anything but also no longer wanting to do nothing.
6:30
Why am I still here? Why in God’s name am I still here? The phone hasn’t rung in an hour, over half of my co-workers have gone home and the sun has already dipped below the line of buildings outside. The utter lack of sunlight throughout the day while I work simply proves that I’ve taken a job specifically designed for the undead. Happen to be a vampire and short on cash? Take up a job sitting in your sepulcher while talking on the phone with annoyed immigrants until the witching hour. It is, however, likely that any vampire working this job would run screaming into the sunlight after a week, preferring their skin being seared off by the rays of the Sun rather than sit for another second in that windowless pit my company calls an office for nine hours a day.
7:00
Finally my sentence ends and I’m free to make the long journey home amongst the other dark eyed, slumping shadows. There’s no joy or hope in being free for the evening; there’s not even the slightest glimmer of happiness. People just seem to dread the very idea that tomorrow they will have to crawl out of their warm bed, put on the same crumpled tie and repeat the process. By the time I finally reach home, I barely have enough time to eat and shower before my body caves in on itself. Sleep overcomes me before I even get the chance to begin enjoying a movie, a book, or even my own dinner. If anything, working like this forces me to think about the next big stage in my life that will help me escape living this lifestyle: dedicating my life to science in order to build a time machine and go back to a time when all I did was play Sonic the Hedgehog and watch cartoons all day. That lovely period of my life which took place anytime between 1992 and the first half of 2007.
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