The Suburban Experience…

In preparation for my upcoming deployment I had to spend a week in the office at HQ. Though it was time well spent, I have little desire to ever have a lifestyle that includes a daily commute to a cubicle farm.

By Friday I had made it through everything I had on my schedule and was self-directed for most of the day. By the end of the day I had had enough of office work. There’s a restaurant on the extreme west side of town that I have fond memories of so decided to go there after work. Marsha met me at the office at quitting time, we got in the car and left for the restaurant. After an hour and a half, what little life the fluorescent lighting hadn’t sucked out of me, the traffic was. We decided to bail on the whole notion and instead opted to seek out a brew pub near our motel. The first place that came to mind was a place we had seen called “Brewery Restaurant”. With a name like that, I expected a micro-brewery. Luckily there was a menu posted at the door that let me know that I needed to lower my expectations. Even though this place wasn’t a micro-brewery, I had exceeded my threshold for tolerance of driving and making decisions at this point and figured we would simply endure this restaurant. We stepped inside and one of the four hosts/hostesses acknowledged our presence and engaged us only to become immediately distracted by another customer. The other three staff members simply froze and took no action whatsoever, excepting the pimply faced teenage boy who, in an attempt to avoid eye-contact, began an inspection of the ceiling tiles. I have an extremely low tolerance for poor service in a restaurant and I was getting the feeling that this was going to be one hellish experience for me. We turned around and left, seeking out another nearby place that had “brewery” in the name. The second place turned out to have service that was only one notch above the first, a gaggle of teenagers at the host(ess) station, unwilling to engage people entering the place, but at least it was a microbrewery and had a menu that appealed to our current tastes. We were seated and served without further incident. We arrived back at the hotel three hours after leaving the office. This ordeal left me more stressed out than I think I have been in years, yet for millions of people, this is the daily routine; drive to work in stop-and-go traffic, work in an environment that offers about as much stimulation as watching paint dry, drive home in stop and go traffic and the occasional evening out where you may be seen as a human, but probably only as a number who happens to order a meal.

I can’t believe that a psychological evaluation is required to spend a winter in Antarctica. It should be required to work in a cubicle farm.