Frustration Row

Work’s a bear right now. Literally, I am being paid to roll around on the floor with a great big, clawlicious grizzly bear. Trying? Sure. Time consuming? As if work were the lead singer of Quiet Riot and time was cocaine. And if I were to write SAT questions, man the world would be a different place. I try to make a game of this job: for every time I get away from Rusty the Bear without a chest full of snarling snout, I get a point. For every head of cabbage I toss into his mouth, another point.

Well, that was a complete fabrication. I do not get the pleasure of bear wrestling for a paycheck, I try to cushion the blow of incompetence above me to those below. But work is particularly busy right now, thank you well placed holiday shopping season.

I feel that I don’t hide my frustration well. Actually it’s difficult for me to hide many of my feelings, if I’m excited by something you will more than likely see me jumping up and down on someone or something – more than likely having dropped trow. But it seems sometimes folks can’t see the frustration.

Not that other people should necessarily care when I’m frustrated. Why the hell would they? But I think that large parts of my frustration are fed by not being able to properly express my frustration. Say at a staff meeting your ADD addled boss is tossing out ideas and plans and processes that are annoying, uncalled for and/or dumb, and your frustration level is getting to be as such that exaggerated sighs aren’t going to vent it enough before you rough up a coworker with the business end of a Pentel EnerGel pen.

I’m suggesting a device.

I’m suggesting one of those helmet’s with the flashing lights on top, like a one man (and granted, bad) rave. My thought is that once that frustration gets close to a breaking point, I flip a switch, everybody’s made aware that I have hit a limit and I get up and out before the yelling and flailing fists happen. The light helmet does its thing with what I imagine to be a red light, but green could be quite nice, and that’s the cue for others to think, “Hey, condition critical for Billy. I’m lucky it’s not the bad old days where he’d jump up on the table a knee someone in the face.”

I think this would be less distracting in meetings than my initial ideas of the bullhorn or giant steel gong.

And back to work…


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Polly’s Into Me” by Black Francis.