Part 7
Almost 2 litres. That’s how much coffee I made today. Almost 2 full litres of the stuff which ended up getting poured down the drain, cup by cup because the milk to coffee ratio was ‘off’.
How much milk was in the coffee, I asked. He didn’t know.
What colour did it turn, I asked. He didn’t know.
Was it even milk in the coffee, I asked. He didn’t know.
All he knew was that I was doing it wrong and it was horrible and terrible and had to be chucked away from his person immediately.
I am talking, of course, about my new boss. The guy whose time is so valuable, it’s worth paying me a salary higher than the one I earned before, just to make coffee and order his food. He doesn’t have appointments with anyone, so I don’t have a calendar to look after. He doesn’t take calls so I don’t have answering machine to play. His emails are confidential so they can’t be dictated to me.
Two separate times today, I counted the tiles in the ceiling. Then I got bored and started counting the stitches in my jacket. Eventually, when I was ready to stick a pencil – sharpened for the sixth time already – in my eye to escape from the monotony, I finally heard by name being called.
To do what? Find his coat. He was cold.
I kept a running tally of the number of times I was asked to do something today where the asking took longer than if this guy had actually just done what he wanted to get done himself and removed me from the equation.
Guess how many times it was.
Just guess.
All of them. What the hell.
I told S none of this. I know her, she would have gone off on a tangent about taking the initiative and then circled round to what a good employee she was and how I need to be more proactive instead of waiting for things to come to me on a platter. And then, I would have been forced to murder her and feed her remains to stray cats.
Really, it’s for everyone’s benefit that Hurricane S’s big nose stays out of everything I’m doing. She‘ll stay healthy, I’ll stay out of jail, and whatshisface will stay too important to talk to fast food employees all by himself.
To add insult to injury, S keeps rubbing it in my face that I got the job because of her. All in all, this is not a good day in the S & T household. I keep hoping she’ll go to sleep already – if I could, I’d just turn the lights out myself – but she’s got this weird energy and I drank over a litre of coffee today so it wouldn’t all get wasted so instead of going to bed like normal people, we’re annoying each other into shallow graves instead.
Right this second, actually, S is blowing bubbles with gum which she knows I despise. To retaliate, I turned the sound on on my phone’s keyboard. Truthfully? She’s gonna win. The constant tick-tack is making my eye twitch and I’m the one doing it.
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I’ve been at ‘work’ (boredom central) an hour and a half and there’s no one here. Well, there are people in the building obviously or I wouldn’t have gotten in. But my new boss, whatshisface, he’s not here. I was standing outside his office, waiting for him.
Now I’m sitting. May women could spend over an hour standing still in stiletto heels with nothing to lean back against. I’m not one of them. I weighed up my options and decided kicking off the shoes was ruder than just sitting on the floor, and here I am.
On the bright side, my feet aren’t numb any more. On the not-so-bright side, my feet aren’t numb any more. Ow.
I wonder if the boss dude will actually come in at all today. I know I’m in the right place – the very nice HR lady who came up to give me my key card found me with no trouble and didn’t mention me being in the wrong place either.
Boss dude’s name, by the way, will stay Boss dude up until such time as I become a millionaire and have a lawyer on retainer to deal with defamation suits – I’d imagine that anything that made me famous would include me being true to myself and offending every second idiot I come across.
I’m bored, I’m bored, I wanna take a nap. Or sketch. Or play a game. Or sketch.
I haven’t sketched in over a year. I either didn’t feel the urge or the place I was in wasn’t the kind I’d want to be memorialised in ink. Today, I saw the prettiest flowing hijab on a lady I nearly bumped into in the lift. From friends, I know that’s the type of one that needs extra strength super glue to keep on the head but it was gorgeous despite being finicky. And now, I have a full view of the skyline. I want to draw that scarf with the skyline hand painted across it and I want to do it right this second.
It’s always been that way for me, with art. I’ve heard some people talk about ‘banking’ ideas and the very thought makes me want to giggle. The whole draw of art and drawing is that they’re not logical. They’re based very much on emotion and don’t follow a pattern of productivity.
And now we’re meant to ‘bank’ ideas for when we run out of steam. I’ve rarely ever heard of anything worse. Usually, whatever it is has come out of a family member’s mouth too.
Mom’s family are cuckoo, and not the nice, free spirited kind. They’re the kind of people who compete over every baby milestone and try to one up each other all the time. I don’t know how my grandfather managed to produce such weird children (who, in turn, found themselves weirder spouses) but the whole family is beginning to resemble a box of mixed nuts on a shelf – often stale and too imbalanced to be enjoyed with any enthusiasm.
My fingers are still itching but the only thing I have on me is a phone. The rest of my stuff is locked in the office whose I’m sitting against. Maybe I have a pen and paper in my handbag… I dump it out on the floor in front of me and begin to sift through the mess.
Aha!
I snatch my pen and black loafers begin to fill my vision. Crud.
Yep. My boss found me scrabbling on the floor with the contents of my big bag all around me. He didn’t say anything, just stepped over me and unlocked the door. I’m sitting at my desk right now, waiting for him to appear and fire me (and typing, obviously).
Why is this my life?
The Imperfect Muslimah 