As of today I've end my extended "work from home after knee surgery" period. No more funny knee-bending machines to hook up to for 6hrs/day. All I have now is 2x/week of physical therapy, and a will to dunk a basketball to get me well. i'd have to say that I'm more freaked out about how I will fair during my first week back in the office more than anything that has to do with my knee. I try and get to work at 8am or 9am (depending on which train I catch in the morning). To achieve this I need to wake up about 2 hours before my intended arrival in the office. For the past 6 weeks if I wanted to start work at 9am I could wake up at 8:55am (just enough time to freshen up, strap into the machine, and open my laptop).
Working from home for a little over a month has convinced me that it's better to work virtually. Offices are soooo 1990's (especially when the majority of your job is done through email and phone communication). Why not lease out that office space to some other company that hasn't figured it out yet? Of course there are times when you need to be face to face with your colleagues, but let's reserve a conference room, meet, and go back home (or better yet, I'll see you at Starbucks).
Since I mentioned Starbucks, I have to figure out how to fight my extreme fatigue this week. i don't want to be one of these folks:
Which brings me to one of my best "being tired at work" stories ever. The summer before my freshman year at Stanford, I got a job working at Dow Chemical Plant in Midland, MI. My job was to label pipes in this enormous plant. I would put stickers labeled "Hot Water--> or Nitrogen -->" on a pipe and follow it throughout the entire buliding from source to desitination, labeling along the way. I made a whopping $400/week doing this (which at one point I thought... why should I go to college when i can make this money right now? - I know... I know... ). This job was EXTRA BORING. I mean it was fun for about 20 minutes and then i would get bored and tired. So since there were only two of us in the entire plant, and my job was about as important as refilling the coffee pot, I would go into the bathroom and take naps. I'd basically sit on the toilet with my coveralls down on the floor, perch my head on my hands with my elbows on my knees and simply fall asleep.
I KNOW THIS IS BAD, BUT IT WAS LIKE 13 YEARS AGO, AND I'M DEFINITELY ASHAMED OF THIS STORY!!
One of these days i actually fell asleep for 90 minutes!!! I woke up, looked at my watch and couldn't believe that I had taken an official full-blown nap sitting on a toilet. Feeling fully refreshed, I went to get back to line labeling and fell on the floor as I tried to get up. My legs had fallen asleep and I was forced to do a dead-man's crawl around the bathroom (Imagine how Rick James' legs felt after Charlie and Eddie Murphy beat on his legs for stomping their couch). Of course this would be the one time that the other guy who worked in the concert arena-sized plant would choose to come into the bathroom. His words..."Stanford, huh?!?"
VERY EMBARRASSING!!
So I got to Stanford and Dr. Dement taught me that drowsiness is RED ALERT!!! Anyone who has taken Sleep & Dreams at Stanford knows what I'm talking about.
My biggest foe this week will once again be fatigue. If I've been in the bathroom too long, someone come and check on me (yeah... maybe I should not be allowed to work at home). This mix is just to say that I'm back. Back 2 The Office Mix
Oh boy Dow Chemical, I truly hated going to that place. I did the same thing but I had an office with blinds. So most days I closed the blinds and locked my door until people kept knocking on my door. Anyway good stuff.
ReplyDeleteI've seen you function with little to no sleep before...I have faith in you!
ReplyDelete