Busy Work

Busywork
9:17 a.m.: Monday morning at Cretin/Croak Management. Peel and eat an orange as slowly as possible. Time is a syrup and I Am the Fly. It's the beginning of the month, the time when my beloved co-worker Steve enters dividends onto "The System" and completes other mysterious prep work for the month ahead. This takes about four days. The rest of us, who balance rich folks' accounts each month, can't do anything until the preliminaries are taken care of. My pet peeve (one among many) is that we are supposed to look busy during this time period, or else suffer the fate of a dreaded "down-time" assignment, such as revamping the filing system or cleaning the coffee machine. In kindergarten, this used to be called "busywork," and was designed to fill any remaining time at the end of the day. Busywork means easy, repetitive tasks that don't require any thought. My normal duties (I call them "Administrivia") are a microstep up from busywork, and I dreaded the idea of doing something even more boring. ... more.... from PROCESSED WORLD