9 to 5

I have to say that I just plain don’t get what SuperAmerica is trying to do with these “Working at the SA is my dream job” tv ads. Have you seen them? I mean, they must know we’re not buying it, right? That NO ONE is buying it? I honestly don’t mean to offend anyone who works at or has worked at their own friendly neighborhood SA, but I gotta believe that even those people—or perhaps especially those people—aren’t going to pretend it’s some kind of professorship at the Sorbonne. Or whatever. You get my point.

On the other hand, it’s not like I’m exactly The Apprentice myself.

As a matter of fact, I attended an impromptu happy hour tonight, which was largely incited by a few of my coworkers’ absolutely unquestionably justified disgruntlement. And although I was feeling only mildly disgruntled myself—and even then I was really more disheveled and dusty than actually disgruntled, following a spelunking mission launched under my desk in an effort to figure out why my mouse had died. Eck. Dead mouse on my desk. Anyway—despite my own lack of legitimate indignance, I thought I really ought to go. You know, as a matter of collegial camaraderie. That’s right. I forced myself to drink those three glasses of wine, for the sake of workplace morale. It turned out to be plenty worth it, though, as I got to ride the bus home at a totally different time than usual, and thus with a totally different group of fellow riders than usual—and they were quite a bit more interesting to listen to than the standard after-work crowd. I learned a new way to use a word, for example. I’d heard the term “friends with benefits,” of course, but what I hadn’t realized was that “benefits” could be used as a verb in this context. e.g., “The only boy I benefits with is [name deleted to protect the innocent].”

So, my verbal horizons have been expanded. Not that I see myself using the construction a whole lot. But in publishing you just have to keep your thumb on the pulse of the world, you know?