This is something I wrote earlier today. I think it gets across a certain kind of tedium that a lot of people probably know, even if they aren’t quite aware of it.

I hope you enjoy.

—

It was a office like any other. Rows of desks, open plan, loud space, but quiet space. Usually it was empty, or at least with low attendees, but even so, being there always felt like being watched. It was difficult to shake the feeling.

They typed on their standard keyboard and words appeared on their standard monitor. The other monitor had their emails open, though their main purpose was to be deleted, offering no real information that was key to the role or the organisation. Just employer-mandated junk, wasting space, justifying roles existing.

They typed and words appeared, and they prepared an email that, realistically, could’ve been far more stock than what they were doing. But sometimes a little flair had to be added, just to help kill the tedium for a few moments. Just to help push away the dullness of being in an office with a job that promised business but could never deliver. But it only pushed it away; that dullness would always come back.

They could read but they’d get in trouble as they weren’t working, but there was constantly so little to do that there needed to be other things to help stay entertained. To help keep the brain going, and so reading became a covert war of sorts. So did job hunting. How to get it done without people seeing, unless no one was in that day, of course. But those days were less exciting as there was no challenge in it. Relaxing days were better, of course, but they didn’t offer much in the way of satisfaction.

Office cricket was not viable, and neither were chair races, even if there were a minimal amount of people in and even if those people also were fighting to stay motivated and moving. Couldn’t risk injury; couldn’t risk something getting damaged. But with the right people, those things wouldn’t matter so much. Endless conversations about which band and which artist were experienced when, how their music fit into the greater cultural morass, and whether they deserved to be part of the zeitgeist or not, and which zeitgeist they’d be most appropriate for anyway, and the political state of things, and where society was going. Grievances were aplenty on some days, and so was heavy introspection. But these moments seldom lasted. They blended into an indistinct mass, occasionally resurfacing as fragments to talk about once more, and the memory and conversation would be shaped by those missing parts.

Occasionally, on rare days there would be work. There’d be something that resembled being busy, but it was also such a low amount to what comfortably busy could be, and it’d either peter out before the end of the day, or it’d be spread thin from the day’s start to end. The latter would lead to rough days; too busy to risk getting invested in something else, and too quiet to avoid the dullness. But that’s the way it went sometimes.

And the days went on and they tried to stave off the tedium of it all, and they looked for work elsewhere and tried to entertain themselves where they could. They were aware of their great fortune, but it was one that came with drawbacks, and their leaving wouldn’t change that space. Someone would, inevitably, fill their seat and eventually go through the same things, and morning would move to afternoon again.