Ways To Tell If You Are Not Being Challenged At Work

"I call it 'Smith's Theory of Office Productivity.'"

This is a compilation of myself and several friends. So, bosses, in case you are reading this, I'm not actually slacking off every day at work. I mean that'd be so unprofessional.

• You routinely solve Rubik's Cubes and other assorted puzzles in between minor tasks.

• You finish your work for the week by 3 p.m. Wednesday.

•  You have time to balance your finances on a daily basis.

• You routinely take time off to write plot treatments for films or children's picture books.

• You have the high score on every arcade machine in the lobby.

• You are routinely yelled at for asking if there is more work you can do.

• When someone asks you if you can do something for them, you excitedly answer in the affirmative.

• You use company time to research the evolution of the letter Z.

• You sit around hoping something goes wrong so you will have something fun to do.

• You draw a really sweet picture of a cat.

• You start and subsequently finish and entire BBC original series while filing paperwork.

• You have a measurable IQ over 130.

NBC's Community | I Hate Loving Joel McHale

Yeah, I abandoned the Friends theme. Who would you rather
look at, this guy, or David Schwimmer?

I watched the first episode of NBC's Community a few weeks back for the first time, at the behest of many, many people telling me that I in particular would appreciate so much about it.

While I ended up watching all the paintball episodes in series and raucously laughing alone in m room to each, the pilot itself left me, well, offended that my closest friends had such a bare understanding of my tastes.

There's not a single character in Community I want to see more of, no character development, noting to push the plot forward. No plot, really. Best I can tell, it's a slice-of-life satire that devolved into an homage to homages as time went on. Still, one thing struck me from the end of the first episode: the line

Part of the trouble with being a smart guy is I never learned how to study.

I never really got that either. Somewhere along the line I developed some cramming abilities, to combat calculus and the dreaded Spanish. Don't get me wrong, I aced those classes, but I can barely remember the quadratic equation and all I can say en español is "Hand me a hose, my cow is on fire."

Damn you, Joel McHale, for making me empathize with that dastard Jeff Winger.

All the more upsetting, I find it, having just discovered that I've miraculously started developing a work ethic.

At least I think it's a work ethic. I've always done my work and done it well, but it was something I loathed. I am lazy by nature. I'm a hypothesist, damn it, not an actionist. However now I find myself going to bed earlier and waking up earlier, working longer and more satisfied, spending more of my free time productive, searching for homes, and careers, and evaluating my self-sufficiency.

What the hell is wrong with me, Joel?

On Cabin Fever

I got through this whole post without making one
Rider Strong joke. I should win a date with Topanga.
…Damn it.

I haven't gotten into work for a week now. No, I've not been barricaded in behind steel doors fending off dreaded ice zombies of the snowpocalypse. It just keeps snowing the night before all the days I'm scheduled to work. Store's not open, I can't go in.

I've filled my time fairly well. I worked on my book, I took notes whenever a new episode of Jersey Shore was on, I even got out to the grocery store a couple times and saw friends before the weather got too rough. But I went into this most recent snow storm basically being done. I finished everything. Now I've got very little that needs doing and precious little that I'd be interested in doing after spending the last week indoors.

Of course, most of my friends are stuck driving into work anyway at the crack of dawn and sitting around doing nothing all day, so I suppose sleeping in and only being bothered by too much free time isn't all that bad. In fact, it kind of makes me the asshole of the group. Awesome.