A typical day at my job lately involves office duty. A warehouse sized office where once you type in your code to get in the door you enter a maze of aisles that lead to a sea of cubicles. It's like a Wal Mart sized office with row after row of cubicles. Now as a rule my role is outdoors away from the city where to office is located. So when laying out the facility one of the cubicle spaces in the center had to have a big ole pier in the middle. Being I'm usually gone that cubicle seemed like the logical place to assign to the guy always gone. That means 30% less area to work, 1/3 less desk area and a freaking pier to bump into anytime I swivel around or back up my chair. Something that would drive a normal person to go postal.
Well right now there is a project going that I'm assigned to and my duty is records keeper on this one. The client is negotiating the procurement of an office building for me to set up shop in. So for now it is what it is. Meanwhile I'm in training for a promotion. Also meanwhile I'm training a greenhorn. Also meanwhile I'm performing tasks that the big boss does whenever she is in the office. And since I have nothing better to do I'm assigned closing out records of two other projects.
So here goes: A typical day of ADHD plethora of ever changing assignments involves the answering emails of a client requesting instant answers to a situation that requires research for an accurate response. The site(s) where I research were updated an all old links are broken. Great! New guy approaches with a question. A procedural question that requires a thorough explanation. I pause and explain where the answers can be found in manuals X, Y, or Z.
New guy has something to do for a few hours while he reads said manuals. I hear a voice 2 rows of cubicles away asking if I'd finished records of project #3. "no sir" is my reply. I hear "can you get on that this morning?" "Sure thing" is my reply. Big boss sends email requesting a spread sheet be updated by 10 o'clock for a meeting she has. It's 9:30. I open said spread sheet to find the company has changed their proprietary spread sheet software overnight. Great. Relearn the software, again.
By now a normal persons BP would be spiking. My ADHD brain is thinking "cool". At 10 the spread sheet was updated and sent, the project 3 records are spread out on my limited desk space and new guy has found the answers he sought. Time to sneak a few puffs off my vape stick. Also time to refill my glass of ice water and take a quick stroll to the mens room a football field away.
Emails from my project begin to arrive with things to e-file, read and print. Where's new guy I ponder. He is my print guy. By now it's 11:30 and my tummy is growling for lunch. I write a list of tasks to get done by 5 so my ADHD can sort it out while I eat lunch. But with 30 minutes until lunch, I sort out records spread out on the desk. My ADHD allows a system of categories to pile folders in. Later it is just a matter of alphabetical order. But my dislexia is at work so I stack them Z to A, which allows inserting them back to font later on. See?
Return from lunch and see my limited desk space is full. OCD says no way this will remain and I start filling up a bankers box with folders about the time new guy drops off a 6" pile of printed stuff to be sorted and filed. He asks "what's next?" More emails arrive looking for answers from the new boss in training, me. I send new guy off to a location to take some photos of an upcoming assignment so we have "before the giant Tonka toys moved in and began destroying things" records. We inspect road widening or building and its important to have 'before' photos in case some adjacent property owner says we broke a mailbox that was already broken before we arrived or to show the enviro-nazis the wetland was properly flagged with yellow caution tape before work began.
Oh, I replaced a record keeper who was supposed to have already built a system of records for me to add to only to discover he had not. So I discover in the first few days of my new assignment I'm about 30 days behind because he was 30 days behind. But my usual role involves cleaning up messes anyway so that's no big deal after being the clean up guy for 20+ years.
Go to ease back in chair but bump into the stupid pier. Take a few puffs from my vape stick all Stealth-like. Celphone rings. It's the wife asking what I want for supper but a floor above us is a government agency that at times jams celphone signals. Wife wants to chat. Great. Go outdoors to chat about, oh the trash man was late or the dog ate my flashlight etc. Meanwhile more emails from the client arrive while I'm outside. Get back indoors and that guy everybody wonders what he actually gets paid to do wants to chat about a lasagne his wife cooked last Saturday. I check off items from my list since the OCD requires at least half be done by 5. Homie soon understands that I'm not real excited to hear how many cups of water it took to boil the noodles of said lasagne and walks away to find somebody 3 rows over to chat with.
As I hear the din of people chit chatting about running a marathon, their first date with a new beau, their vacation or other typical experiences I'm seemingly up to my eyeballs in work and getting further behind by the minute. Yet somehow I manage to blurt out a quip of some sort on a subject someone 6 rows away was chatting about and hear a sea of laughter. And someone whispers loudly "that quiet guy sure is funny sometimes". New guy approaches and says "how do you keep up?" I respond "I just do things in the order the voices tell me to and it works out". He asks "got anything for me to do?" I respond "yeah, go to the break room and read the sports page, you've done enough today".
At 4:30 on the dot my OCD says its time to clean up. The ADHD thing has allowed me to complete 90% of todays list but the plethora of emails means a full roster for tomorrow. My dislexia ensures everything right to left and left to right on my desk has been placed in its proper spot by 4:45 and the computer screen is blank from being turned off by 4:50. It takes the thing a few minutes to shut down.
Hey, I've got ten minutes to spare. Ease back in chair, bump into pier again and decide to rearrange my cubicle space to gain 63 more millimeters of work area and it's 5:00. If I stack my differing color sticky note pads in a line the stapler can set on that. Twist the hole puncher 90 degrees and free up more space. Slide the pocket calculator under the tape dispenser and free up even more square inches. I now have room for a coaster for my sweaty glass of ice water to set on. Take more stealth puffs from my vape in celebration.
I got more done than 5 people who have more room to work and more time to do it. On the way out the door I pour my remaining half glass of water on an office plant and hope I don't get stuck in traffic on the way home. Get stuck on the interstate. That drives most people nuts. To me that just means more time listening to the music I chose that morning and allows the combination of disorders in my brain to sort out all the things I didn't get done today to comprise a plan for tomorrow. A plan that will likely be completely rearranged in the first 30 minutes of the day tomorrow. Great.
Get home and wife says "how was work?" as the dogs all compete for attention as if to say "it's that guy, he came back, this is the greatest day EVER!!!" I reply "eh, same ole same ole".
