Today is Monday, my hangover day. It being my hangover day, I’m usually dragging my ass through the day trying to scrounge up any and all motivation that I can find. I woke up at like 8 a.m., and feeling really shitty and hungover drank the remaining three Coronas (lol) from the 12-pack. I felt better and went back to sleep. I woke up at 2:20 p.m. giving me about an hour until I needed to leave for work. I chugged a Bang energy drink and sat around doing fuck-all until work.

I went to work and had another Bang energy. 600 mg of caffeine in three hours. Yeehaw. I had electricity running through my veins, a nervous shaking fueled by my hangover, caffeine, nicotine, and it being cold out. There was probably a moderate risk of me having an anxiety attack or a heart attack but I survived.

But what about the blog? Wasn’t I double-shifting tonight? Yeah, whatever, I’ll figure something out later. Put your back against the wall and fight against the midnight deadline. I’d have to post from my phone from work, but surely I could churn something out.

Work went to hell quickly with our first plane showing up a whopping two hours late. Somewhere in the two hours we got like a half-hour break and I sat in our crew van trying to muster some motivation to do anything. Read Wheel of Time? Write the damn blog post? Listen to music? I didn’t want to do anything.

And then a coworker started talking to me. Well, wait, let’s backtrack a bit.

I like to take my breaks mostly alone and in silence. I don’t eat food, I don’t socialize very much, and I try to lay low. The past year I had a tiny break room all to myself, and then we hired a bunch of seasonals that started shitting the place up. I then started bringing my bluetooth stereo thingy into work and camping out in the crew van listening to music. I had a little safe zone of solace, but apparently no place is safe anymore.

We have this one guy who I won’t name who is impossible to be around. He is literally one of the dumbest people I have ever met. Despite this, I still can’t quite put a finger on what bothers me about him, it almost seems like a little bit of everything. Something about him is so immensely frustrating and grating on the nerves that I can’t stand being around him for more than a few minutes.

So I sat there totally spacing out trying to figure out what to do. Obviously this coworker was still camped in the van for some reason. It’s not like it’s my van, my personal break area on wheels, but it also kinda is. He usually goes upstairs and lurks (sometimes in my old break room; another reason why I don’t go there anymore) but for some reason he’s been camping in the van the past few weeks.

I grabbed my book which usually means I’m about to read and he started talking to me about…you guessed it, the goddamn coronavirus. Jesus Christ. I’ve complained before that I’m sick of hearing about it; sure it’s okay to talk about in passing but I’m just sick of having big elaborate discussions about it especially since I’m losing so much goddamn money in the stock market. It’s a sore subject for me. And of course that’s what he talked to me about for ten fucking minutes. “When is this quarantine supposed to end? Yeah, I hung out with my friend yesterday — I think the media is blowing it out of proportion — the H1N1 virus wasn’t that big of a deal.” And something about the federal government and quarantines. Somehow this guy was totally lost on the fact that the states are the ones tossing up quarantines, not the federal government. Anyone ever hear of the federal system? I was about ready to scream, yet being my usual kind and thoughtful self forced myself to sort of socialize with him even though I was dying by 1,000 papercuts to my ear and my brain.

Luckily, my friend hopped in the van shortly afterwards and I gave her this fucking wide-eyed scowl and just stared at her; it was obvious what my problem was and she knew it immediately. Everyone on the crew feels the same way about this guy. Luckily I was able to direct my attention to a conversation with her and mostly ignore the other guy. I felt kinda bad but also not very bad. I hate talking to this guy and sometimes you need to look out for yourself. It sucks not being a saint or a Buddhist Monk at all times in your life, but I’m neither of those and am as flawed as anyone else. I’m guilty of being a douchebag but sometimes I don’t have the patience to suffer out of politeness.

Last week we were all in the van and I was trying to read. Another frustrating thing about this guy is he’s the type to force his way into any conversation no matter how oblique he is to it. It’s okay to be around two people talking and not be part of it if it doesn’t relate to you at all. Someone mentioned that they went out and did yard work this weekend and he had to point out that he hates gardening; he can’t make plants grow and they always die on him. Big conversation about gardening and how he’s awful at it. Okay. Someone had food in the van; he had to mention that he likes cooking and then shit all over his wife because she isn’t a good cook. She got her terrible cooking skills from her dad because he can’t cook either! Awesome bro! Good to know!

ANYWAYS, I was trying to read and he was butting into every conversation going on in the van. He even asked me what book I was reading. I said Wheel of Time and he asked if it was good. Well, I probably wouldn’t be reading it if I fucking hated it. How do you even point something as obvious like that out to someone? He then talked about how he can’t read anything that’s long or boring (I’m assuming without pictures too…) and just, urgh. He kept talking and I kept trying to read but anytime he talked my mind would instantly lose focus and direct attention to whatever dumbass thing he was going on about to my coworkers. I couldn’t do it. I had another two hours on break and it took about five minutes to read a paragraph because of him talking and his voice. Eventually I abandoned ship van and headed upstairs to the supervisors’ office. I don’t like to barge in there and shit the place up, but once again sometimes you need to be selfish. I made sure to stress that I just wanted to read and wasn’t trying to socialize with the bosses or intrude onto others: I just needed a quiet and safe spot away from my dumbass coworkers.

We are trying to make some effort to accomodate the guy so he doesn’t feel left out of forgotten about at work. This is good in a way, but it’s also making him more talkative which is stressing everyone else out. You know, try to see everything in a positive light and appreciate everyone as their own, unique person. Everyone brings something to the table, right? Thoughts about how people pissing you off is your own problem, and maybe you can learn something from them in how they make you mad. All of those wonderful and all-encompassing views of humanity and how we’re all the same, struggling through the same problems. This view works great with people you love to be around, but this guy makes me think that maybe all of that lovey, dovey bullshit is, well, bullshit.

And I don’t like to take the Taoism approach of “bad people make the good people good” because goddamnit it’s frustrating. I really think I could appreciate the people I appreciate without a coworker who’s grating on the nerves, but maybe Taoism in onto something. Who knows. I wasn’t trying to make any big or grand points to teach anyone anything here; I just wanted to bitch and bitch I did. Mission Accomplished.