east village idiot

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A Parallel Universe

parallel.gifI’m at work this week, along with about 100 other poor souls in my entire industry. Nobody works this week, but the powers that be decided that my agency would be open, despite the fact that every other agency owned by our parent company is closed.

No, I’m not bitter.

Working this week makes me feel like I’ve been sucked into some strange parallel universe… a parallel universe where the L train is not crowded at 8:30 am on a weekday morning… a parallel universe where the line at Starbucks is populated with people in pajama pants instead of suits… a parallel universe where my phone doesn’t ring off the hook during the workday… a parallel universe where it is not only acceptable to drink at a business lunch, but encouraged.

For all the great things that happen in this parallel universe, there are still two harsh realities: the L train will still stall at 3rd Avenue for 5 minutes at 8:30am, even with nobody riding it, and tourists will still scatter in packs across the sidewalks of Midtown.

Unfortunately, not even the greatest discoveries in astrophysics will change these realities.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Life in NYC, Life at Work. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “A Parallel Universe”

  1. December 27th, 2006 at 12:56 pm

    says:

    Chris, you’re not alone.

    My group scheduled a five hour lunch at Balthazar tomorrow. :)

  2. December 28th, 2006 at 12:46 pm

    says:

    You could always split the difference and just be drunk at work. Like me! Now! Hooray!

  3. December 28th, 2006 at 11:22 pm

    says:

    Actually, working during this week is awesome, for the same reasons you mentioned (uncrowded commute, low pressure). And what exactly were you going to do if you had off, with all the tourists around?

    For various arcane reasons, at my job there is alot of real work that we have to get done this week. But the commute is still golden. I calculated that I can get an extra fifteen minutes of sleep because I don’t have to deal with all the idiots holding up the doors closing on the Lex.

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