The week that was

On Mondays we tended to complain about the weekend. We'd either done too much and not really had a chance to relax or done too little and there we were sitting behind our cubical walls again without a damn thing to show for our two paltry days off. On Mondays the printer always said Happy Monday, but we could never figure out what there was to be happy about. At times we'd have a good conversation with someone we almost knew, and for a few moments we'd imagine that this week was the week when things were going to change. And then we'd get an e-mail or a phone call about something that had gone wrong, that we'd screwed up, and we'd realize that it was just Monday again.

On Tuesdays we'd start checking the clock at 1:15. Only three and a half hours to go we'd say to each other intending for it to be a joke and not some depressing reality. We tended to forget to drink coffee on Tuesdays, and we'd sit in our cubes with a headache watching videos of things that we heard were funny.

On Wednesdays we went to meetings in the morning with a bunch of people we sort of knew but not well enough to make jokes during the particularly boring portions of the meeting that really merited it. It was on those days, the sun just some ghost hidden behind dark clouds that we thought about applying for other jobs. We tossed words like passionate around to people we sort of knew about things we weren't doing until the day was over.

On Thursday we started talking about the weekend weather. We speculated on wind chill and its relative effect on the quality of our plans. We spent at least an hour walking around the office looking for people to talk to but only spent ten minutes with people we knew. The other fifty minutes were spent imagining the things we'd say in a life that wasn't our own.

On Fridays we pretended to work while we dreamed about weekends to come. We walked quickly to appear busy. We asked our co-workers about all those little things that we'd forgotten to during the week. We bore them no ill-will. It's Friday dammit! we seemed to say. In the afternoon we had a meeting which we spent doodling pictures of roses in our notebooks. And eventually the day ended, the sunlight fading to that uniform blue of late afternoon, and we trudged home almost certain that nothing was ever going to change, but that it would be okay for just one more week.