Make Work and Kill Time

Finding joy in your work.


It's good when you enjoy the work that you do. No matter what job it is, when you really enjoy doing it...well it's a blessing. But there is some work that it is very difficult to enjoy. There is some work that is torturous to the very bones! Make Work and Kill Time. Yeah, you heard me right.

By definition, Make Work is what an employer gives you when there isn't Real Work to do. It's something sub menial and frightfully boring. Something that no one wanted to do or tackle, but since you have nothing to do...or since I have nothing to give you, we can't have you just sit there, so...do this!!

Then there is Killing Time. This occurs when you run out of fucking Make Work. This is when even your employer has ran out of onerous ideas and no longer gives a fuck. He's as tired of you as you are of being there. He's thinking "why the fuck do I have this swinging dick taking up space in my job?" when he looks at you. You're just dumb and watching the hands of the clock as they drag like a dead body in a rug in the Bronx.

Why the definitions? Well, that's what I did today. First I did some Make Work. I am kidding you not. I get up this morning, happy to be alive, then I'm dismal that I am, and get ready to go to WEDARE. I don't feel like going. I really don't. I just want to cash in, just turn around and go back to bed and deal with the consequences later. But I had promised myself FOUR weeks. Four weeks of this bullshit that I'll put up with before I tell this entire fucking system to kiss my ass.

So I trudge in like a good soldier, and go to the lab, to play on the computer until we're called into a classroom, where we wait. We sit there and wait, and there is a big clock on the wall, mocking up as the second hand ticked...it didn't sweep, like some of the newer clocks, it ticked, one second at a time, maddeningly slow. I sat there staring at it as if I was a deaf mute, my mouth agape, my eyes glazed.

Presently, myself and another woman are called into a larger room with an instructor. Upon entering, to the left, there is a table with fake food, that looks surprisingly REAL. There is a menu instruction on the wall over the table. The instructor tells the girl to make plastic sandwiches following the menu. Whereas I am taken to the right. A clothes rack with clothes is just behind another table piled with clothes. "Hobobob," the Instructor looks me in the eye. "We want you to fold and stack these clothes neatly, and then give me the count of the pants and the shirts." You want me to do what? He repeats himself and offers me the table. I walk behind it and get busy, folding, stacking, counting. What the fuck??

Make Work.

Soon, the girl is finished with her sandwiches, and is given a good grade. I am checked. My anal retentive obsessiveness gets me good grades as the instructor is impressed with the way that I folded clothes. He reaches to the side and lifts up a stack of file folders with names typed on the tabs. "Here, put these in order." I take a seat and resign myself to my new task. After a minute, he stops me. "Look....I know you can do that. Put those away!" I did. "I saw you in the lab. You were working on Microsoft Word, and Excel...you were even taking the tests. I'm just going to mark you good on those too. Don't tell anybody I did this." I nod. "Go ahead back into the classroom."

Well Dayum! That worked out. I go skipping back into the class- room...to do what? Kill fucking time. I bring a book and read it until my head hurts, then I look up at the clock for an hour, and then it's time for a thirty minute break. People storm out of the room. I do not. Instead I eat my sandwich. What was the purpose of going out to get thrity minutes of freedom...to come right back into this fucking classroom. And I was right. The mopes walking back in realized the same thing as they retook their seats and stared up at the clock. Two at a time, we were called into the other classroom, to make sandwiches or fold clothes. The rest of us waited.

I leaned back in my chair, put my face in my hand and fell asleep until the instructor walked in and dismissed us for lunch. For lunch I walked uptown for forty five minutes, and then back. That loosened me up, sharpened my dull senses, and allowed me to take the full brunt of the next hour and a half...it knocked me out. Before I knew it, the instructor was waking me. "Hobobob, you have to meet with your Job Developer." I nodded, stood and followed him and antoher woman to an office not far off in the maze that they call WECARE. I meet with my Job Developer, a snappy dressed, well groomed man in a shirt and tie. "Hobobob, we have a job for you in an old age center uptown from you on 114th street." I nod as I listent to the description. A clerical job.

I return to the classroom. I should be happy, but this job is not a regular job. You don't get paid a paycheck at the end of the week, you get what is called WEP hours. I like to call them WEP dollars...otherwise known as smelly farts. That right. I'm working for my benefits. HRA feels that they are giving me enough. I would not mind this. Hey, I get a lot from HRA, Social Services has really gotten me off the streets, given me the drugs I need to live a little longer on god's green earth, and food in my belly. But wouldn't it be better to give me a nine to five, take back all of your shit, and instead give me a paycheck and let ME decide what exactly I want to spend it on. A job means freedom, doesn't it? I could turn to WECARE and tell them to suck shit out of my ass. But instead, I work at this joint for three days, and report to WECARE for two. I am not free.

On this job, what do you really think will be happening? Hey, I could be wrong, but I have the feeling that I will be doing my two favorite forms of work. Make Work and Killing Time. Three days of it. And no doubt I'm supposed to take all this with a smile. Or maybe they don't want me to smile. Maybe they want to see just how much shit I will take from them before I FTC my ass. It's like being a porn star. First they want you to undress, then suck dick, then fuck, then take it up the ass, then take on TWO dicks, then.... Just how far are you willing to take their shit? Well, when you're this low on the totem pole, you'll take two dicks to change your circumstances. Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm a pornstar.

I wait. I wait until I KILL TIME more. I'm not feeling good. I'm mad. I'm so mad that I can be fed a plate of nails and razors, with a side of metal filings and covered with hot sauce. I've only been here for four days and it's felt like four years. They move fast at SWE FAIR, very fast at doing fucking nothing. I'm churning air here, and now I see why people just go berserk. They just snap and lose it, because someone on an upper level designs a system that works like this, and fills it with people who hate their jobs too. We hate being here, they hate dealing with us. It's a living for each of us. What we all should do is snap. Everybody, the workers that work here, and the people under them, come in with guns, and take the elevators upstairs to the big wigs, and well, that's not a good thing to think of now is it?

I head home, drained and sick. Tomorrow I have to come back and sign my IPE. I'm taking half a day off so that I can go to see my NEW shrink!! I can unload all of these feelings. I have to say something good for HRA. I could never be able to afford these professional head doctors on my own. So I guess I should be happy. I'm going to need a doctor's note to see her, but I'll be able to talk to her about the LUVOX, and have someone closely monitor me when I get back on it. I think that will be the safest thing.

I get home, disgusted with everything and mostly with my life. I sit in front of my computer and sulk, my face turning into a scowl. Maybe life out on the streets wasn't all that fucking bad. I open my mail. 20 emails. One of the emails reads:

Hobobob, coming tomorrow? we miss you. Dr. A.

I smile broadly.

Hobobob