For some time now, I’ve felt as if I have defiled my own dignity as a human being, as a person who ought to – by the very fact that he is human without any mental defects – be able to introspect and think about the world, about life, about the goings-on of this dizzying laboratory of emotions. Of course, I suspect that this failure is a result of my own indolence, as I have allowed myself to sink into the new depths of dimwitted drudgery in this silly job I now have.

I used to abhor people who cast blame conveniently on the system, on others around him, on the weather, on anything but himself. But increasingly, I’m seeing symptoms of the syndrome in me, as I cast blame on the menial tasks that are simply interminably thrown to me. It is harrowing sometimes when you think of going to work. True I am a clerk on weekdays, and the idea of a clerk is almost inextricably bound to words like ‘slack’, ‘bum’ and the like. So I had expected as well. But I never quite realized that my job would entail so much miserable phone calling and gritting of teeth when you are treated like dirt for no apparent reason by the people you take so much trouble calling, arranging interviews for, hankering after to make sure they have the right ornamentation for their uniform and making sure their credits and leave and all the rest of the perks they get are properly disbursed. It’s like a bitter mother who has neither room nor reason to scream and ask for remuneration of some sort, even if it comes just in the vague and desperately rare form called ‘respect’ in the organization.

And all this calling and administration – alongside absolutely time-devouring meetings of pointless issues – are taking their toll on me. I feel almost as if my wit is slipping through my fingers with each passing day, when I work from 8 to 5.30 on lucky days, giving myself 10 to 15 minutes for lunch and heading right back to work once the swill is washed down with some cheap sweetened dye diluted in water. More often than not, I work beyond, and suffer the travails of a boss who is both infamously inept and procrastinating who insists almost every day that nobody can be more ill than her but because she is oh-so-close-to-death but still oh-so-loyal-to-the-cause she should be an inspiration to her subordinates who are oh-so-callous-to-be-inspired. Then, when you comment purely out of goodwill that she has stopped coughing in the office for some days, she instantly breaks out into a series of weak and deflated coughs and insists again that she is so ill and ought to be resting at home but is so busy that all of us who must by definition be so free ought to come to her rescue.

I’ve bitched a lot about my boss to many friends, and I sense to my concern that I am getting very close to my wit’s end towards her. I try to be civil still and we are still friends, but I definitely steer clear from her if we have to co-exist in the same confined space of the interview room when I need the extra space to prepare my letters and mail packages for my guys. Her voice now begins to send shivers down my bent-over spine even when she is here just to chat, because it is just so laden with complaints and reminders that she is sick that you feel sick with her just by listening to her whimpers.

But back to my life. My interviews are coming up and I feel simply put that I am rotting away mentally by the minute in that blighted existence of an office. I used to have some time to do my own reading, but this has come to pass with the torrents of work that surge my way. Now I take quiet sneaks out of the office and try to spend 10 seconds more in the toilet by washing my hands once more just in vain hope that in that 10 seconds she was calling for me to no avail and hopefully when I sneak furtively back to the office she has forgotten what she had called me for previously.

But if this is what life is, then surely there is a deeper question to be asked, about where the dignity is. I told myself when I first got posted (I refuse to use ‘joined’ because I didn’t ‘join’ it. I was not and probably will never be part of it) to this office that I will do everything above the table. My lunch and rest breaks will be legitimate and I do not need to worry about being caught because I am not sneaking out of the office. But in due course it began to dawn on me that such idealism was never allowed to germinate in the cold confines of my office. You simply have to stay back if you want to let others think that you’re doing your work, and otherwise you don’t get the green light from the bosses that you are at least a mediocre worker. You will be deemed a sloth even if you have done your work more efficiently so that you can leave on time (note that I’m not even talking about leaving early). There are many practices that continue to confound me in this office and I suspect strongly that they will remain abstruse and enigmatic to my dying day. Much that we learnt are good organizational skills and practices suddenly become locked up like the artefactual mausoleums of cabinets encasing eons of years of documents belonging to persons long gone and close to dead.

So it is all very obnoxious I must say, that I have to cast aside my dignity and even work slowly and whine and whimper like a dead puppy would that continues to cough when you comment that it hasn’t coughed for some days. You must insist that you are inundated with work and writhe in your seat like someone just stuck a durian into your ass and hope that the missiles don’t hit home. When they do, whine more loudly and hopefully the missiles undo the damage and the dead kids stand up and play again. No I am disgusted. But what can one do?

I liken my predicament now to a blind man leaping over a cliff. There is no way to tell just how far over the edge you are already, or whether you are just hanging in the air and will never reach the other side without having your guts spill all over when you hit the ground. I am not simply waiting for my job to come. I need to proactively work for the coveted job. And unlike some of my peers who simply get to be in there already before they are even liberated, I have to work against the tide and keep my dead brain alive. It is all so depressing because this reeks of injustice that no one wants to work on.

This isn’t just pre-Monday blues. This is a whole stretch of blue that will likely shroud my interview days. I know this would be superfluous worry and I am throwing more thorns on my own path. But I guess I’ll need the time. Weekends now no longer are retreats from the horrors of work itself. It is time to rest your ears from the interminable whines of your boss and persistence that she is oh-so-sick and oh-so-busy because she’s oh-so-loyal (note that soon after she tells you she’s too busy to do X and so tasks you with it, she heads back to her cubicle to chat with her friends about ‘food and flowers’ and her ‘trip to Turkey … no why don’t you want to go to Turkey? But I don’t want to go to Japan’ conversation that of course illuminates on all but the very dim the fact that she is oh-so-dedicated indeed). I am not exaggerating facts when I say I feel nauseous when I hear her go on about this again. Hypocrisy ipso facto will make me green already. Hypocrisy that implicates me will make me sick. Hypocrisy that implicates me doubled with cheap calls for sympathy certainly make me throw up.

Oh this is all so depressing. Goodbye Sunday. ‘ere a blue Monday rises.

(I might add: my dignity now is so compromised that I don’t any more remember the password to my preferred blog account. I resolve nevertheless to redeem some of that lost value and recover the key to another bastion of my past experiences and desultory memories of yesteryear)