Welcome to the Working Week

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve got a fun temporary full-time gig helping to launch a corporate web site, so blogging, which I try to save for evenings, has gotten squeezed lately. (Nights I’m trying to finish the other freelance projects due this month.)

Financially, I feel like a space alien. It’s been nearly a decade since I worked in a corporate environment, and I’m bumping up against macro-trends I’d only read about as if in a guidebook from another planet. Planet work-from-home, that is. Like, buying water.

Remember when Bottlemania came out? I was all like, “Oh yeah, why would you buy water? I mean it’s right here in the tap.” Which is maybe five feet from my office.

Then I started this gig, and quickly learned that:

a) I am the opposite of a camel. I probably drink at least 16 ounces of water every morning as a coffee chaser.
b) I am far enough away from the drinking fountain to make the amount of water I need to consume counterproductive.
c) This workplace is so sprawling that it lacks a kitchen where everybody stores mugs and glasses.

I bet I bought at least three bottles of water that week before I remembered to reuse one, and many more cups of coffee before I dug out our thermos.

Lunch? Yes, one day when we ran out of bread. Multiply what I spent by the thousands of people in that cafeteria every day, and you get… Wal.E. All I can think about is how big the waste management contract is.

It lends a whole new weight to the term, “consumer.”

Perk: I got to buy some new “Hey I’m a grownup” clothes.