Employee Of The Year

I play this game at work where I try not to speak all day.  I don't count phone calls to my wife because I like talking to her.  But the rest of the day, I try not to talk at all.  I stay in my office, I wear headphones, and I avoid eye contact when I have to leave my office.  It's a really difficult game because even coworkers I've never met will sometimes say "good morning" to me.

And I would love to say that there's some great motivation for this.  But there's not.  I'm not trying to save my voice as an opera singer.  I'm not trying to avoid annoying people.  And I'm not trying to prevent myself from saying something stupid (although that would be a great reason).  I just want to see if I can do it.  And every day since I started this job in September of last year, I've lost the game.  Every day, that is, until yesterday.

Yesterday had the perfect set of conditions.  I had a lot of work, no reason to contact anyone about it, and I only left my office to get coffee in the morning and my lunch in the afternoon.  So not only did I get a lot of work done, but I didn't have to speak to a single coworker all day!  It was my shining moment as an office recluse.

You may think that this accomplishment is sad.  And you're absolutely right.  It's super sad.  And it would be monumentally sadder if I cared at all about my "work life."  But I totally don't care.  I can say with 100% certainty that I will never be one of those people who cares about his "work life."  Because that's stupid (you probably already knew how I felt about that based on my putting quotes around "work life").  So it's not sad.  It's awesome.  And you only wish you could be that detached and hermitlike at your job.  And I'm here to tell you that it is possible.  You too can be the weirdo that nobody hears from.  You too can sit silently for so long that you wonder what your own voice sounds like.  And you too can leave at the end of the day when that random coworker (whose name you don't know) says "Seeya!" and you just nod and wave.