The Ponderings of a Big Foot Buddha

2003-08-20 - 2:34 p.m.

Survivor - Corporate Office

Log Entries

7:00 am – Arrive at the office an hour before the rest of the tribe. Am trying to appear useful & energetic to help prolong my stay in the on the island. Foraged a breakfast of wild donuts at the local Tim Horton’s for the other members (hopefully this generates goodwill for me). Skipping the donuts for breakfast to leave more for the others I feasted on nuts, berries & seeds.

8:00 am – Other tribe members begin to trickle in looking bleary eyed & sleepy. Donuts consumed in short order leaving none for later in the day. Conversation is minimal at this point.

9:00 am – Rewards Challenge – Find the hibernating/AWOL Lead Engineer who has the missing information from my project. Reward – I get to finish my project in a timely manner on schedule. Penalty for failing this reward is having to explain to my boss why I missed the deadline.

10:00 am – Discover the missing engineer has apparently been voted out of the office for a few days. Start to hunt for the junior engineer that did the actual work on my project & see if he has a copy of the required information.

10:30 – Rewards Challenge – Success found the junior engineer that had done the actual work and retrieved a copy of his calculations.

10:45 – Conversation is beginning to pick up as the rest of the tribe begins to wake up.

11:00 – Newest tribe member is a sexy young female engineer. Dressing in short skirts and blouses she has commanded the attention of most of the younger males in her area as they compete for her attention. Female tribe members are troubled by this attention and are calling her sluttish behind her back. Can see future tensions arising here.

11:45 – Buzz has started on the what/where/how of lunch.

12:00 – Fish & rice it is. Yummy!

1:00 – Uh-oh, discover that the structure we designed will collapse like a hut made of twigs & leaves first time it gets windy. Thanks to the sales guys adding more equipment to the original project without letting us redo the engineering until the end. Sort of like finding a big fat guy after the merger in the middle of that hut & him jumping up & down. Start rebuilding our hut

2:00 – Most of the tribe is wandering about aimlessly stopping to chat briefly here & there with each other. Seems like the endless boredom is getting to some more than others. It seems only a few of us are doing the majority of the work & the rest are coasting. It seems social skills may be more important than work ethic.

2:30 – Fight! Fight! Sales Engineering & Mechanical Engineering are blaming each other for letting the big fat guy jump in our hut. Looks like Mechanical will win but Sales is squealing and flapping their arms more.

3:00 – Spent afternoon looking under rocks & leaves trying to find tidbits of information regarding more changes to my project. Finally found a specifications sheet buried in the back of a binder in a Sales Engineers office. Seems he "forgot" to pass it on to me even though my name was on the fax.

3:30 – Hunger setting in must forage for fruit. Found an apple. Smuggled a mint out of the reception area and brought it back to "camp" hidden in my mouth. Offer to share it with fellow drafters/designers, am turned down. Ingrates mocked my attempts to bring them sustenance.

3:45 – Nearing the end of the day excitement starts to build throughout the tribe as if in anticipation. Seems we may get to spend some time with our families soon.

4:00 – Convince Boss that my deadline needs extending through no fault of mine. He agrees I now have 2 more weeks (only need a day or 2 but I’m not one to turn down extra time).

4:15 – Hear sounds of laughter about the camp. See small groups of people gathering talking in hushed whispers. Are they talking about me? Are they forming secret alliances? Are they complete slackers avoiding work? Will I alienate more people (boss type people) by joining in and also being a slacker? Will I alienate more people (colleague type people) by continuing to work when they are not? Who should I risk alienating more? The people I work side by side with & rely on for sharing workloads and information or the boss people who are on another floor & I see up here but rarely?

4:45 – Official end of our day. Only thing standing between me & family time is now many, many miles of concrete jungle trials populated with the insane and the aggressive (often insanely aggressive) riding in their metal chariots.

So to recap I eat nuts & berries, rice & fish plus I spend large amounts of boring time away from my family with people I have little in common with in a place I don’t really want to be playing endless stupid mind games and social politics. All for what? Well if I mange to survive yet another month I receive a paycheque which after taxes is about half of what should be.

Who says I need to watch TV?

Disclaimer: Any resemblance of the preceding story to any reality TV programming past, present or future is entirely intended.

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