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ant spray illness
Monday, July 26 1999
Every workplace meeting, large and small, seems to have its own slave-driving purpose. The bigger ones are a lot easier to ridicule and ignore than the smaller ones. This morning, for example, all of us had to announce in turn what we were doing this week to make our company "kick butt." It was such a cultishly oppressive atmosphere that I found it impossible to subvert, so I said what was expected of me. But still I found myself smirking to myself at its laughably self-caricaturing qualities.
Smaller meetings are where a much more personal, inescapable sort of pressure is applied, where my boss takes the opportunity to single me out and kindly, rhetorically ask what I'm going to do when I've completed all my projects on time. And being human, being a sucker in the face of an amiably-applied whip, to an extent I always succomb. For example, Kim had, in her usual frazzled last-minute style, had called me and arranged a romantic dinner for this evening, but an hour later I escaped from a small meeting to call her back to cancel, because I suddenly realized it would be unseemly to take off so early given all the work I'm irrationally expected to complete.
Further adding to my misery was the ant problem in my part of the building. This morning ants had been swarming over everything in my office, so of course the first reaction of my conventional American co-workers had been to start spraying vast amounts of Raid without any regard for air quality. Consequently, throughout the day I felt myself gradually developing respiratory problems. This may have been an entirely psychological effect (like similar illnesses experienced by my mother ), but no matter, it increased my bitterness towards my workplace. Why was I indoors breathing toxic air on a sunny day? Why wasn't I free? How had this happened to me?
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