The Office

Sometimes, when working in an office, you find strange ways to make the mind numbingly nine hour day pass quickly. Those days can also cause you to find you're self making the biggest deal out of the silliest things. Especially when your boss is the villain straight out of a movie. My boss was an awful lady, and she made my days longer and more terrible than they had to be. Lucky for me, I had friends.

Not just any friends, but ladies who I shared a strong and deep bond with. The kind of bond you can only develop after years of sitting three feet from each other every day for nine hours. People who know every little intimate secret joy and pain of your life, because again, they're three feet from you all day every day. The ladies I shared my office with were like a second family. I guess that would make our boss the evil step-monster.

One of the most important survival techniques we had, was the radio. Of course it was always set to the local station (KKIQ) and we all knew each other's favorite and least favorite songs. But our favorite song, together as a group, was Love Shack. Whenever it would come on the radio we would share imaginary long distance high fives across the room (as to know disturb the evilstep-monster in the office next to ours) and swivel our little chairs in unison.

Silly as it may seem, those moments would release an immeasurable amount of stress for us, and made us all laugh. If someone would come into our office while Love Shack was on, they would quickly be ssshhed. There was no talking during Love Shack, only swiveling and quiet singing (again, didn't want to attract attention from the step-monster).

One thing that was good about our boss was that she left everyday at 4PM, on the nose. That would leave us an entire hour without her, and those were the best. It became part of our daily routine to turn up the radio as soon as she was gone, and sing-a-long, loudly, to whatever song was playing. It was our way of celebrating the end of the day, and just blowing off steam.

The greatest part of those 4PM sing-a-longs was that at least once a week, as if the DJ knew it was our favorite, the song that would come on right at 4PM would be Love Shack. Even today, as I listen to it while I write this, I can't help but sing and swing in my swivel chair here at home. I'll forever think of my wonderful office family whenever I hear Love Shack, and how much they meant to me. How much they'll always mean to me.