At 8:40am on Friday morning, Norman had already settled into his desk at the office. He took pride in being early; on the rare occasions that Norman had been a few minutes late for work, his racing thoughts took over. What if he missed an important announcement? What would his coworkers think about him? What if he didn't finish his work? And because he couldn't help himself from ruminating, Norman would be unproductive for the rest of the day.
Norman smiled with pleasure and pride as he stared into his black computer monitor, his hands gently clasped on his desk. 'I'm one of the very first people here,' he thought to himself. For a few minutes, Norman sat in this position, as he watched his coworkers begin to arrive, one by one. Being early gave Norman a small burst of confidence; Norman even waved at the first three coworkers that entered the office hoping that they would recognize his punctuality.
'Maybe I'll check my email. I haven't done that in awhile,' Norman thought as he pushed on the button to his computer monitor. He took a few minutes to log into Outlook, where he noticed a new e-mail from his boss.
The subject line read Happy Friday!
'Well, that's nice,' Norman thought. 'I hope he has a happy Friday, too.' He triple-clicked on the e-mail and found a blue hyperlink as the content:
"Ten Signs That You're Ready For The Weekend!"
Norman furrowed his brow as he was led to a page he hadn't heard of before. "BuzzFeed," he read to himself, as he began to scroll down the page. Below each line of text on the list were various pictures with a 'play' button, each reading "GIF." 'I wonder what a jiff is, but I'd better not click on it,' Norman thought.
1. You already know exactly what you're doing Friday night!
"Hmm," Norman said. "I'm actually not quite sure what --" he stopped himself, and looked around his nearly filled office. '--I'm doing tonight,' he finished his thought silently.
2. Your refrigerator is already stocked with alcohol.
'That's odd. I'm not so much of a drinker.'
3. You already know EXACTLY which Netflix show you're going to binge-watch.
'Netflix?' Norman wondered. 'I'm not quite sure what that is.'
4. You're hitting everybody up on Facebook to see what their plans are.
'But I don't have a Facebook.' Norman sighed as he looked around to see his coworkers standing at their desks, craning their necks to talk to each other through their cubicles. He heard laughter, and one younger male colleague say, "This article is spot-on!"
Norman shut off the monitor and stared into the blankness. 'Maybe I'm getting too old to be ready for the weekend,' he thought.
Submitted November 06, 2015 at 01:32PM by downthenumberline http://ift.tt/1RAKcgn lifeofnorman
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