» Work till you drop
Katie wonders if there’s any more to her life than work, work, work
This week I read an article about women who work a lot. Actually it was more of a women-wholive- alone-and-work-too-hard-sohave- no-friends-or-life-and-thendie- a-sad-lonely-death-but-noone- even-notices-(becauseeveryone- just-assumes-they-are- ’at-work’)-until-the-neighbourscomplain- about-the-smell kind of article.
Anyway, damn the specifics, it struck a chord. You could say I’ve been working a lot recently. And it’s starting to worry me.
“Would you notice if I died?” I asked my new best friend Rupert, “or would you just assume I was at work?”.
“Are you at work now?” he asked.
“Er yes,” I admitted, checking the clock and noting that 10.30pm wasn’t the latest I’d been sat at my computer this week.
“So if you died,” said Tom “the clues would be…”
“Well you’d have to start buying your own vodka for a start,” I snapped, clinking down the phone and starting up this column. But at some point past 1am, when I finally went to bed, I started to think.
Had I put my career before everything else? Was I destined to turn into a career bitch? Had journalism taken over my life? And why was I asking all these questions like I was Carrie bloody Bradshaw?
When you’ve got issues like that its hard to know who to talk to. I called Parcel Force.
It’s been three weeks since I tried to get Parcelforce to redeliver the parcel that they’d brought over ‘while I was out’, and so far a combination of my workaholism and their ineptitude meant I was getting no closer to seeing it. But today, I decide, will be the day we finally sort it out. So I’m appeasing my anger by thrashing out the redelivery down the phone.
“I don’t think we should redeliver,” the rude man from Parcelforce is saying, “can’t you come and pick it up? What about Wednesday?”
“I’ve told you, I have to work Wednesday.”
“But we’re open until 8pm.”
“I know, but I’ll still be at work.”
“Thursday? Or even Friday?”
“I’m working every day this week until late,” I tell him, thinking about the days that will start at 9am and finish sometime past 12am.
“Next week?”
“Next week too.”
“What about Saturday morning?”
“I’ve got to work Saturday,” I tell him, depressed. “I don’t understand why you won’t just redeliver.”
“You can’t be working Saturday – nobody works that much.” He really does say this and, naturally, I am irritated.
“I am working that much. I’m working all the bloody time,” I scream.
“When do you go shopping then?” (Yes, he does ask this too. He cannot be serious). There is silence while I think miserably about the fact I never go shopping. And about the irony that the dress I bought online is the very one Parcelforce are holding hostage.
“I don’t go shopping,” my teeth are gritted.
“Your life,” the man from Parcelforce who has no right to comment on such things, says, “sounds rubbish.”
I bite my lip, hang up the phone and remind myself gently that the man from Parcelforce does not really know anything about me or my life.
Then I walk across the office and ask my editor for a day off.
