The Work Day Morning Hangover

The noise blaring in my ear gets painfully louder with each passing second. It is rhythmically timed separated by what I visualize as hammers hitting huge bells coinciding with the ticking of a second hand on a clock. This consistent hell has finally motivated me to action. As I peel my eyes open, I realize my next move is to roll over and stem this noise at its source. I fumble gracefully toward this small black mechanical object. It’s hard to believe something so small can make such an earth shattering noise at 7am. After a few unsuccessful attempts to hit the relief button on this small box, I make contact and depress the snooze button successfully. (Repeat this scene five more times)

I don’t think anything is more dreadful than a work day morning hangover.

Just prior to this rude awakening, I was having dreams of water. Not swimming or floating, but actually grabbing and chugging glasses of water because my thirst was so dire I felt like I was lost in the Mojave for days. I sit up in bed wondering where I had left my brain from the previous evening. I look around my apartment and see a ridiculous mess of tortilla chips, strewn clothes, and ant insecticide. What in the hell happened in this place last night? Oh well…no time to figure that out now. I was almost late for work.

After a comical hour of trying to get myself cleaned up and presentable for my job, I managed to get to my car and filter myself into the morning commute with all the other good people of California trying to earn their slice of the American pie. I have to turn my radio up in order to get adrenaline running through my veins to jump start my brain. It feels as though there is something missing where my head should be. The synapses are refusing to fire.

I finally get to work and realize I must still be a certain level of intoxicated. This is good. God forbid I have to roll into work with what will potentially be a huge fucking hangover by noon. At least I will appear perky even though in reality its remnants of the evening past. Damn! I forgot about the 9am meeting. Okay…be cool. Lay low and keep your mouth shut. This tends to work best in situations such as this. Since this is a conference call meeting with someone sharing their computer screen via the Internet, this will be much smoother than an in person meeting. God I love technology.

I have five minutes until the meeting and I have the coffee walk and brew timed to the second. It takes 3 ½ minute to walk to the make-shift cafeteria (aka: converted closet), brew the single coffee serving, stir, and make it back to my office, all assuming there is no coffee traffic. That throws it all off. You could be trapped for several minutes which would call for you to abort the coffee mission and run a serious risk of a narcoleptic-type occurrence during the meeting.

Success! No traffic, no sleepy.

With all said and done, I made it through another hung over morning in the trenches of corporate warfare.