I'm the Jim of My Office / Week 6

I work in a climate-controlled, cube-dotted, and fluorescent-lit office building plopped down in the middle of a forest preserve in a quiet northern suburb of the third biggest city in the country. The building is separated into floors, and each floor a section. Each section is classified further into groups, which house aisles of 30 or so cubes, which hold one person each. Each group is assigned a name and genre of products. I am part of the LPG team, the Legal Professional Group. We reside on the first floor, Southwest section, of the Riverwoods Branch, of CCH, Inc., a Wolters Kluwer company. My group publishes new and revised laws, regulations, and court cases on topics ranging from banking and finance to advertising and nuclear energy.

Each group, I assume, resembles The Office in some way or another. And one can conclude that each group has a Jim. I’m the Jim of my office.

We have an Oscar. An effeminate Latino man who wears vibrant sweaters and sports a single stud earring. We have a Michael Scott, sort of. An extremely awkward higher-up who gets his kicks telling bad jokes. We have several Phyllises. Overweight, middle-aged women overscented with department store perfume and wearing flowery matching outfits from Fashion Bug, and who fill their area with pictures of their children and grandchildren and faraway beach scenes. We’ve got a Toby. A quiet, single guy who has an obvious crush on a co-worker. But ours wears see-through, short-sleeved collared shirts from the 70s. And we have a Kevin. A large balding man who creeps all the women out with his monotone voice and stalkerish tendencies. We do have a woman who is of Indian decent. But she is no Kelly.

We have a blond who obsesses over office parties and events, like organizing a coupon bin for the group’s cost-cutting needs, but she is not standoffish or cat-obsessed, like Angela. We have no Pam-like cute secretaries who dress modestly and excel in various crafts. No grumpy Black guy like Stanley, or overeager brown-noser like Andy. We lack Merediths—alcoholic redheads. We have a temp, but it’s an older woman who keeps to herself, not a young guy like Ryan.

And we only sort-of have a Dwight. He is a balding, bespectacled fellow who creeps around the attractive girls’ cubes sporting his size-too-small Banana Republic khakis. And he really doesn’t seem to have a job other than that. But he does not have a bobble head of himself. And he is not quite as militant, as far as I can tell.

But I am Jim. I find myself looking around the aisle for a camera some days. Like when two older women discuss their current bowel movements and whether or not cheese consumption has contributed to its erratic behavior. Or when our Michael makes comments like, “Well if my cube had a door, I’d have an open door policy.”

I search under my desk for boom mikes when the woman who sits across from me vocalizes her every thought. She says, “Shoot,” every time she makes a mistake (which is a lot), “Oh gee, its almost lunchtime,” every day at precisely 11:15 CST, and even “Stretch!” each time she does that. And her diction pierces through the ESPN Radio I blast in my headphones throughout the day, allowing me to hear even the most subtle utterance.

I scour my car for lipstick cams when I roll into the parking lot just in time to watch a co-worker’s morning routine of peering into every window of his new CRX to make sure that all the doors locked. Then spying him walk away, only to turn back around and check every window again. And then doing this again. And once more.

I look behind me to make sure I’m not being followed by a crew. Sometimes I’m hesitant of speaking for fear of delivering the wrong lines. But my day is never completely dull. And I guess, for a recent grad tackling bills and real apartment rent, and awaiting the inevitable death of an 11-year-old car, that’s all I can really ask for. Besides a raise.

NFL PICKS WEEK 6
Last Week: 11-3
Overall: 35-25

BALTIMORE over St. Louis
GREEN BAY over Washington
Tennessee over TAMPA BAY
Cincinnati over KANSAS CITY
Philadelphia over NY JETS
Houston over JACKSONVILLE
CHICAGO over Minnesota
CLEVELAND over Miami
ARIZONA over Carolina
SAN DIEGO over Oakland
SEATTLE over New Orleans
NY Giants over ATLANTA
Game of the Week:
New England over DALLAS