The yawning kingdom and its subjects

How do I know that today in history Louis XIV of France moved his court to Versailles (1682)? That today is Sigmund Freud’s birthday (1856)? That a cat named Hawkeye scuba dived in a custom-made $20,000 wetsuit? Because lately, I’ve been finding myself sitting around work bored pretty often. A typical boring day at work is when an email from FreshDirect announcing they’ve added over 50 new cereals to their online inventory is a big thrill.

I know that the best thing to do under these circumstances is to tell your boss. I did. I asked for more work. I got something to do and chew on for a couple of weeks. And now I am again bored out of my mind.

With a simple Google search I discovered the vastness of the office boredom universe. A recent survey found that 14% of employees in the US are bored. There’s even a Boring Institute, founded in 1984 as a clearinghouse for information about boredom. What bothers me the most is that due to the stigma attached to acknowledging your infinite uselessness (or your exceptional time management skills, like in my case), I have to bore myself to death alone. Otherwise I could hang out with that 14% of bored people working in my building, we could establish bored employee clubhouses, perhaps have a dedicated trade union?

On the contrary, you must pretend that you’re very busy at work. However, a proficuous Internet time-suck session will show you a gazillion sites offering help to squash your boredom. Among the many pearls of wisdom I found, here are my favorite ideas to liven up your day:

• Reload your favorite news page every 5 seconds to make sure you are the first to read the newest article,
• Shout random numbers while someone is counting,
• Put your garbage can on your desk. Label it "IN."
• Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
• Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the same person: "Do you hear that?" "What?" "Never mind, it's gone now."
• Walk sideways to the photocopier.

Overachievers get bored too. They should check out those sites that teach you how to take dull moments as a signal to start on some productive action and “advance towards your goals”. For example: tidy your desk, practice your PowerPoint techniques, learn your keyboard shortcuts, etc. Actually, I’d rather bang my head against the wall (calorie expenditure: 150 an hour, I learned in the course of my fourth Internet time-suck session of the day). “Socialize with colleagues” was the best piece of advice I found on these nerd websites. To make it more interesting, I would further elaborate on the socializing task: “start a surreal conversation with the dumbest colleague you have.” Like the one I had the other day with my Asian colleague who happens to start every sentence with “oh”:

-oh, did you have a good week-end?

-absolutely, my sister is in town

- oh, she’s moving to New York?

- no, she’s on a field trip with her law school

-oh, she got a resident visa?

-for what? She’s on a field trip with her school and she’s gonna go back to Italy in 2 weeks

-oh, she can’t get a resident visa?

-she doesn’t need one, she doesn’t want one, she is viii-siii-tiiing.

-oh, so she can’t live here, what a pity.

-yes, what a pity. Sorry, I gotta go… I’ve got a lot of work today.