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Some of you work cushy gigs that let you skate by, putting in the minimum 9-5, 40 hours a week, home at a reasonable hour type job. And my message to you is this: I fucking hate you. My job knows nothing of the sort. I’m not in I-banking or big firm consulting, or any other job where a 25-year old would be making Prada shoe-wearing, Ibiza vacationing, party with Manziel type money. I make a good living – enough to afford the organic free range chicken at Trader Joes ¬– but it doesn’t come without a price. I work in a specific sphere of strategy consulting, and I’m a slave to the client and to the deliverable, which is consulting jargon for a really boring slide deck in most cases. Typical weeks see me work maybe 50 hours M-F, then some weekend work. Nothing awful. Not ideal, but it’s what I signed up for.
But sometimes the client gets demanding, or the deadline for a deliverable (big boring slide deck) is getting damningly close, and your boy gets stuck in the office late. Like, motion-sensing lights turn off for the night and won’t get back on no matter how much I move type of late. This just happened to me, so let me document what a late night in the office is like.
6-6:30
The people on my team start to wander out of the office. The ones working on my specific project are probably staying. Get a cup of coffee.
7:15
The rest of my team has left. I’ve just been crowned Lord of the Manor. The headphones come out.
7:45
Hunger sets in. Hopefully, I strategized and brought extra lunch. If not, I’m fucked. Who am I kidding? Even if I did, I’m still hungry. Hunt for snacks. Raid the receptionist’s candy stash. Get more coffee.
7:58
Research grad schools. Research how to live on an island. Research how to marry an heiress.
8:00
Change into my gym clothes. Not going to be used tonight for the gym. Leisurewear, office style.
8:15
Check on how my bets are doing. Lost all my first half unders. Concentration starts to wane. Start thinking about my first ever Bachelor party I’ll be attending in a few months. It’s in Miami. I need a new bathing suit. Hit up Rowdy Gentleman and score a sick new pair. Need some sunglasses to match. Customize some new shades. Fuck how much did I spend? Let’s go win some money. Text the bookie a bunch of second half lines. Quick internet search on gambling addiction. Back to work.
8:30
The lights go out, permanently. No longer feel like King of the Castle.
8:45
TFM just tweeted out another picture of some incendiary bomb who would liquify me Raiders of the Lost Ark style if I even glanced at her from fifty yards out. The Improper Brostonian’s Hancock Tower moves a little bit. Consider a quick work jerk, then decide cracking stick in an office building bathroom is what homeless people do. Quick internet search of Tom Brady statistics. Crap it moved even more. Roger Goodell, Deflategate, loss of draft picks. Okay, crisis averted. Better than a cold shower. Master of my Domain.
9:05
Read some blogs I was too busy to read earlier.
9:20
Realize I really haven’t done anything productive in the last 45-ish minutes. Realize if I left the office now I’d get home just in time to catch the beginning of that awful Kardashian show also known as the OJ show. Think about how Cuba Gooding Jr won an Oscar and can’t fathom it based on his performance as OJ. Get down the Cuba Gooding Jr Wikipedia rabbit hole. Still can’t figure out how he won the Oscar for her performance in Jerry Maguire. Then start thinking about Travolta and how his face in the OJ show gives me bone-chilling nightmares. Decide I don’t need to see that night’s episode.
9:25
Pack up my shit and get to my car.
9:55
Back home. Change into sweats. Fuck it, I worked hard all day, we’re JOing.
9:59
Start praying I never have daughters.
9:59:30
Start flipping through the channels. Ah, shit, let’s just watch the god damn OJ show. .
Image via Shutterstock
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Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
@boston_maxg
This sounds more like you just hang out at your office instead of actually working.
Essentially. That’s kind of the spin I was trying to take on it. Like you say you were at the office late but you hardly got anything done. To be fair, work does get done (sometimes) between the random interneting
Yeah, once you resign yourself to being there all night (or thereabouts) your productivity goes to shit. What’s staying to 10:15 including some web surfing if you were staying to 9:45 anyways?
You work at Cambridge don’t you
I don’t stay late anymore. I’m pretty much Peter Gibbons at this point.
9:25 is a late night at the office? Shit, I’ve pulled all nighters and slept on the floor when there’s no point in going home it’s so late. Got gym access, not to work out, but for access to the shower and towels for pillows and blankets. Law is fun.
Damn it.
it’s not too late unless you’re a 3L. At that point might as well finish.
Happy what city do you work in? Won’t ask firm.
Austin (from home) or a satellite office on the east coast (skiing) where I keep a vehicle at a friend’s place. Main offices are west coast. Texas address so I can contract with little downside because no income tax. 4 years full time in the office was more than enough.
My rule is if I’m working past 8, dinner is on the company CC. Course it’s usually the Quiznos next door, so no one cares.
Lucky. They don’t hook us up with one of those.
I travel on occasion, it’s really for that.
This is sadly so spot on.
Pull the trigger on grad school. I am going in the fall and it empowers me to become world’s worst employee.
There should be a timeline article on early mornings at the office.
Coffee. Lots of coffee
Get there at 8:30 and surf the web until 9 when you feel it’s right to actually start working.
My buddy works audit at a big4 firm and works from whenever he gets in (around 830 mon-friday) until around 1am from January-late March. From about 7pm-as late as 3am they pretty much just circle jerk until their senior leaves, and their senior doesn’t leave until other seniors leave. What a joke of a lifestyle.
But lunch/dinner is free as well as well as the hotel or ride home. It’s the little things.
Big4 advisory here but I definitely don’t envy the boys over on the tax side. Busy season is the worst.
Side note: In Hoc.