I started drinking with the people I work with because I decided I’d rather hate myself than have to spend my 9 to 5 hating all of them. If I could do it all over again, I would stand by that decision. It wasn’t that they were awful people -- it’s just that they were pretty close to it, and it took at least a 5th of vodka until I could stoop to their level. And honestly, as soul crushing as option 1 was, option 2 would have inevitably led to me drinking alone again, which I had promised my shrink I would stop doing. It was less of a choice and more of a necessity.
What I do regret, however, was telling the previously mentioned co-workers all of the above during Friday night’s usual karaoke get together, in a drunken lapse of judgment.
So now it was Monday, and even with the help of an Ipod cranked to an eardrum splitting volume, their stares of disdain as I walked in were still deafening.
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“Would you believe me if I said I was kidding?”, I finally asked someone after the first hour or so of my shift had passed, breaking a silence that was so awkward it could demolished the spirit of even the most exuberant public speaker. Unfortunately, the reply I got didn’t do much to alleviate the tension.
“No.”
Where I had been hoping to crack through their newly erected walls of sheer hatred, they all seemed to spend the whole morning really becoming acquainted with the bricks and mortar, constantly striving to make it taller and wider with each dreadful second.
Oh, the inevitability of it all.
