Today I learned — the hard way — that carrots are not for the cubicle life.
Crunch.
I lived a cube life just three short years ago, so you’d think I’d remember. Only of course I forgot everything about office life, mostly because I’d gotten used to sharing office space with a shih-tzu who really didn’t care if I sang Taylor Swift songs in my underpants and laughed at the people who had to bundle up in the dead of winter and ate Chinese food whilst standing in front of my open fridge as long as I dropped a noodle every once in a while.
It was easy to forget.
I forgot about awesome office people who will teach you how to drink tea or help you steal a garbage can. I forgot how excited I get about office supplies—there’s nobody who gets as jazzed as I do about binder clips and Sharpie pens.
I forgot about how nice it is to put on a pretty dress and heels and makeup and how nice it feels to walk in the house at the end of a long day and take off my pretty dress and heels and makeup.
I forgot about that glorious minute at end of the day when I pull in the driveway and turn off the car and just close my eyes — that silent minute-long pause, carefully dividing the busy of my work day with the busy of my family life.
I forgot about the free coffee.
(And I forgot about the communal bathrooms.)
My new job is…very new. I flip-flop fairly hourly between “Oh my god I am loving this job so very much this is amazing I am so, so happy” and “I’m really feeling very dumb right now because I don’t even know how a landfill works I’m failing miserably and someone’s going to discover that I have no idea what I’m doing.” But I feel like that’s probably normal, right?
But just in case I googled how a landfill works.
And threw out the carrots.

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