Today was rough. I have tendinitis in both my wrists, the product of working eight hours a day at a computer with no other duties but to edit the copy. Spent a year with doctors and physcial therapy before they decided, meh, you just have to live with it.

And today my wrists hurt. BAD. And this is before I’ve even left for work, and eight hours of wrist torture.

Days like this, when I am in pain and angry and frustrated and just so fucking tired of it, that all I want to do at work is put on headphones and not interact with anyone, just do my job and go home.

But copy desks don’t work like that. It’s a big collaborative process. You need to be able to hear what is going on; people need to be able to get your attention. You can’t tune it out, because you can’t do your job.

The machine yes the machine
never wastes anybody’s time
never watches the foreman
never talks back
never talks what is right or wrong
never listens to others talking or if
it does listen it doesn’t hear
never says we’ve been thinking, or, our
feeling is like this
the machine yes the machine cuts your production cost
a man is a man and what can you do with him?
but a machine now you take a machine
no kids no woman never hungry never thirsty
all a machine needs is a little regular attention and plenty of grease