d. / November 19, 2007 2:23 PM

nothing is going on at work today. i mean nothing. no support requests, few phone calls, it's dead. i've been playing video games and chatting with coworkers and i won't even be coming in to work on wednesday!

how bout you guys?

lizzy / November 19, 2007 2:36 PM

Nothing. Except the boss, running around trying to make sure we all have things to do all week while he's gone. We don't and he won't be able to!

Andrew / November 19, 2007 2:36 PM

Being a freelancer sharing an office with a bunch of other start-ups and freelancers, everyone's in and working this week. No real difference from any other week, although I suspect that will begin changing sometime on Wednesday afternoon, as we all start to slip off to our holiday destinations.

sam b / November 19, 2007 3:20 PM

i'm busy. everyone else is gone.

Emily / November 19, 2007 3:40 PM

The exchanges are open all week, so we'll be busy today and tomorrow and then pretty much dead Wed and Friday when the traders are out...but support staff must be in the office just in case. Hopefully we'll be out early Wed and Friday.

daruma / November 19, 2007 4:11 PM

Very busy so that hopefully we can take the day off Wed.

Val / November 19, 2007 4:13 PM

I'm using all my days for my trip over Christmas... I'll be in the office on Friday... and I will be the only one. Maybe I'll actually get something done.

A better question is, is everyone going out on Wednesday?

jennifer / November 19, 2007 4:19 PM

as a grad student, I have plenty of work to do whenever I like...even on thanksgiving day! lucky for me, I'll be spending my first holiday with the boy's family. but after t-day, it's all sorts of work.

oy.

fluffy / November 19, 2007 4:41 PM

It's been kind of slow recently, but this is our slow season...I work in a small office with 3 others. they're not that busy, but I've got enough work to keep me going until Wednesday- when hopefully, we'll get out early. I fly cross country early Thursday morning- everything's "blah"

skafiend / November 19, 2007 4:44 PM

I usually stay in my office with the door almost all the way closed all the time anyway, so consequently I wouldn't know if it's dead out there or not... and subsequently I don't care.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Amanda / November 19, 2007 5:58 PM

Insanely busy. I work as a career counselor at a
university, and all the kiddies want something positive to tell mom and dad during thanksgiving, so my schedule is flooded beyond belief.

JasonB / November 19, 2007 6:24 PM

unlike Emily's situation, we're always dead prior to major holidays; though, we're primarily an options trading house.

C-Note / November 19, 2007 7:48 PM

We're busy as always, 'cause we do real things.

And it's like (and I realize this is a little dated), do you think Michael Jordan's sitting around bored, waiting for some turkey? Shit no - that's what the other guy's doing. Michael Jordan's workin'. That's the standard I live by. I came to do work.

Matues / November 19, 2007 8:31 PM

I am a Chicago emigré, and here in Spain of course there is no Thanksgiving. But you should have seen it a few weeks ago... a four day weekend followed by a three day weekend. You could hear a pin drop in my office. The real question is why I didn't get out of Madrid those days too.

Leelah / November 19, 2007 9:10 PM

Last Friday, before school, a student of mine (14 years old) came to my classroom crying, asking to speak to me in private. The night before, she was at her best friend's house when some men broke in. She and her friend heard it happening, and hid in different places in the house, but the men found her friend. They asked her friend some questions about her father's whereabouts (they were after him), then told her to "give your father this message." They shot her. My student, hiding somewhere in the house heard it, came out to find her friend bleeding, called 911. The friend went to the hospital, and Friday morning she was in critical condition. She came to school because she was afraid to be alone.

Today, before school, my student came in, red-eyed, sobbing, pieces of tissue trapped in her eyelashes, to tell me that her friend had died earlier this morning.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Emerson Dameron / November 19, 2007 9:36 PM

A pimp never rests.

Jill / November 19, 2007 11:25 PM

I hate working on Thanksgiving week because it's traditionally busy as hell. People all of a sudden they'll have two days with no research support, and heaven forbid they take a holiday.

Jill / November 19, 2007 11:27 PM

I hate working on Thanksgiving week because it's traditionally busy as hell. People all of a sudden realize they'll have two days with no research support, and heaven forbid they take a holiday.

Monday wasn't so bad, but I'm not holding my breath for the rest of the week, especially Wednesday, when the office will be dead (except the library) and we'll be allowed to go home early--if our work is done.

pantagrapher / November 20, 2007 8:31 AM

I'm busy; everyone else is half-dead.

m / November 20, 2007 8:33 AM

there are things to be done, but people are a bit more chatty. more people are missing today than yesterday and more will be gone as the week progresses. friday (half-day woo!!) will be a ghost-town though.

Steven / November 20, 2007 9:24 AM

Work to be done, just no new requests coming in. I'm off tomorrow though, until Tuesday. Woohoo! Except for the fact that I have a root canal scheduled for Monday. Booooo.

Nuke LaLoosh / November 20, 2007 10:06 AM

The People's Work is never done! (I'm a lawyer for a large municipality. I'll give you three guesses which one.)

I've been working very hard on trying to get to the bottom of this case I'm working on, but the judge keeps this case a moving target. He's changed his most recent order dismissing parts of the complaint 3 times. I think we finally know what the case is about.

I just walked out of court and got a whole mess of new discovery deadlines. Yech. But I also got an extension on answering the complaint. Yay!

So, fewer people here this week (and fewer each day), but I'm busy.

I think on Wednesday, this place is going to be a ghost town.

Spook / November 20, 2007 10:45 AM

Leelah,

reeessst assured,

if your student is poor, lacks adequate resources- and family support-, lives in a underserved community plagued by violence, and coupled with this one more added trauma, ends up succumbing to some forum of addiction while leading a downwardly spiraling free fall tragic life, rest assured she will be judged by a suburban middle class normative gaze by an unempathetic and clueless majority and a large self hating segment of the minority.

Needless to say she will be judged particularly harshly.

Add this with the fact that politicians from Daley to Madigan, to Pelosi to Bush to O’Bama’s political lexicon doesn’t include children such as yours, and the few politicians that are willing to bear witness to what’s going on with these children, exit on the outer fringes of the political horizon, fits nicely into the question at hand, because inside the Beast where I'm situated daily is, as we approach “Thanks Giving” busy and thriving making sure it feeds itself while barely functioning to those in need.

Yea yall, Happy Thanks Giving!

Carrie / November 20, 2007 10:57 AM

Kind of busy. I feel like we always get busy before the holidays because people wait until the last minute and when we're trying to leave early, they finally send us their creative and expect it to be live immediately. Without fail, something doesn't work, but of course everyone at the agency is already gone, so we sit at work for another hour trying to fix it and finally decide to just leave b/c there's nothing we can do. I am trying to get everything done today though b/c the boss leaves at 2 tomorrow, which means 2:05 for me.

Leelah, that's terrible about your student. I hope you encourage her to continue to talk to you or a school counselor... sounds like she'll need some help. Oy stupid messed up society.

Leelah / November 20, 2007 12:45 PM

My student is poor, and she lacks resources, but she is determined. She will not succumb (trust me, I can tell.)

By the way, I made sure she talked to our counselors (who are wonderful, caring people). She has support here, at least.

I just came from another teacher's room... she showed me a personal narrative she just received from one of her most talented students: sixteen, selling her body because she can't stand seeing her little sisters going hungry.

Work kind of sucks this week.

Leelah / November 20, 2007 1:34 PM

Also... and this is kind of funny... our building currently has a fruit fly infestation.

zoenotcool / November 20, 2007 2:21 PM

It's not very busy and it would be the perfect time to catch up on some housekeeping/dull projects, but I have a cold. So I'm just here, spreading my germs and contemplating that no-win choice - take something to breathe better, or take nothing to think better?

fluffy / November 20, 2007 2:23 PM

Leelah,
I'm glad those students have caring people like you and those counselors around them.

Spook - if your job is being a douchbag, you're working overtime!!

printdude / November 20, 2007 2:41 PM

Busier than a street sweeper on parade day.
Now leave me the hell alone so I can leave work before Reaper comes on!

Spook / November 20, 2007 2:47 PM

Mindless Fluffy
learned as her cat
reads like Red Eye

Baldeesh / November 20, 2007 3:34 PM

Well, there's a whopping 2 people in the office, and my boss is a bit of a workaholic.

It's business as usual here.

Except that my digital camera came in the mail today. I would like to go home and play with it and either sew or knit a case for it.

Three cheers for time off!

Haiku / November 20, 2007 4:29 PM

Acute tragedy
provokes mere sloganeering
from didactic Spook.

Mindy / November 20, 2007 7:09 PM

my workpkace (bakery) is so fucking busy,

Spook / November 20, 2007 8:36 PM

Hey Andrew here’s one for the delete key, but until then,

OK. "Haiku" congratulations you're obout to get your rise out of yer old Spook. Yea, "sorry" for digging a little deeper with my original comment, I should have let it rest, before Stupid Fluffy added her Hallmark sentiments including a personal attack, you stupid moron cowardly hidding behind "Haiku", unless you spent some time in one of those class rooms or in one of those schools, don't lecture me you sad sack of sh*t, shove it up yers with a silver spoon.

p.s you don't have to teach, not that you could, but take your cowardly A@s down "there" were kids get buried
and share something long term. But its easier to comment about shit like this on the internet, then actually do something.

Happy Thanks Giving :-)

Brandy / November 20, 2007 10:06 PM

Things are crazy busy overall. I'm escaping for 3 days downstate to visit friends.

I work for myself with a very strange job. It's Nov 10 and I'm already fully booked for December! That's a first! And really insane.

JasonB / November 20, 2007 10:17 PM

should we tell her it's actually the 20th?

mike / November 20, 2007 10:59 PM

-leelah,
I hear you. I teach seniors in an alternative school in Humboldt Park and see critical success and hopelessness daily.

As a Latino I've come to understand that everybody has an opinion of under-served, minority students, but it's generally media mimicked, over-intellectualized, or just plain racist.

Keep up your amazing work and remember to share your successes with every body who has an opinion and to fight for teacher's rights and pay, so you can afford to continue to do so.

Remember, you are literally saving the state millions of dollars in court and jail costs and you are literally saving lives.....

At Spook / November 21, 2007 10:41 AM

Spook:

I don't think Haiku was attacking you, per se, so much as the tone of your message.

You took a tragic story of a young girl and started to rant about society failing to find empathy for drug addicts. Your post seemed sufficiently tangential that it seemed like you might have missed the human point to make a societal one. Moreover, it doesn't sound like this little girl has drug problem, she is scared and victimized from an act of violence.

I totally get your politics; I agree that the act of violence was surely borne, in large part, out of a horrible social/political/economic situation; I'm just as sure that this event was also borne out of the choice of a couple of violent, perhaps even sociopathic individuals.

When you wrap it up in a bow and blame an uncaring society, it divorces people from solutions. They throw up their hands and say either "Spook is wrong, you can't blame society, the problem is this one violent man" or they say "Spook is right, society is to blame, and I can't fix all of society." Either way, people stop listening and care even less. I'm sure that isn't what you are going for.

Anyway, I think Haiku's point is that this girl (as an individual) and that neighborhood (and the country) need help and action, not lefty sloganeering.

Before you yell at me, know that I give hundreds of dollars each year and hours of time to comfort the afflicted. I also cast my vote in an effort to afflict the comfortable. I'm just saying that I get what Haiku was saying.

FYI, I'm thankful for the Spook for forcing me to think about these issues, but tone down the name calling, por favor.