A time comes when every cubicle hand looks around and says, "This is not how I planned it."

Your neighbor has been clearing his throat non-stop since November. The copy girl is bringing more memos Effective Immediately. Your manager is already at your desk, but you can't hear him over the smell of his breath.

You catch eyes with a temp across the street. This has happened before. Eventually, the pain grows too rich and you both draw the shades.

Your smart friends are already living the American Dream: workers' comp lawsuit. They won't return to work until they are good and sick of Oprah Winfrey. Their children are also at home, having torched their lemonade stands for insurance money.

When your career counselor asked about your future, there was no talk of touch points or peer reviews. You couldn't imagine using the word "task" as a verb. Yet here you are in a climate-controlled, OSHA-compliant cubicle, 25-to-life for not being rich. So it goes.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to ease the pain. Please find here an itemized list Effective Immediately...

• Wherever you go, walk fast and carry a document. No one ever questions the speed walker. You could be delivering Valentine's cards and still get a raise...
  
  "That Barbara sure is diligent. How much are we paying her?"
  
  
  
• Log your sick-day excuses to avoid this sort of muddle...
  
  YOU: "I won't be in this week because my brother, sadly, has passed away."
  
  GORGON SECRETARY: "Your brother died last year. June seventh."
  
  Awkward silence.
  
  YOU: "Oh. Then I've just got the flu."
  
  
  
• Establish early on that you married into a Jewish family and will be observing extra holidays, which you would specify if you could only pronounce them. Be ready with self-deprecating Jewish humor. "Yeah, life is like a box of chocolates -- my side nuts, their side Jews. Ha ha ha ha."
  
  
  
• Spend at least one vacation day at your desk to let others know that you can't help them. Bring a novel and a coconut drink; this is your day. If anyone gets testy, snap a photo for your scrapbook.
  
  
  
• You know from the Keyboard Shortcut Meeting that Alt + Tab switches program screens. Exercise your Alt-Tab fingers regularly so that you're quick on the draw should someone walk in and find you playing solitaire. Alt-tab, alt-tab, alt-tab. Practice makes the master.
  
  
  
• When you are ready to quit -- and it shouldn't be long -- give three weeks notice. This allows extra time for surfing the Internet and talking about life on The Outside.
  

Studies have shown that personality loss comes from long-term exposure to fluorescent lighting. Well, that and holding your gas. Your only defense is to get a little zany...

Top Ten Ways to Salvage Your Personality from Fluorescent Lighting


10. Wear a sign that reads, "Out of Service. IT called."

9. On Casual Friday, bring your teddy bear.

8. Imagine the others in a naked barroom brawl.

7. Create a nameplate that reads, "Very Important Peon."

6. Whenever someone hands you work, ask if they want fries with that.

5. Slip and fall. File a lawsuit. Watch Oprah Winfrey.

4. Every time your neighbor clears his throat, clear yours twice.

3. When management asks you to assume a new role, tell them that you never assume.

2. Arrange a Ditch Day for seniors.

1. During reviews, say that you have taken up meditation and that your career goal is now to swallow the universe. Remind them that you will still be observing Jewish holidays.


Meanwhile, back in the boredroom, managers are "connecting" over pastries and Great Questions.

"That's a great question. Let's schedule a meeting to discuss our meeting schedule."

Management can spend weeks deciding a temperature for the thermostat. We call them chairpersons for good reason: They're always sitting around. Imagine how much work they could get done if they weren't always talking about how much work they could get done.

Today management is discussing the Corporate Catheter, which will reduce time lost to potty breaks. Coupled with the Corporate I.V., there should be no reason for anyone to stand up other than to attend a meeting.

Maybe there's a book in this whole thing: "Just Because We've Got A/C Doesn't Mean It Ain't Hell" ... "Working Hard or Hardly Working?: Why We Want to Vaporize Our Coworkers."

All I'm saying is that the next time someone uses "task" as a verb, that should be grounds for a workers comp lawsuit.

You don't lose your innocence when you start having sex; you lose it long before then, the day you find out that pizza is fattening. That is when you're jerked out of paradise into the cold, prying world of Nutrition Facts.

Today's kids grow up faster than ever...

"That little piggy can't have roast beef. She's on a diet."

Did we ever vote on Nutrition Facts? I personally prefer the old system: Ask me no questions; I'll tell you no lies.

Ever peek at the Twinkies label in the middle of a binge? Hmm. I just met the whole month's requirement for saturated fat. Maybe I can get a credit toward next month.

In time we developed the willpower to ignore nutrition facts, so what did they do? They moved that information to the title. Gentle reader, I give you ... Nabisco's 100 Calorie Snack Packs.

Nabisco says that it helps with "portion control." What are we, friggen lab rats?

"They took my pellets, man. I've been hittin' that lever all day. They took my pellets!"

When did we all go to food prison anyway? Special K wants us to pinch ourselves, and Grape Nuts' new motto is, "Why diet hungry?" (to replace their old motto, "Why eat gravel?") Instead of a toy prize, you get a free measuring tape. So it goes.

Whatever happened to that original peace, when we made choo-choo sounds in our Gerber banana slime? How did that turn into stomach stapling? It's not that people staple their stomachs; it's that they can't stop talking about it...

"So far I've I lost 65 pounds, and would you like to hear everything I've eaten since February?"

Maybe they could go the extra mile and get their mouths stapled.

My aunt has been on a diet since 1962: South Beach, Hamptons, The Zone -- all the bad neighborhoods. She says the first week of a diet is always the hardest (probably because by the second week she's off it).


This week my aunt is eating pine nuts and flaxseed. I'm watching her closely to make sure she doesn't stool on my windshield.

Maybe the supermarket is supposed to make us crazy. Why else do we stand in line staring at celebrity cellulite WHILE SURROUNDED BY CANDY BARS.

"How to Make Your Own Cheesecake," "Diets to Trim Down before Summer," "Ten Reasons to Feel Bad about Everything ... According to Prophecy."

What we could really use is freedom from the press.

And the models keep getting thinner. Can you see Vogue magazine in the hands of Namibian bush people?

"Bad news: Famine has spread to America."

Remember when there were just calories? Life was so simple. Now there are carbs, sodium, sugars, sugar alcohols, good fat, bad fat, kinky little trans fat. Let's hope the USDA doesn't get its way with restaurants ...

"Our special tonight is filet mignon, which contains 25 grams of fat. I recommend the house merlot despite its carbs."

Consumer psychologists -- who study the mind not to better humanity but to sell processed foods -- are enjoying the ride. Their most recent contribution: water bottles that have hourglass figures like Marilyn Monroe. Who killed herself.

And is it just me, or is diabetes airborne? Growing up, I never heard the word; now it has its own aisle at Rite-Aid. It reminds me of this commercial: "You are getting sick ... To repeat, you are getting sick ... And when you do, there's Cure-it-ol."

I myself would rather explode from diabetes than spend one moment doing this around a dessert cart...

"No, I really shouldn't, but don't go. Maybe I could just smell the tiramisu. Someday. When I've earned it."

I was about to return to K-Pax when I saw on a box of cookies the most beautiful thing ever printed. It read, without apology or explanation, "Enjoy life. Eat freely."

I felt so heard, as though we had together arrived at some universal truth, the basis of a new religion. I bought ten boxes not to eat but to circulate as literature. Perhaps we, The Free Eaters, will get together and remember that the same force which beats our hearts and grows the crops and spins the planets will NOT be outsmarted by Nabisco.

And if anyone says, "I shouldn't" or "diabetes anything," I will strangle them with a measuring tape. According to prophecy.