Fifteen minutes after eight o’clock in the morning is when Andrew sat down at his office desk and reached over to power on his company issued DELL laptop.
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As a mid-level marketing agent, his most adventurous happenings of the day are the grotesque wrecks he passes by on his morning commute. The trite and mundane of pushing papers and sending emails filled the rest of his anything but fulfilling occupation.
It was only Andrew’s third year on the job, but he had already been promoted several times despite his best efforts to the contrary.
Although never openly defiant, Andrew tried to do the bare minimum to get by each work week.
However, his efficient completion of all his tasks along with his dependable attendance record made him stand out in comparison to his lackluster peers.
In fact it was only this wide spread subjectivity that got him to be hired in the first place.
He, while in the desperate throes of a recession, haphazardly submitted an application to the YOU NEED THIS Marketing Firm and upon interviewing, Andrew was the least worst of the potential candidates for the entry level marketing spot.
From the initial printing, copying and stapling that composed his inane preliminary work, which was a hell of sorts; Andrew kept at it in spite of himself.
For the alternative to “this stupid job”, as he put it, was to be out of work and when the decision to be underemployed and make enough money to get by and put bread on the table is pitted against being out a job completely, there is really no choice at all.
So Andrew begrudgingly went to work every day faithfully and eventually stumbled upon promotion after promotion.
Now immersed in mid-level management, Andrew oversaw the North Central Midwest region of the United States (all together including North and South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and parts of Montana, Oklahoma and Wyoming).
Furthermore, he was a supervisor of four entry level positions, like he formerly held, along with an intern (who was unpaid) and a handful of company operatives.
All this emailing amounted to roughly $34,000 annually which, although nothing spectacular, allowed Andrew the freedom to return home each night and have something to eat before crashing from exhaustion.
Doing nothing is tiring; when one's sole aim, purpose and objectives for the day are meaningless abstract transfers of information with no personal relativity, your life sucks.
Perhaps I am just depressed, Andrew thought.
He had not been sleeping well again, a scant four hours a night. Also his workout regiment had dwindled to only include walking to the car in the morning, from the car to the office and once inside to the elevator.
From the elevator it was just about 30 feet to his desk and once he reached there that was the last real extensive movement he usually made until lunch time, some four to six hours later.
In addition to his pathetic moods and feelings, Andrew also had been struggling with his relationships with the fairer sex.
Andrew was a mere twenty-six years old, which caused resentment from elders whom he worked with and he was semi-in-shape because he use to be on the college swim team.
He had short cropped brown hair that although not disheveled, was not particularly kept neat. At least not jelled over like most of the other office drones.
At five foot nine he blended in with every other man of average height and was only set apart by his enchanting steely-gray blue eyes.
Andrew’s last night on the town ended the usual way in which he awkwardly reached for a hug which ended up in a not quite side hug as his disinterested date was turning and reaching for the taxi’s door handle.
Andrew took his own cab and sat silent the entire ride home.
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It was not sex that Andrew was after, but companionship.
He had slept with a few women before, some from long-term relationships and others flings. Yet it was all unfulfilling.
He came to the realization that what he was missing was a deep friendship and had a need to love and be loved, to have a helpmate.
His date with Shannon was typical as of late. Andrew had met her through friends at a small get together and had been attracted to her right off.
After a brief chat they had exchanged numbers and made plans to go out to dinner that previous Wednesday night.
They went to one of those corporate chain restaurants where the food is never as good as it sounds and they give you enough for four people on one plate.
No wonder my coworkers are all overweight, Andrew thought when his plate was set before him.
They had decided to meet there to allow for either of them to leave alone and avoid the uncomfortableness of a bad date (if that’s how it ended out).
However, it was not so bad, just that Andrew, after a few minutes of conversation, had made up his mind that he was no longer interested in this girl.
Shannon had not done or said anything in particular that rubbed Andrew wrong, it was just that he had had so much disinterest already in his own life that he projected expectations on his date that went more often than not unfulfilled.
Andrew simply kept on the date to go through the motions and because he reckoned he was a polite guy, and besides a night out of the apartment was always better than being home alone.
Shannon was not so interested in Andrew either but had had her own set of expectations she projected onto him.
She had been lonely lately and felt unloved and underappreciated.
Although not promiscuous in general, Shannon thought she would shake things up a bit and try to relax her guard and allow herself a little tryst to pacify her urges.
With the two aiming at different goals, they were both distressed and frustrated as the night drew to a close.
I thought dating was suppose to be fun, thought Shannon as she scorned herself for practically throwing herself at a stranger and feeling ashamed she was rejected so openly.
It was not to protect her that Andrew parried Shannon’s advances.
It was just that to Andrew the whole act seemed like an elaborate set of gestures that ended too quickly once the play began and took too much effort for him to muster a go at it for such a typically disappointing outcome.
If at the end every time the love was so temporary, Andrew figured, it was best to head it off long before the bedroom in order to keep things as uncomplicated as possible.
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