The power went out late in the night and since clocks didn't exist, I drank past my bedtime. The only reason I came into work the next morning was so I could listen to CDs and write emails to friends. I could do that stuff at home, but I earn money when I do it at the office.

Some say there should be a law against working before 8:30 a.m., but who then would make the doughnuts ahead of time for the clockless and dehydrated? Or operate the bus so the doughnut maker can get to work? The work chain is a delicate balance of cause and effect, and damn it, I'd forgotten to bring my flask again for the thousandth day in a row.

My boss expected an important conference call and said, “If so and so calls, let me know.”

I responded, “So... Do the same thing I always do when someone calls. Got it.”

When the important conference call finally came in, my boss was chomping at the bit. He talked loudly to the other people on the line and closed the conversation with, “Thank you for the three-way.”

I chuckled under my breath and went back to bending a paperclip into the shape of a hand crank.

When I left at 5:30 p.m., a dozen hand cranks sat in the wastebasket, which is somewhat of an exaggeration because I really left at 5:23 p.m. It's deceptively close enough and it gave me a seven-minute head start to work on the next morning's hangover.