exit strategy

I've been eating potato chips again, which can mean only one thing: I have got to quit my job. There've been too many afternoons of this already, me re-dipping my barbeque-seasoned fingers into the Baked Lays bag, extracting another fistful.

I'm getting dehydrated from all the salt, but because I'm on the verge of leaving and therefore in need of all the gratuitous self-indulgence I can get, I don't care. In fact, I'm making it worse, spending more unbudgeted money on espresso drinks from the cafe downstairs, and chasing them with my latest addiction, double-chocolate mini Milanos.

I don't care about any of it right now, though, don't care about the dehydration, don't care about the salt, the calories, the money. I need to do this. Need to develop a food-based fortress around myself, a bit of armor necessary during this pre-flight preparation.

That this fortress is raising my blood pressure, injecting me with smoke- and chocolate-flavored carbohydrates, and keeping me awake at night seems to be a small price to pay for the semblance of comfort and safety I'm getting while I anxiously plot out how and when to give notice.

All that caffeine and salt and sugar makes for an interesting chemical combination during the day. There is the frenetic movement of my eyes, darting from computer screen to clock, back and forth like a furious tennis match. Then there's my skin, which is beginning to look sallow, almost jaundiced, a not-too-distant candidate for blood transfusion. My hands are slightly shaky, too, getting less exacting on the keyboard. I keep accidentally pressing the ESC key instead of SHIFT.

My body's giving off these odd little gurgles and squeaks, as if the machinery of me is grinding to a halt. I've been eating lunch at my desk a lot, which is definitely a bad sign. The complete lack of outdoor air and contact with the outside world for eight hours straight does the double disservice of keeping my face squinty from too much fluorescence and my social muscles flaccid from too little interaction.

Not a picture of resiliently good health, obviously, but I'm worried that if I let myself stroll to the Embarcadero, if I run errands or go to the bookstore or lunge into the Gap sales rack down the street to give my eyes a break, I won't come back. Like ever.

There have been other signs, these last weeks, of my unhappiness at work. Of course there were. You don't just get unhappy. You slide into it like tapioca, like viscous spring mud. It gets into the grooves of your shoes, and you learn to walk with it.

First to go is that on-time alacrity of the freshly employed, these overzealous 8:30 a.m. devotees leaving all the room in the world for a traipse to Starbucks for a grande mocha and a mid-level perusal of the headlines. I knew things were slipping when my window of an arrival time kept stretching wider and wider after those initial weeks post-hire.

From then on, my 9:15-ish entree into the downtown high-rise where I called my cubicle home held for awhile, though once I felt the first quiver of questioning (do I really belong here? do I really belong here?) it descended like a reverse allegro scale to 9:30, which segued into 9:45, and in my deepening doubt about work, I'm currently sitting (but not very steadily) at 10 a.m. plus change.

Now, as the decision to leave grows clearer everyday, I let the crowded subway cars go by, wait for an emptier train, even when I'm horribly late. In the sudden clarity of the soon-to-be-departed, I'm no longer tolerant of those mid-station stops MUNI seems intent on making. I feel more vulnerable, now, to the blackening claustrophobia that can result in whatever power failures this intemperate transportation system is privy to and I don't want to be caught in the dark with all the bug-eyed commuters scurrying off to their downtown holding cells.

It's possible I never liked the job in the first place, that it was a placeholder, from the beginning, for something else, some nebulous something which will only be determined once I leave the nest of gainful employment. The morning commute, and those terribly inauthentic bagels from Briazz. I need to be out of here.

And I hate to say it, but maybe it's really about the money. Tedious work, in my opinion, demands a disproportionately high income..and I'm not getting it. I mean, the sheer patience required to consistently perform functions which would compromise the sanity and overall self-worth of any reasonable person should at least be rewarded with bigger bucks. In my mind, the monotony of computer-driven administrative tasks merits a gently inflated salary with good benefits like a gym membership or a parking spot at the nearest garage.

You're wondering, of course, why I took the job in the first place. You're wondering why I've stayed as long as I have. You're wondering why I'd hang onto work that paid me less than I know I'm worth. You're wondering why I'd be at a job that blasted any hopes of creativity by inundating my inbox with work that results in too many hours of social inactivity, dermal negligence, sacral dysfunction, and perennial coffee breath. You're wondering why I couldn't see the clear and present danger that day I was so bored I logged onto my home email account no less than 25 times.

You're wondering about the matter of my ID badge, which I'm required to show whenever entering the building. You're wondering why it now has a photo of Mr. T pasted on top of what was an unflattering picture of me, and the curious satisfaction I get when I flash it in front of the security guard, who has eyed me warily since my very first day. You're wondering why I consistently wear my favorite broken-in jeans and pair them with shirts like the one that says "You're My Type" on it.

You're wondering what brings me to the high rise on Howard Street, what ludicrous impulse pulls me through the revolving door, what twisted torture I'm enjoying as I take the elevator up to the umpteenth floor with the buttoned up corporates flattening their cellphones into their belt holsters. You're wondering if I'm one of those people who wants sympathy, or maybe I'm just being lazy, biding my time, waiting indefinitely to be noticed for my service and then lifted up by the shirtsleeves to the next platform of the employee food chain.

Don't worry, I'm leaving soon. I'm getting the itch. I know it's almost time. I am here, eating my chips, drinking my coffee, losing flexibility and feeling in my legs, forgetting to take my change from the barista downstairs. Leaving whole dollars on the counter. I can feel the mud of this thing, this job, this whatever it is, and it won't be long now, promise.

But before I go, I'm taking notes, tracking information, gathering evidence that I was here. Just in case. You know, just in case I can figure out a way to make my workplace the subject of either a sober and potentially award-winning documentary on office culture or one of those hiply smart and funny indie films that becomes a runaway hit at Sundance.

While I type and answer agonizingly dull emails that will have no impact whatsoever on the world at large, I'm picturing myself astride a loveseat next to a gracefully aging Robert Redford, talking about the brilliance of my screenplay. Redford is there, looking eager, intent. I'm his new baby. He's asking me how I did it, how I turned the everyday humdrum of the water cooler into such poetry, how I got the dialogue to sound so...real.

And the characters! He'll ask me what inspired me to make the C.E.O. such a short man, and I'll say something witty like how I was interested in the relationship between diminutive stature and an inflated ego. Redford will turn to me on the couch, then, and ask me what I'm working on now, what my viewing public can expect from me in the coming year...

The bag's almost empty, my fingers coated with salt and Red Number 5. It's almost time to go. The sky dims into a swirl of deep cerulean and bits of rose. It gets dark so early this time of year. Half an hour left now, the final half hour before I will rise out of this ergonomically correct office and head home.

My screen sputters with the day's final emails. I hear purses shifting, people calling spouses about dinner, the men of the office squaring up their piles of paper for the next morning, the women uncapping their lipsticks.

The five o'clock ether of this murmuring space feels, tonight, like a dying promise. A mutiny of order. And yet it could be any day, any day at all, the same lights flickering. Someone snaps open a tin of Altoids, another is gathering her keys. And this one, this one gets up, gathers her scarf, her coat. She instructs her computer to log off, then shut down. I am logging off now, she says to herself. I am shutting down. To the walls, the fake ferns, the copy machine, the mail slots, the taupe taupe carpet, she whispers her farewell soundlessly. I am leaving, she tells these unglorious, limited things. I am leaving you.