Work and career. Like so many other people my age, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up so for argument sake, let’s just focus on the “work” part and leave the “career” part to someone else.

Long story short: I have a degree in Sport Management and now I work for a banking software company. As you can see my schooling really paid off since I made the logical transition. Truth be told, I did work in professional baseball for a couple years in and right after school, but one thing led to another and WHAM! now I work in an office in the suburbs talking to banks about complying with federal regulations.

So that’s where our story leads us. Now I won’t bother you with details on my job because, well, it’s not that interesting. If I was an acrobat or a stunt man, I’d bother you with details, but “Account Manager” doesn’t really imply great adventures. Of course, at bars and parties, I tell everyone I am a stunt man for Josh Brolin, but now we’re getting side tracked so stop thinking about Josh Brolin while you read this.

But don’t get me wrong I love my job. It is very rewarding. Day in and day out I feel like I get to make a meaningful contribution that not only benefits myself and my company, but helps our clients and suits their needs. Everyone I work with is the best and I’m nothing but smiles and sunshine every morning. It may sound silly to you, but as soon as I wake up I’m whistling Dixie, eager to face another blissful day at the office. So that I can share my love of work and make you see why I’m so elated to work in an office park, I have compiled a list of the top 10 reasons why I love my job.

• 10. Free internet at work means I can spend all day on ESPN, Wikipedia, Hotmail, any page about Viking lore, Petboots.com, and watching that monkey pee in his mouth, 8 hours a day.
• 9. My home office is really coming along thanks to the magical closet that houses all the office supplies at work. I’ll admit getting that paper shredder & fax machines past reception was a bit difficult, but my inner MacGuyver came out and I was able to construct a smoke bomb built from White Out, post-it notes, and 3 different colored rubber bands in no time at all.
• 8. I work in a cube, so it’s basically like working in a prison cell. That’s not a bad thing though. Let’s talk about convenience. I can eat, sleep, and do practically anything in here. Forget about getting up, this king gets to sit atop his throne from 9-5 (more like 9:35 to 4:30) everyday.
• 7. Luckily I love smelling 6 simultaneous people eating their lunches at the same time everyday. Given, if they could cook it’d better more rewarding, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. At least I can pretend my turkey on Wonder bread is chicken marsala one minute and something that smells like salmon* another minute.

  *update: It was leftovers from taco night, my mistake

• 6. Playing cards in the conference room. I’m much better online, so I sit in another room and use the video conferencing equipment to play. So far this week I’ve won 10 shares of preferred stock off the CFO, a 7k raise next review period from my boss, and let’s just say the pictures of me doing unspeakable acts to the soda machine are no longer in the marketing guy’s possession. That day was a reminder to us all why drinking a fifth of gin in the stairwell isn’t yet an accepted lunchtime practice.
• 5. Photocopying pictures of various body parts and then faxing them to myself. They are automatically converted to attachments in my email. After that I go print them out and put them all over my cube. I could just photo copy them and put them up on my cube wall, but the new office policy that just came down from Corporate says it has to be done this way.
• 4. The radio reception is pretty bad in the office. So essentially when #1-3 below aren’t a priority, I like to pretend that I’m one of the cast-a-ways on Lost. The radio is my transmitter and I’m trying to find out what this island really is. I’ll sit under the desk and talk into the radio. Stations aren’t going to stop playing songs, so I can pretend like I’m getting a response from a mysterious stranger on the other end. Who could it be?? I don’t know! Stay tuned. It’s really fun, except I somehow have a lot of commercials in this fantasy.
• 3. Finding some way to flirt with every woman in the office at least twice a week. Sure Sylvia from Accounting is 63, but I got to see if I have a shot.
• 2. Hitting the new people with the “I’m watching you” hand signal on their first day. Then periodically standing up and shaking my head at them every time we make eye contact. I’m 6 for 6 in getting those people to quit since I started doing it.
• 1. Being able to write articles for Shebrew at my desk. Sure it will lead to me having to get a new job once IT audits my machine. – but it will most likely be the porn, but I wanted to squeeze in a shout-out to my favorite Jewish women’s magazine somehow.