IF

No, I am not about to plagiarize the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling. And no, my title isn't even intended as a misplaced conjunction. I threw it in there as nothing more than the second half of “TGIF.” Boring, right? Well, that’s how I feel about Fridays now. It’s no longer “Thank God it’s Friday!” for me. It’s more like. Oh... today’s Friday? And OTF just doesn’t conjure up the same excitement in me. It’s sad that I no longer get excited for the weekly holiday that both commemorates the end of the workweek and commences the gluttonous two-day vacation to follow. It’s just not the same anymore. Happy Hour? Postponed indefinitely. Texas Hold ‘Em with my buddies. Dead. A stop at Blockbuster Video on my ride home? Whoops. Looks like I reminisced a little too far back, but you catch my drift.

And I know what you’re thinking: “Being a Cloud Technology Engineer for a global giant can’t be that hard. What the heck does the end of the workweek matter to a guy with a cakewalk of a job like you anyway? It’s not like you have any stress, or that billions of dollars could potentially be lost in a millisecond if you erroneously integrate multiple data providers using XML or JSON. I mean... stop your whining, Gary.” But you may not know that my job actually is somewhat challenging, and I do look forward to the weekends (or, at least I used to).

I enjoy my job. Don’t get me wrong. And I’m compensated well enough to put up with the pressures that come with it. But since the earliest days of my career, I would count the minutes until Friday afternoon, when I would be able to meet fellow nerds at Sloopy’s Lounge for a few Rolling Rocks. Sure, the most stressful moments back then were when I had to repeatedly tell Doris, the school secretary at the small junior high where I first began my IT life, to check again to see if her monitor was plugged in. But not since then have I gone more than a month without at least one Friday Happy Hour.

And don’t give me that “Just do a Zoom Happy Hour, Gary. It’s cheaper and you’ll be saving lives” nonsense. Of course I want to save lives. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. But I honestly don’t know how much more of this I can take before I’m going to need to see my coworkers and friends again... in person! I know it’s risky to do so, but you cannot tell me it isn’t also dangerous to remain in seclusion this long. People need people. Not on the other side of a computer screen, but on the other side of a high-top table at Sloopy’s Lounge. And I guarantee you Sloopy, though I’ve actually never met him, agrees.