After all these years of only satisfying the specific job requirements of my position, I’m finally going above and beyond and taking some initiative of my own. I’m rising to the occasion, casting my passivity aside, and fulfilling my long-delayed destiny to become one of this company’s much sought-after self-starters, because I just set up a killer home beer brewing station in my cubicle.
No one told me to do this. I came up with it all on my own. Sure, there were hints and suggestions along the way: “To advance in this company, you really need to be proactive,” “We really value employees who take some initiative once in a while,” “Aren’t you excited to be here—where’s your passion for the work?” Well, my passion is sitting on my transparent plastic chair mat right now, blocking the view of my monitor and fermenting like a motherfucker.
I hauled that 7 gallon bastard up the stairs after hours all by myself without any help at all, because I’m 100% capable of efficiently completing essential tasks without supervision or assistance, which usually goes unnoticed by senior staff but that’s beside the point. The point is that at this very moment the yeast is reacting with the wort and I’ve got an army of empty growlers standing in formation on my anemic-gray plastic desk that is ready to display a genuine sense of urgency once that sweet nectar has finished conditioning, which will probably be sometime around next Thursday afternoon during our regularly scheduled team meeting.
I’ve just very confidently stocked an entire year’s supply of 50 lb. bags of malted barley and a stainless steel hand-cranked grinding apparatus next to the urinals downstairs.
One thing I’ve learned during my time here is that it’s important to be able to communicate clearly and effectively, and that is why I’m letting my manager know well in advance that I won’t be able to attend that team meeting. It’s a simple matter of assessing competing priorities and determining which one brings more value to the company—a one-sided time-sink of a discussion concerning the constantly shifting, project deadline as determined by the whims and poor planning of various third parties, or some freshly brewed cubicle beer for everyone in the office?
Yeah, it’s a rhetorical question and the answer is goddamned obvious.
Also, I’ve requisitioned the first-floor men’s room for my milling and mashing operations. If anyone thinks that I’m going to be hauling all that raw grain through the parking lot and then up the stairs for each and every batch I brew, they’ve got another thing coming. Part of taking initiative involves making decisions with confidence, and I’ve just very confidently stocked an entire year’s supply of 50 lb. bags of malted barley and a stainless steel hand-cranked grinding apparatus next to the urinals downstairs. My apologies to the dudes working on that floor, but they’ll thank me once they start filling up their coffee mugs with my carefully-crafted cubicle-brew instead of the usual Keurig-brew.
And speaking of which, the Keurig machine is now located in the lobby, kind of floating out in the middle of the floor all by itself, because it was imperative to clear some space out of the office kitchen for my brew kettle and a multitude of cleansers and sterilization equipment. But I decided to delegate the exact positioning of the Keurig to someone else since I possess uncanny business management skills. I’m a newfound, highly inspired go-getter and that means I’m completely done with meekly seeking permission to do anything that doesn’t strictly adhere to unspoken company routine, which is why the kitchen now looks like a devious DIY meth lab straight out of Breaking Bad. It’s all a part of the ambitious in-house quality control measures that come with the territory of exceeding on-the-job expectations.
And if ownership doesn’t like it, well it doesn’t really matter anyway. I might be billing all this extra time to office overhead, but they’ve still got me on salary.