Generation X Read Online Free PDF Page A

cup, while Margaret, who worked at the other end of the office, was waiting for her herbal tea to steep and informing me of the ramifications of my letting off of steam a few minutes earlier.
    ' ' W h a t d i d y o u j u s t s a y t o M a r t i n , D a g ? ' s h e s a y s t o m e . ' H e ' s just having kittens in his office—cursing your name up and down. Did t h e h e a l t h i n s p e c t o r d e c l a r e t h i s p l a c e a B h o p a l o r s o m e t h i n g ? '

    22
    GENERATION X

    QUIT
    YOUR
    JOB
    " I deflected her question. I like Margare t. She tries hard. She's older,
    a n d attractive in a hair-spray-and-shoulder-pads-twice-divorced
    survivor
    of way. A real bulldozer. She's like one of those little rooms you
    only in Chicago or New York in superexpensive downtown apartments—small rooms painted intense, flaring colors like emerald or
    raw beef to hide the fact that they're so small. She told me my
    s e a s o n
    o n c e , too: I'm a summer. " 'God, Margaret. You really have to wonder
    why we even bother to get
    up in the morning. I
    mean, really: Why work?
    Simply to buy more
    stuff? That's just not
    enough. Look at us all.
    W h a t ' s t h e c o m m o n a s -s u m p t i o n t h a t g o t u s a l l from here to here? What
    makes us deserve the ice
    cream and running shoes
    and wool Italian suits we
    have? I mean, I see all of
    u s t r y i n g s o h a r d t o a c -quire s o m u c h stuff, but I can't help but feeling that we didn't merit i t , t h a t .. ." 'But Margaret cooled me right there. Putting down her mug, she said that before I got into one of my Exercised
    Y o u n g M a n s t a t e s , I s h o u l d r e a l i z e t h a t t h e o n l y r e a s o n w e a l l go to work in the morn ing is because we're terrified of what would happen if we stopped. We 're not built for free time as a species.
    We think we are, but we aren't.' Then she began almost talking to
    h e rself. I'd gotten her going, She was saying that most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting

    moments in our lives, the rest is filler, and that at the end of our lives, most of us will be lucky if any of those moments connect together to form a story that anyone would find remotely interesting.
    SICK BUILDING
    "Well. You can see that morbid and self-destructive impulses were MIGRATION: The tendency of
    overtaking me that morning and that Margaret was more than willing to younger workers to leave or avoid
    sweep her floor into my fireplace. So we sat there watching tea steep jobs in unhealthy office
    environments or workplaces
    (never a fun thing to do, I might add) and in a shared moment listened affected by the Sick Building
    to the office proles discuss whether a certain game show host had or had Syndrome.
    not had cosmetic surgery recently.
    " 'Hey, Margaret,' I said, 'I bet you can't think of one p e r s o n i n RECURVING: Leaving one job
    to take another that pays less but
    the entire history of the world who became famous without a whole lot places one back on the learning
    o f c a s h c h a n g i n g h a n d s a l o n g t h e w a y . '
    curve.
    " S h e w a n t e d t o k n o w w h a t t h i s m e a n t , s o I e l a b o r a t e d . I t o l d h e r that people simply don't . . . c a n ' t become famous in this world unless a lot of people make a lot of money. The cynicism of this took her aback, but she answered my challenge at face value. 'That's a bit harsh, Dag.
    What about Abraham Lincoln?'
    " 'No go. That was all about slavery and land. Tons-o'-cash hap-pening there.'
    "So she says, 'Leonardo da Vinci,' to which I could only state that he was a businessman like Shakespeare or any of those old boys and
    that all of his work was purely on a commission basis and even worse, h i s r e s e a r c h w a s u s e d t o s u p p o r t t h e m i l i t a r y .
    " ' W e ll, Dag, this is just the s t u pidest argument I've ever heard,' s h e s t a r t s s a y i n g , g e t t i n g d e s p e r a t e . ' O f c o u r s e p e o p l e b e c o m e