Federal Zombies

It's my first week at work at [name of federal contractor deleted] and I’ve already run into three really nice former coworkers whom I was glad to see. Two of them work on my floor in the [name of government agency deleted] offices and one came in for a meeting. And I met one of the managers at a party a few weeks ago. I’m also meeting some fun new people who ask if I know certain people that work at my former employer and laugh over stories I tell them about the Halloween decorations I put up in one young manager’s office that he tore down immediately. Hey, my boss’s boss thought the decorations were awesome.

My former employer was very self-absorbed with its work, making presentations to each other. The goal was to have the bosses vote your Powerpoint slides or videos as being the most entertaining. I don't know if much else was ever done with the work, since nobody at my former employer had any real power to do anything about solving air traffic problems. I have pretty much the same job again, just a different audience to entertain.

The cool part about working downtown is that I get to be part of the scenery for the tourists at the Smithsonian metro station. Whenever I used to come downtown, I was more of an outsider, riding the metro alongside the real workers of the city, observing their daily routine. I watched all the good little citizens doing their duty, wandering through the system like zombies, not paying attention to the process of their worker-bee lives, buzzing from one building to the next. Now that I go downtown to do my duty, I am one of the zombies.