17 Ways to Spice Up Your Dead-End Job

1. How high can you be at work without getting fired? There’s only one way to find out: I recommend purchasing a high-quality bong and using it to dull the edges of your six-hour graveyard shift. I’m talking about the kind of bong that turns Scooby Doo into the most engrossing episode of Law & Order ever made. The kind of bong where you burp three hours later and smoke comes out. The kind of bong where you show up to work without realizing that you are still holding your bong.

2. Not the drug-using type? Looking for something a little more, uh, legal? Drink so much coffee that you can feel each individual strand of hair on your head having its own distinct panic attack. Drink coffee until you find yourself striding purposefully through your workplace shouting things like, “HI BOB HOW’S IT GOING BOB NICE TIE BOB WANT TO GO PAINTBALLING AFTER WORK BOB?”

Drinking way, way too much coffee feels horrible, but it feels horrible in a way that is more fulfilling than your job.

3. Working in a retail store with a limited playlist of upbeat, consumer-friendly songs is perverse, diabolical torture. While this kind of trite garbage is awful enough in its own right, it’s doubly depressing when piped over concert-quality loudspeakers while you fold “Duck Dynasty” hoodies at Target. In fact, there’s a scientifically-verified mathematical formula that illustrates the dangers of a horrible in-store musical selection:
(# of Black Eyed Peas Songs + # of John Mayer Songs)² – # of total songs on playlist = Likelihood that you will use a customer’s face as a fist receptacle

There’s no real tip here. This is more of a warning, I guess. I still have PTSD-esque flashbacks every time I hear Clay Aiken’s “Invisible.”

4. Doodle. Express yourself through doodling. Create your own style of doodling and inspire your own unique doodling movement. Become the Picasso of doodling. Make doodles so intricate, they make the Sistine Chapel look like a Bazooka Joe comic.

5. Spend an entire week communicating with coworkers solely with dialogue from the 1993 action classic Demolition Man.

Co-worker: Yo.

You: Mellow greetings. What seems to be your boggle?

Co-worker: Have you seen the mop?

You: You are a savage creature John Spartan, and I wish for you to leave my domicile now!

Co-worker: Seriously, man. Someone vomited in Aisle 6.

You: You’re gonna regret this the rest of your life… both seconds of it.

Co-worker: You know everyone hates you, right?

You: Enhance your calm, John Spartan.

6. Remember that short-lived reality show The Mole? The premise was that a group of people worked together to add money to a pot that only one of them would eventually win – except that one designated “mole” was constantly trying to sabotage the team. Needless to say, this is the role you were destined to play at your job – you must embrace the fact that you are undoubtedly The Mole. Your passive-aggressive terribleness is finally justified.

7. Find a girlfriend/boyfriend so single-handedly awful they ruin your entire company. Sound improbable? Dude, Yoko Ono ruined The Beatles. You work at a fucking Lids.

8. Invent rich, elaborate backstories for customers or people you see daily but don’t really know. Work is a lot more interesting once you decide that the customer who always shows up first thing in the morning and wanders around the store all day is really an alien gathering information about our planet, or that the white guy with the balding afro and the mesh tank top who works downstairs used to be the bassist for Jamiroquai.

9. Flirt shamelessly with all of your coworkers. It’s bound to end in disaster, which should keep things interesting for at least a little bit.

10. Set challenges for yourself. Well, not challenging yourself to get a promotion or improve your performance or anything. I was thinking more along the lines of challenging yourself to go an entire workday using only expletives, or seeing how many of your coworker’s desktop backgrounds you could change to photographs of Tara Reid’s breasts without getting caught.

11. Do crosswords. Learn crossword words that generally only appear in crosswords, like “epee” and “olio.” Become an expert crossword player. Enter crossword competitions. Win the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Have sex with crazy crossword puzzle groupies. Quit your crappy job and live off your mad stacks of crossword money.

12. Fire people whom you do not have the authority to fire.

13. Become a writer. When you are a writer, you’re always working on your writing, even when engaged in seemingly unrelated mundane tasks. You’re not just rounding up shopping carts, you’re contemplating the next Great American Novel! You’re the goddamn David Foster Wallace of this PetSmart.

14. Change your nametag to read “Danny Glover.” Repeatedly remind customers that you are “too old for this shit” and that you “seriously, seriously regret Operation Dumbo Drop.”

15. Create trading cards for all of your coworkers, including ratings for categories like “Perceived Power,” “Resting Bitchface Status,” and “Lovemaking Prowess.” Make several sets and encourage people to trade them Pokemon-style.

16. Develop a refined anti-capitalist, pro-Marxist theoretical lens based on your hatred of consumerism and the American labor system. Masturbate vigorously in a bathroom stall. Purposefully fall headfirst down a long flight of stairs. Become what you most fear. Eat one of every item in the vending machine for lunch.

17. Quit.