It’s about 3 am and I am having a really odd dream… I have been re-hired at Earthlink and I am sitting next to some guy at a desk and he is going over my job with me. I am really not paying much attention, because a lobotomized monkey could do the work he is describing.

I notice that every desk has a phone shaped like Santa Clause’s head. I ask him why and he tells me that this guy in marketing got a great deal on them for the company, but that nobody really wants to talk about it.

From there, I go to help some people put a sign on a door. Inside the door, there is a meeting taking place, which is pretty much what the sign we are hanging says. A dowdy older woman comes up and begins berating me, because sign hanging is her job and I am not doing it right.

I leave her to the signs and proceed to my new hire orientation. I am confronted by a thick stack of papers to fill out and sign, an overly chipper man in a pink shirt is telling me that everything must be filled out with a number two pencil. I begin to wonder why the heck I am here.

It’s not that anything here is so terrifically horrible, it’s just so mind-numbingly, soul-devouringly pointless. How did I get here? What happened to my business? Where are my guys? I began shoving things into my book bag and preparing for a mad dash to the door. I am pretty sure that I can find a sword somewhere and free Bryan and Brian from whatever heartless corporate hell train they have been shanghaied to… when my wife woke me up. She said I was making weird noises.

Honey, you don’t know the half of it.