I spend enough time on the computer that I’ll have “moments” like when I left my damn torx screwdriver at the office and then had about 20 seconds of elation when I realized I could Timbuktu in to the work computer from the home computer…
“I’ll just send myself an email from the work computer with the screwdriver as a file attachment! Hooray, I’m so smart & clever!”
oh wait… :smack:
I’m working in a clipping service, so consequently I a) don’t read the newspaper anymore since I read about 10+ of them a day b) have realized that there really is a hobby magazine for every one, and have tried to make them all interesting to help the time go. Very difficult…though you do learn a bit.
On the upside, I have a lot more empathy for people I’ll never meet.
I’m on the 4AM-1PM shift.
Even when I’m on vacation or have a day off, I automatically wake up at 2:30AM.
Expect my eyes to droop around 3PM.
Do not ask me anything mentally challenging after 5PM.
I run on second and third-wind vapors. Pulling a 12-hour day doesn’t faze me anymore.
Posted by Lizard:
I’m sorry, please feel free to ignore my posts. :o
I thought of another thing I do:
Whenever I’m in a museum or other exhibit, I have to bite my tongue when I hear another visitor pose a question to avoid going into “interpreter mode”. It’s especially hard if another member of their group pipes up with a wrong answer.
I also drive my husband insane when we watch movies or TV shows with a historical setting. “They weren’t wearing* that *in that time period! . . . No, no-- that tool is all wrong. . . . Hmph! That wasn’t even INVENTED for another fifty years!”
I look up at every single thing in the air. Airplane, balloon, bird or plastic bag, if it’s in the air, I watch it. If it makes a noise and I don’t see it, I will stop midsentence to find it.
I also always know the weather forecast - But if someone asks me, I’ll instantly forget, and have to look it up for them, because the forecast changes too often. I also completely ignore temperature… I have no use for it.
I can no longer read works of non-fiction that don’t have footnotes. Or TV documentaries, for that matter. Thank goodness that I can ask for cites on the SDMB. It’s not even really that I doubt the veracity of the facts, it’s just… I need footnotes, okay?
Pharmacy.
I have to stop myself from asking people personal medical information when I’m not at work.
“You know I’ve been feeling kind of dizzy lately…”
“What medications are you taking currently?”
“Who are you?”
“Shit. Sorry ma’am, nevermind.”
-foxy
I work in an Aerial Photography Lab out at the Airport. I’m a darkroom guy.
Geeze. What a list?
[ol]
[li]I get up before dawn (in Fall/Winter/Early Spring), work all day in the dark, & come home in the dark.[/li][li]I’ve learned to read upside-down & backwards to read titling on negatives.[/li][li]Hi Opal.[/li][li]Seasonal Affective Disorder. Nuff said.[/li][li]Physical isolation, both at my workstation & in the remoteness of the Lab.[/li][li]Jumpy as a cat, if somebody wanders into the darkroom that don’t belong there.[/li][/ol]
Due to the completely moronic computer system Home Depot uses, I now try to log in to every single window that opens on my home computer.
I dial 9 before every phone call.
If I need to cut something, I immediately stick my hand in my right pocket because my right apron pocket is where I keep all my knives.
My most embarrasing: a few weeks ago, someone aked me for directions while we were both sitting at a red light. I told her the building was in aisle 8, halfway down on the right. :smack:
I forgot the most annoying habit. I try to convert everything into square yards. Guess what? Cooking measurements don’t convert that easily.
I sometimes answer my home phone, “Hello, you’ve reached Dr. Surname. May I help you?”
I catch myself worrying about getting things done that aren’t due until 6-18 months later because the university’s scheduling occurs half a year to a year and a half in advance, which sometimes makes me think everything is due that far ahead of time.
Not job-related, but while I was writing my dissertation I played Tetris constantly (it really helped me think through the next section I needed to write) and after a few weeks, when I’d look at a person’s face I’d want to drop another eye between their eyes, or an inverted “L” shape over one eyebrow and down their nose.
Advertising creative = don’t go with the obvious answer to anything. I misread a lot of signs (I thought a sign outside a bank was a political poster and spent a few blocks wondering who Ira Rollovers was. :rolleyes: ). I come up with weird scenarios for dealing with pretty simple problems and tend to get all excited about cool but completely infeasible ideas. Oh, and because I’m frequently thinking about other things, I’m easily stymied by complicated tasks like starting a car or putting on socks.
I look at low weight women and wonder if they’re genetically set that way, or if they starve, hyperexercise, use laxatives, or throw up, or a combination of those. I check to see if their thighs touch or their abdomens are concave, if I can and they look unusuallly thin.
EXACTLY what I was going to mention. The first thing I do when I get to work is count yesterdays money, make a deposit slip with yesterdays date, write out a form detailing all of yesterdays numbers. Go into Quickbooks (the finacial software) pull up the deposit screen and back the date by on day* and enter all the numbers etc etc etc…
*The whole yesterday thing is further complicated becuase until I do something that requires today’s date, quickbooks still thinks it’s yesterday so I still see yesterday’s date all over the place.
Where I work I have to constantly help people with wine. We sell mostly cheap wine, so most of the customers that come in do not have a clue about what kind of wine to buy. I can spot that “I have no clue what I’m doing” face from a mile away.
So when I see people confused in other stores I get the urge to help them out. Especially when I sit next to the map the New York subway and people come by to figure out where they are going.
I work at night in a data center. We work with people and machinery across North American and India. Time is measured in 24 hour block (military time) and is plus or minus greenwich mean time (GM). Outside of work I have to think hard to say “lets met at 7:30” instead of “lets met at 18:30 -4GM”
Hmmm, that still doesn´t make me too comfortable. :dubious:
But to give you an idea sometimes it´s more or less like being Neo inside The Matrix, but instead of nonsensical cascading green characters I visualize wiremesh topologies and texture layers of diffuse, specular, glossiness, bump, etc…
Now I just have to practice on that bullet dodging technique. 
I’m a full-time chemistry student who shares a twin bed with my ex, who herself is being (emotionally) clung on to hard by the soldier she just dumped and who kicked her out of his home and is now calling and begging her to come back. Between ionization tables, phone calls at all hours, awkward (in a few different senses) repositioning every few hours, stiff necks and backs, annoyed roommates (they don’t like her much), and the general idea that a big, intimidating Army man is intensely jealous of me and I’m still not getting play, these days I’m not sure I would recognize comfortable sleep if it bit me in the face.
I have the same problem as the OP. I work in programming for a HR outsourcing company, and we’ve been preparing for the yearly health benefits Open Enrollment since April. I’ve spent the last two months convinced that it’s 2007.