**Guest column by Mary Shapiro**

It can be hard to go into work each day knowing that nothing new or interesting is likely to happen. I mean, let’s face it—most jobs are predictable and not exactly exciting. You can practically envision the whole day before it even starts: you’ll see the same coworkers, make the same trite small talk, and start working on the same tasks you always do. So we can forgive Alma for her jaded mentality—after all, she’s been working this job for, what, a hundred years?

But as we can see in this comic, the alternative isn’t always that appealing either. Too much of the unexpected—whether it’s a power outage, a government raid, or worst of all, an impromptu team-building exercise—can be just as bad. I’ll take boredom over office chair races any day, thank you.

The ideal solution, it seems, would be a compromise, something that would enable us to explore a new skill or idea each day while still keeping some of the comforting banality of a dumb office job. Maybe Alma could start listening to different podcasts when she does her work (or, as she likes to call them, “radio plays”). Maybe she could eat lunch with a different coworker (except Joe) each day. Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem at hand, which is that someone just kicked the frigging door in!

Sometimes, there’s a pretty strong argument for “same shit, different day.” …And, hey, maybe after a while you’ll grow fond of that shit!