Typical Day
Darrell McPox wakes up in a cold sweat with his skin crawling―another one of his scary bug dreams. Darrell's distaste for all things creepy and crawly is what first inspired him to get into the bug-spraying biz.
He ruffles his hair with his fingers and tries to forget the dream as he reaches over to the nightstand for a sip of water. The clock reads 4:34AM. The sun is starting to show its face over the corn fields surrounding Darrell's rural Illinois home, but there's still plenty of time to sleep.
A couple hours later, after some more pleasant dreams, Darrell arises at 6:30AM to the music of his alarm clock radio, yawns, and heads to the shower. After his shower, he pads downstairs for breakfast―Wheaties, as always.
A young professional at the tender age of twenty-eight, Darrell lives alone. He doesn't know many people in the area―the company moved him here to their central research facility a few years after hiring him fresh out of grad school. Darrell has a feeling the company may be grooming him for management―he even did an internship with them the summer after undergrad, deciding to go back for a master's in plant health management on the advice of his boss.
One of Darrell's favorite things about his job is the casual dress code. As they always say around the lab, "It all looks the same under a lab coat." By 7:45AM, Darrell is out the door and truckin' along County Road 446 on the way to the General BioSciences facility, feeling fresh in his 100% cotton yellow button up and his new blue sneakers.
Arriving at the office by 8:15AM, Darrell exchanges cheerful hellos with the folks in Clerical and Reception, then retreats to his office to plan out the day―looks like there's a meeting at 9:30AM with a new soybean assignment from corporate. Darrell allocates the rest of the day to crunching data to determine the best course of action from a short list of options to adjust treatment of wheat for rising temperatures in the Midwest over the coming decades.
There are perks and drawbacks to each of the options―from the expense of developing an all-new spray to the potential environmental and regulatory consequences of adding a heat-resistant agent to the pesticide.
Darrell works with a whole matrix of pros and cons to determine the ideal course of action for the company. His management classes help him understand corporate's viewpoint, and as senior chemist, he's sort of the go-between guy for the lab and the corporate office.
The daily meeting is a breezy conversation among the geeks in the lab (and by geeks we mean a diversity of highly-trained experts in a variety of technical fields). They discuss the latest―runoff results and figure findings, comparing notes and assessing their next moves. Each weighs in on the issues others may be having and together they agree on a course of action to be submitted to corporate through Darrell.
Darrell works a full, busy day of number-crunching, emailing, and experiment-planning, punctuated only by lunch at 1:00PM (tuna salad and kale chips) and as many water cooler conversations about Hollywood's latest as he can squeeze in. The break room is right next to his office―if he's paying attention he can hear the bubbles, in which case he jumps up to say hello to whichever thirsty colleague's just popped in.
By 4:00PM, Darrell has made some good headway on his work, and on top of that convinced at least two coworkers to catch that new Nick Cage flick over at the Mega-Plex in Bendsville. He finishes up one last email, saves the data from today's run of tests, and packs up to head to the movie. By 5:15PM, he and his coworkers are en route to the theater, excited to turn off their brains for a spell.
The picture is aggressively average, but Darrell and his friends enjoy hooting and hollering during the action sequences, which no one minds―the theater is practically empty.
At 8:00PM, they split up in favor of getting dinner―everyone got stuffed on popcorn and sweets. Darrell drives back to his rural home, arriving around 8:45PM. He spends a little time texting to catch up with his far away friends and family, then enjoys an organic frozen enchilada and waters his avocado plant before conking out. His place is messy, but it'll have to wait until the weekend. Here's hoping for no bug dreams.