You're not supposed to use your cell phone at your desk at my job. Fine. I got that. See? I said it first thing in this post, so I must know it. Despite the fact I see co-workers with their cell phones out all the time (thus the picture of me taken with an iPhone at right), you're not supposed to have them out. Okay.

Usually I abide by this rule, but two or three weeks ago I had to make an appointment for some outpatient surgery. Making this appointment was becoming frustrating because you can't just call the front desk, you have to make the appointment with the nurse. The nurse is always busy, of course, so you leave a voice mail, then she calls you back and leaves a voice mail for you, and then you call back and leave her a voice mail...You hope somewhere, sometime, the mathematical probabilities work out and you actually get to make your appointment before your tumor kills you. Why the front desk can't just grab the calendar and pencil you in I don't know.

It was 4:47 and I had just signed out for lunch. The doctor's office closes up at 4:45 but I was hoping against I hope I could catch them before they turned out the lights. I whipped out my cell phone and placed my call, and was put on hold to wait for a nurse.

As I'm waiting for the nurse, all of a sudden I hear, "Art, what are you doing?" It was Kim Clementine, another call center team manager who's not even in charge of my team. Her tone and facial expression were as though she had just caught me yanking the pants off a five-year-old behind a dilapidated tool shed.

"I put a customer on hold and now I'm making a personal call," I joked, trying to remove the bug that was up her butt.

"You're not supposed to be on your phone at your desk." Yes, I know, I just signed out for lunch and I had to make this call, I explained. Then came the part where she very nearly sent me into a meltdown. "Art, step away from your desk, please."

What?! She's actually trying to command me when to stand up and sit down? In the meantime I think I hear a nurse finally picking up while I'm putting up with this garbage on my end. Yeah, in just a minute. "Art, step away from your desk, please."

I nearly lost my mind. I slammed my pen down, stood up and spun towards her and said, "I'M NOT SEVEN YEARS OLD!" She looked spooked that I was now up and facing her and probably visibly quaking with anger. I caught myself and realized I was at work, but I was really ready to let her have it. She just repeated herself again, "Step away from your desk."

The only two options I could think of were to sock her as hard as I could, or destroy my own cubicle. Neither was good, so the third was to say, "FINE! Go fill out whatever little papers you have to to say, 'Art was on his phone at his desk! Art was on his phone at his desk!"

I still didn't get in contact with the nurse for my appointment, but I found a co-worker and did what we always do, talked about the latest humiliation at the hands of our puppet masters. I found that my voice was actually trembling with anger, I was so inflamed. I'm sure at that moment they could've found at least three other people playing Farkle or ranting to their baby daddy on the phone. But here I am, never used my phone at my desk, and am trying to stave off a potentially life-threatening illness, and I'm being talked to as though I just blew through 10 red lights and killed 50 pedestrians.

I say to you again, I'm 38-years-old, I scored in the top 99% for written and verbal skills on the SAT, I have a college degree, and I have no credit card debt or unpaid traffic tickets. So why am I being treated like a juvenile detainee? Do they realize I wasn't convicted by a court and sentenced there, I sent in a resume and they hired me?

"Why don't you go get another job?" Good idea. Why don't the 575,000 people who lost their job last month just go get another job? Or the 600,000 from the month before that? "Well if finding a job is so hard why do you bitch about the one you have?" BECAUSE IT SUCKS!