In college, we ate lunch. At work, we take lunch. Because the idea of taking time has become much more important than the idea of lunch.

Looking forward to lunch makes the morning go by much quicker. But most of the time, you eat something quick and greasy like pizza or a burger. Which makes the afternoon go by VERY slowly.

Your job is stressful when you have to take some time out of lunch to IM your friends. Your job is not stressful when you have to take some time out of IMing your friends to eat lunch.

You don't have enough money to go out for lunch unless you work in finance. Which is perfect, since they all eat lunch at their desks.

My company cafeteria is VERY segmented. The editors sit in one place, the writers in another, and the interns in another. Each magazine sits seperately, and no one from editorial ever sits with anybody from production. We might have diplomas, we might have saved our tassles, and we might even have the yearbook - but no one ever really leaves high school.

The thing I hate the most is when someone near me checks their voicemail on speakerphone. The thing I love the most is when I hear it say, "you have no new messages."

Everyone has one guy in the office who knows how to use every feature of his voicemail. You're struggling to change the name that pops up on your co-worker's call ID, and he just used it to check his e-mail, forward calls from his wife to his cell phone, and baste a twelve-pound Turkey.

I don't understand how to use my phone at all. I'm sure that there are a million cool features that I could use if I just read the ten-page manual. But then I'd have to read ten pages about phones.

On my phone at work, you have to dial in your extension and your pass code every time you want to hear your messages. It's a good thing there's so much security. Otherwise anyone could break in to my voicemail and find out that no one ever calls me.

I try to sound professional on my work voicemail, but I still sound like myself. I know some people who try to deepen their voices to sound older. This was okay when you were twelve and calling a girl for the first time. But it's not okay to leave an outgoing message and pretend you're Barry White. "I can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number, I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Awww, yeah."

The free stuff factor we learned in college never gets old. Most offices have an office supply cabinet where they keep all the extra pens, masking tape, folders, etc. And even though the entire contents of the cabinet cost twenty bucks, you still hoard as many supplies as you can, just because they're free. But guess what - free crap? Still crap.

Some companies make stuff with their names on it. That makes sense if these things are being given out as promotional items. Not if they're being used around the office. You spend 40-50 hours a week in this place already, you probably have an e-mail address with the company name, and you might even have business cards. But in case you forget where you work, you can check your tape dispenser.

Everyone I know goes through at least a box of pens in a year. I used to think it was because people are constantly losing their pens. Actually, the pens are right in front of us. But after a week, they're so chewed up that you can't tell they're pens anymore.

Office supply stores are fun because they make you think of uses for products you never thought you needed. Like the desk organizer that organizes your other desk organizers.

Businesses have to make a choice. Either they lose money paying someone to do inventory, or they lose money paying for replacement supplies. So most of them don't bother to do inventory, because if they're going to lose money, at least they can help raise company morale with free pens.

8:00 AM looks dramatically different from this angle. It's not spinning anymore.

The biggest thing that changes when you start work is your concept of midnight. I used to see midnight and go to the bars. Now I see midnight and go to sleep. I don't know if that's really funny, but it sure does suck.

Senior year, you feel very old. Which is nice preparation for being the only one in your company without kids.

The only way to be happy with your first paycheck is to assume they're going to take out 35% of your entire salary in takes. That way, when they only take 32% or 33%, you'll be thrilled.

Interns just create work for other interns. My job is basically as a researcher and reporter, so I have to call people and ask them questions. And when they don't know the answer, they have their interns call someone else, who asks their intern, and so on, and so on. And then somehow, it all ends up back at the White House.

Suppliment - Working for a Time, Inc. Company

I wasn't going to write about my job specifically because I like to stick to universal stuff. But then I realized that AOL/Time Warner owns my company. Which means half of us already work together, and the other half are customers.

The good thing about working for an AOL/Time Warner company is that they can't really get mad at you for using IM seven hours a day. "Dude, relax. I was just making sure the product works."�

During our orientation, they told us all about the AOL/Time Warner subsidiaries, and how vast the company really is. And they showed us this video with all these boy bands, Brittany Spears, and a bunch of kids using AOL before flashing "America Online touches thirty-five billion people each month."� And you thought the Catholic Church was bad.

There's always weird stuff going on in the Time Life Building. Thursday, there was a boy band in the morning and a stand-up comic in the afternoon. Like they couldn't see this one coming...

I love the Time cafeteria. It's got a great selection, the lines move incredibly quickly, and everything costs about $5. And the best part is, I'm not already paying them $30,000 a year.