Lorazepam, €57 vodka and Ducados: the on-call worker's kit

Lorazepam, €57 vodka and Ducados: how the fixed-discontinuous worker's kit comes together

Two lorazepams, a couple of shots of Grey Goose and a cigarette. That's the breakfast someone with nothing to do whips up on any given morning. The scene, told with total nonchalance, sums up better than any report what it means to have dead time and the urge to spend it. The vodka is not cheap plonk: the bottle costs between 56 and 57 euros and has the luxury of lasting since spring because it's only peine two or three times a year.

The maths of drinking little but well

The logic is impeccable within its genre: if you only drink once in a blue moon, buy the best. 56 or 57 euros for a bottle rationed like liquid gold. No mixing. No ice. No orange juice, which is what the guy at the next spot at the bar suggests to turn the screwdriver into a cocktail shaker. Here the vodka is taken straight, in shots, because any sugary addition, besides being a sin, makes the hangover worse.

Tobacco trinc the same doctrine of selective consumption. The smell and taste of blonde tobacco are disgusting; what you crave is a Ducados. And not every day: a pack now and then, just enough to keep the joke from becoming a fixed expense. The irony is served when someone points out that a pack of Ducados now costs as much as a Marlboro.

The liturgy of those who don't work, or work now and then

The kit isn't just chemical. It's a liturgy of a morning with no agenda: getting up without rushing, glancing at the bottle, deciding that today's the day. The question hanging in the air is the usual one: what do you do for work when you're not working? The answer, in this case, is a mix of calm and boredom fought off with legal and expensive substances.

Some see a generational portrait here; others just see a guy with a half-empty fridge and a well-stocked shelf. The truth is the inventory doesn't lie: an anti-anxiety pill, a premium bottle and a dark tobacco brand. The fixed-discontinuous worker's kit, artisanal edition.

What keeping the ritual costs

The annual bill isn't high compared with a daily smoker's, but the outlay per session is. A bottle bought two or three times a year at top-shelf prices and a pack of tobacco that's no longer the cheap option. The result is low-frequency, high-unit-cost consumption, the antithesis of the barfly's habit.

The question left hanging is how much of this ritual is a taste and how much is filler for a day that won't get going. With the bottle at half throttle since spring and the pack rationed, the kit holds up. What's unclear is whether the one using it does.