Post-It Notes, Files, Scissors, Shoot
I'm having random internet issues again so if there are typos in this post or I can't visit your blog have a heart, since I can't see it or quite possibly... you.:(
Before I earned my wages by believing the children are our future, I had another career.
Actually, I don't know if you can even technically call it that. To me, there's an important distinction to be made between the word "career" and the word "job". The word "career" implies time invested, sometimes school attended, and a life being built around said "career" choice. Just think about Career Days at schools across the country. Doctors, lawyers and nurses are in attendance, but you don't see a high demand for public speakers of the Taco Bell lettuce shredding or Target shelf stacking variety.
Yet sometimes our jobs ends up becoming our careers while passing time waiting for something else to come along. These are the times when our careers choose us instead of us choosing them. You might take a job as a waitress at Denny's never intending for it to be long term. Before you know it, you get comfortable and one student loan and two kids later, Denny's seems more and more like a way of life than a way on to a better life.
When I entered college, the first time, I had wide-eyed intentions my four years would lead me to the career I was meant to have. It didn't matter that going in I didn't know what career I wanted. I just figured that was what college was for, that suddenly my destiny would hit me, like it did Felicity, minus the hair chopping that is.
So I declared my original major as English, only to switch to Communications. I was too young to have heard all the "Do You Want Fries With That?" type joking. Silly me listened to professors and administrators who told me that having a degree in Communications would leave the door wide open to a number of career choices.
However what they failed to mention was that sometimes having too many choices can actually have the opposite effect. After graduating I quickly realized there was something to be said for the importance of specializing. It's better to be someone who does one or two things really well, then someone who, in essence, can do anything without any real expertise.
Yet hindsight, as they say, was 20/20. So pound the pavement I did for my first, real job. I did some temp work for a bit before landing my first real office job in an insurance company. I cringe now when I look back on the salary "negotiations". Let's just say I was offered a lot less than I was worth and since I didn't know my worth and I had hard time finding anyone who considered me worthy, period, I accepted. I was super excited to have found landed my first job and be on my way to being a full-fledged grown-up.
Believe it or not my time working in an office was really a lot like the show, The Office. Sure The Office is a caricature, but in my experience, it's really not all that different from the way it really is. There almost always is an inane idiot(s) in charge and you spend a whole lot of time doing absolutely nothing.
When I first started working in an office I was taught the ropes by a "seasoned supervisor" which in lame office terms just meant, "any girl who was about 3-5 years older than you who had been there at least six months". At first I was eager to learn all the important office stuff, but once you learn that very little of what you do is actually all that important, you become jaded at a surprisingly quick rate.
For me, office work was simply not challenging. If anything, it was an insult to my intelligence. To think I had gone to school for four years only to not use everything I didn't learn aggravated me. To be honest the sham starts long before the office experience. It is bestowed upon many of us as soon as we buy into the myth that our chosen university has our best interests at heart.
So I did what any girl who was bored with office work would do. I invented ways to amuse myself. I still completed all of my work, but I tried my hardest to a long day as much fun as possible. Sometimes this involved being very creative. One time I took my friend's marker hostage and wrote ransom notes on behalf of it, scattered all across the office.
Also, since I worked in the "insurance underwriting" aka "customer service" area of the company, I spent a lot of time talking to irate insured taxi drives who wanted to know why their insurance was canceled just because they had 42 points on their license. The fact that I'm still alive to tell the tales after some of the phone calls I had is really quite amazing.
But even the insured themselves, no matter how clueless, managed to provide hours of endless entertainment when I created the "Insured of the Day" game. The premise was simple: I'd pick an insured with a particularly funny name or photo ID, photocopy it, and hang it up in the cubicle I called home. You might think this was downright silly and cruel but I have to tell you, it was also highly educational. I bet you didn't know every third cab driver in NYC is named Mamadoh Bah, but I'm pretty sure it's documented fact.
The office environment, in my experience, is also riddled a lot of pettiness. This is because this is a situation that breeds competition. The competition occurs because nearly everyone in the office hates their job and just hopes and prays they can one day have the corner office so they can continue to do nothing, only on a much higher pay scale, all the while counting the minutes in silent and isolated contentment.
It didn't matter which office I worked in either. In the twenty-nine and a half years I have been on this planet I have had five office jobs, each one of them carrying varying degrees of quiet desperation. Every day to me was like Groundhog's day. You clock watched till lunch came along only to continue to clock watch until it was time to leave. Call me a candidate for ADD, but I couldn't imagine living like that my entire life.
I know not all office experiences are like mine, but that doesn't change the simple fact that at times I wish I could just white-out those years of my life. Then again, without the winter of my discontent, I would not be the person I am today. Changing careers was the best thing this girl could have ever done. Sure my job isn't easy, but then again if life were easy it would be boring, not to mention a unfulfilling, French fry-filled experience.
Before I earned my wages by believing the children are our future, I had another career.
Actually, I don't know if you can even technically call it that. To me, there's an important distinction to be made between the word "career" and the word "job". The word "career" implies time invested, sometimes school attended, and a life being built around said "career" choice. Just think about Career Days at schools across the country. Doctors, lawyers and nurses are in attendance, but you don't see a high demand for public speakers of the Taco Bell lettuce shredding or Target shelf stacking variety.
Yet sometimes our jobs ends up becoming our careers while passing time waiting for something else to come along. These are the times when our careers choose us instead of us choosing them. You might take a job as a waitress at Denny's never intending for it to be long term. Before you know it, you get comfortable and one student loan and two kids later, Denny's seems more and more like a way of life than a way on to a better life.
When I entered college, the first time, I had wide-eyed intentions my four years would lead me to the career I was meant to have. It didn't matter that going in I didn't know what career I wanted. I just figured that was what college was for, that suddenly my destiny would hit me, like it did Felicity, minus the hair chopping that is.
So I declared my original major as English, only to switch to Communications. I was too young to have heard all the "Do You Want Fries With That?" type joking. Silly me listened to professors and administrators who told me that having a degree in Communications would leave the door wide open to a number of career choices.
However what they failed to mention was that sometimes having too many choices can actually have the opposite effect. After graduating I quickly realized there was something to be said for the importance of specializing. It's better to be someone who does one or two things really well, then someone who, in essence, can do anything without any real expertise.
Yet hindsight, as they say, was 20/20. So pound the pavement I did for my first, real job. I did some temp work for a bit before landing my first real office job in an insurance company. I cringe now when I look back on the salary "negotiations". Let's just say I was offered a lot less than I was worth and since I didn't know my worth and I had hard time finding anyone who considered me worthy, period, I accepted. I was super excited to have found landed my first job and be on my way to being a full-fledged grown-up.
Believe it or not my time working in an office was really a lot like the show, The Office. Sure The Office is a caricature, but in my experience, it's really not all that different from the way it really is. There almost always is an inane idiot(s) in charge and you spend a whole lot of time doing absolutely nothing.
When I first started working in an office I was taught the ropes by a "seasoned supervisor" which in lame office terms just meant, "any girl who was about 3-5 years older than you who had been there at least six months". At first I was eager to learn all the important office stuff, but once you learn that very little of what you do is actually all that important, you become jaded at a surprisingly quick rate.
For me, office work was simply not challenging. If anything, it was an insult to my intelligence. To think I had gone to school for four years only to not use everything I didn't learn aggravated me. To be honest the sham starts long before the office experience. It is bestowed upon many of us as soon as we buy into the myth that our chosen university has our best interests at heart.
So I did what any girl who was bored with office work would do. I invented ways to amuse myself. I still completed all of my work, but I tried my hardest to a long day as much fun as possible. Sometimes this involved being very creative. One time I took my friend's marker hostage and wrote ransom notes on behalf of it, scattered all across the office.
Also, since I worked in the "insurance underwriting" aka "customer service" area of the company, I spent a lot of time talking to irate insured taxi drives who wanted to know why their insurance was canceled just because they had 42 points on their license. The fact that I'm still alive to tell the tales after some of the phone calls I had is really quite amazing.
But even the insured themselves, no matter how clueless, managed to provide hours of endless entertainment when I created the "Insured of the Day" game. The premise was simple: I'd pick an insured with a particularly funny name or photo ID, photocopy it, and hang it up in the cubicle I called home. You might think this was downright silly and cruel but I have to tell you, it was also highly educational. I bet you didn't know every third cab driver in NYC is named Mamadoh Bah, but I'm pretty sure it's documented fact.
The office environment, in my experience, is also riddled a lot of pettiness. This is because this is a situation that breeds competition. The competition occurs because nearly everyone in the office hates their job and just hopes and prays they can one day have the corner office so they can continue to do nothing, only on a much higher pay scale, all the while counting the minutes in silent and isolated contentment.
It didn't matter which office I worked in either. In the twenty-nine and a half years I have been on this planet I have had five office jobs, each one of them carrying varying degrees of quiet desperation. Every day to me was like Groundhog's day. You clock watched till lunch came along only to continue to clock watch until it was time to leave. Call me a candidate for ADD, but I couldn't imagine living like that my entire life.
I know not all office experiences are like mine, but that doesn't change the simple fact that at times I wish I could just white-out those years of my life. Then again, without the winter of my discontent, I would not be the person I am today. Changing careers was the best thing this girl could have ever done. Sure my job isn't easy, but then again if life were easy it would be boring, not to mention a unfulfilling, French fry-filled experience.
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