Employee of the Year

Description: This is an essay originally published in Ouch! My Ego, a Rio Grande Valley art and culture 'zine: (http://ouchmyego.com/) This is a truncated version. 

Date: Published May 2011.

 

I've held four jobs in two years: teacher, bank teller, document imaging specialist, and youth career counselor.

When I declared my major in English, I had every intention of somehow becoming a writer. By the time I graduated (equal parts jaded and eager) I figured “those who can't do, teach,” and decided that I'd follow in my family's footsteps to become an educator.

I ended up getting an interview for a job teaching ninth grade English in Houston, and was actually hired right there in the principal’s office. The woman seemed nice enough, but she warned me that this was an inner-city school and a challenge for the most seasoned teachers. I was pretty hard up at that time financially, and this was my ticket to my own apartment - my own everything, really.

The financial independence was great, but the tears, the constant colds, the sleep deprivation ... it simply wasn't worth it. I was miserable. The principal eventually revealed herself to be absolutely frigid and impersonal. The kids had my sympathy but I wasn't who they needed. So, I threw in the towel, vowed “never again,”  and moved to Indiana to be closer to my guy, his family, and our friends.

Teaching left me with a summer's worth of paychecks and about three grand of teacher retirement which I withdrew and lived off of until I landed my next job. My mother and her friends were already shaking their heads at my youthful capriciousness, having left such a lucrative job to move to the Midwest of all places, where American employment had gone to die.

I was hired for my next job that August. Working for a bank was going to be great! No kids to yell at, no lesson plans to submit -- I enjoyed office work, mostly, and the company offered lots of opportunities for a degree-holder to move up and earn more. Nine dollars an hour, at the time, sounded totally lavish.

So lavish that I ate at my boyfriend’s grandma’s house, exclusively. I went without vision and dental insurance. Granted, the money thing wasn’t as big a turn off as customer service was. An excerpt from a blog entry written during that year:

What I wanted to say to the customer: "Just because you're 90 years old and have had account with us since Lincoln was shot doesn't mean everyone knows you, so wipe that look off your face and give me your ID."

What I actually said to the customer: "Well I don't think I've met ya before - can I see a picture ID?"

Turns out, I can deal with your depression, your anxiety, your relationship woes, and your grief. I also learned that I had a special kind of patience with humanity, this being especially apparent to me on the days I had to grit my teeth and “I understand” some crabby old maid to death. Outright demands for service-with-a-smile, though? Those stink.  

I applied for a lateral move within the company and, once again, landed it in one interview.

I really thought that being a Document Imaging Specialist would fix things, and I knew my marbles wouldn’t last another six months at the bank. The job was a longer commute to the corporation’s data hub in Daleville, but I didn’t mind at all, and took it as my morning me-time to use in thought and meditation. 

So, what exactly does a Document Imaging Specialist for a moderately sized, regional financial institution do?

See stack of loan documents. Insert stack of loan documents into $30,000 paperweight. Return documents to loan department and collect more documents to scan. Wash, rinse, repeat. For eight gray, deadening hours.

Those eight hours, five days a week, amounted to me spending approximately two months, or three hundred and twenty hours of my young, priceless life scanning paper in a cubicle.

The job had some advantages. I made a whole forty-five cents more an hour. My boss was actually a bit of a sweetie. And it taught me even more about my personal values. I thought about the things I may have missed – baking a pie with Grandma, watching our dog romp in the snow, writing a new song – it sucked.

I quickly found my fourth, and current job as a youth career counselor. It paid fifteen dollars an hour and took my degree and teaching experience into consideration. Furthermore, I got to work with teens again.

Except … two months into this “awesome” new job? Here I am. Again. Lunchtime is nearly here and I’ve done about a stitch of actual work related to my position. Instead I’ve been writing – that thing I meant to do in the first place.

I can definitely see how an outsider may judge me, my lack of work ethic, my laziness, my fickleness, my ungratefulness. But with every sad, crusty-eyed Monday morning, I believe I’m inching closer toward a realization of who I am, and what my life will be about. I am not a career woman. I’m a business-minded creative, an introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving INFP with a vendetta against Type-As and structured jackets. I need to be in my home, with my family, creating and experiencing life the way I want to experience it. “Where there is a will, there is a way.”

My heart hurts each morning as I close the door of our house on my sleeping husband. I arrive in the office and open up my laptop wanting little more than to write until the ache is gone. And it’s terrible, feeling as though the weekends are reserved for living.