January 05, 2004

January 05, 2004 - 10:01 a.m.

So according to the comments, a bunch of you would like to come with me on the imaginary journey to a place that's warm, sandy and serves highly alcoholic fruit beverages. (No rum for Wench, though - how about a lime Corona?) What does this tell you? How many of us are content?

When I first started counseling, one of the big issues* that came up was how unhappy both my parents were in their jobs. My poppa hated his so much that it was literally making him ill. (He spent thirty years battling air pollution before it was cool. Have I mentioned today that he rocks?) I didn't want to be like that. So when some money came through after my accident**, I quit the job, took hospitality management classes, and opened a catering/personal chef business.

I knew fuck-all about running a business. But because I was also volunteering for the American Cancer Society, I knew that they needed catering. Tons of work came from them, and then other people heard about me, and work was steady. Unfortunately, only the personal chef portion of my business was legal - all the catering was kept under the table. You can't operate a professional kitchen from your home. Sigh. And I started to get worn down. It was damned hard work, putting together emergency dinners for 50 by myself. Some days were so exhausting, it was too much to try and re-organize the refrigerator again to make room for the platters of roasted red pepper and goat cheese crostini. Know what I'm saying?

Then COBRA ran out, and nobody else would sell me health insurance. Sure, I was 25, but with a fused back, you need health insurance. So painfully, unhappily, I closed the business. Found this job and took it, even though it was already clear that I wouldn't think much of the work. As a friend said recently, he's never heard me be professionally happy since. It's true; I just don't care much about what we do here. Frankly, it's hard to figure out what we do here, other than push little slips of paper from one desk to another. I help hire new senior managers - deans, vice chancellors and the like. About half of my time is spent on the phone with faculty, encouraging them to do their duties and show up for meetings. In the other half I process payroll, write manuals, script databases and plan conferences. Whoopie. It's deadly dull, frankly, and because I think it's stupid, I'm not very good at the job. Last week three workdays were spent researching deanship position descriptions at other universities. Crap, a student could do this! Why are they paying me to do such pointless work? Yes, there's the question of confidentiality - everything I do is hush-hush because of its newsworthiness (HAH!) - but for three years I've been doing things like this, and it's killing me.

The new position they want me to take will be similar. No more big-shot recruitment; instead, it's writing process manuals and helping with internal hires. I desperately want ownership of something here. I've been successful in other jobs because the sups/owners trusted me to make improvements and saw that I had unused skills. In this huge bureaucracy, it's almost impossible to find that kind of freedom. Swear to god, I spent three hours making photocopies last week. Do you know how much they paid me per hour to make photocopies? About $25. No shit.

I'm sure there are people out there thinking, "Take the money! Why are you complaining?" The thing is, I like my brain. I need to use my brain. This place leaves me emotionally drained at the end of nine hours; I go home and knit or read Polish history and try to forget that at 7:15 the next morning the commute begins again. I don't want to be like my parents, stuck in a crap job to support my lifestyle. I don't want to be here, stuck with people I can't stand doing pointless stupid tasks (Kaetchen, would you call Professor Dillhole a sixth time and remind him about the Friday meeting?) for the rest of my life. Aaaargh!

The economy's better, but it's not great, and there's no work here that's interesting. Just more assistantships and lower-level admin stuff. There are hundreds of people like me looking for work, most of 'em also with soft B.A. degrees and mortgages to cover. It's a hard time, not getting any easier, and I know I'm lucky to be employed at all. It just doesn't feel that way sometimes.

One of these days I'm going to be able to write funny and stupidly happy*** entries again. Honest.


*Despise this word in this context. Ew. But it makes sense, so...
**Broken back, for the newbies. Five vertebrae fused. And I still do yoga!
***Six lovely soft kisses for anybody who gets this reference. And then a smack on the head for, like me, buying such a crap album.

Comments: Speak your piece!

former / latter