Tuesday, April 14, 2009
taking a break at work. 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM.
I am standing outside of a beige office building. The building houses the company I work for, the cubicle I sit in, the colleagues I work with to produce writing I am not too proud of… with every line of text I edit I surrender some soul. Not because I am dramatic, or a drama queen, and yes, the thought has crossed my mind. But because I contribute to the defilement of the every day. Ad text. Ad title. Small bursts of bore mined by search engines, the hated and the loved king Google.
Everything is popping and sudden and quick, nothing takes it's time, slowly grows warmer, like a whitman poem.
Occasionally I let my mind wander to thoughts of next year, my next life. The term “entry level” withering in my memory.
But for now I keep editing and changing and conversing with the middle man. So many middle men that I don’t recognize people at the ends. Are they even there?
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5 comments:
God. When I went to university, my summer job was packaging school supplies boxes. Never ending stacks of papers and pens and heavy lifting and oh.my.god. It was hot and I made 9.50 an hour and I wanted to die.
I'm glad I'm past that. :)
I'm glad you are past that too, sounds hellish, makes me appreciate my soul suck job more :)
I was a waitress at a self serve continental breakfast bar. It didn't make sense then either. Every day no matter what crappy job I'm in I remind myself that I'm not dealing with people who are angry about their breakfast.
i was a terrible waitress when i was 19; also worked for a large corporation for 5 years cashiering, doing returns, and stocking shelves. it was good at times, and taught me quite a bit, but ultimately i knew i didn't want that as my path in life.
This is so descriptive and I'm so glad you'll be getting away from it!
I had many jobs I hated. Wouldn't know where to start.....
Some were truly bizarre, like the one in downtown Portland where I was hired to be office manager for a prearranged cremation "society." Selling prearranged cremation plans was gonna be enough out there, but when I saw the walk-in closet off my office full of boxes of cremains ready to be picked up by the sorrowful I was about done in. There's nothing like sharing office space with the dearly-departed, especially when the owner has hung a fluorescent sign in the closet reading, "Easy Money."
What really DID do me in was when the owner's wife handed me one of the boxes late one Friday afternoon after hearing that I'd be visiting my mother over the weekend. As my mother lived some 15 miles from the particular State Park where the deceased had asked to be scattered, and since the deceased had been abandoned by any and all friends and family in his current ashy state, I was being asked by the owner's wife to "Go up to the Park and scatter Mr. Baumgartner." I've never forgotten the man's name!
I refused. And found another job before two weeks passed.
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