work

For a long time, my favorite thing in Chicago was the painted window on a certain storefront underneath the Western brown line station: "Chubby Wieners...It Will Happen Soon!" It just had this very portentious feel about it. I know they used this somewhat baroque phrasing to avoid telling us that a wiener would be coming, but that never lessened my delight. I loved how heavy the announcement seemed, how certain: it WILL happen, and SOON.

I'm thinking about the Chubby Wieners sign this week, because things in my life are reaching the It Will Happen Soon point. My options are opening up, change is on the way; could be, who knows. It kicked off three days ago when the job I put in for, and about which I am still reluctant to speak, called me about an interview. So I'm busting down to New York on Tuesday night for a Wednesday afternoon interview with the head of the sales department and the head of HR. I am now an official candidate for this position, and I have the three-page job application form and background check authorization paperwork to prove it.

So sometimes when you see a problem at work, the correct response is to look around, see if anyone else has noticed, and move the fuck on without trying to DO anything. Because Trying to Do Something will precipitate a storm of controversy that goes all the way to the top. The top, I tell you! One minute it's a polite disagreement ("hm, that's odd; this customer said he did receive stock from a damaged shipment that you'd been told did not go out") and the next, it's all "Nora, pls triple check that you are right before we go forward" and "hm, let's loop the editor in chief in on this shipping error" and lots of work for me.

Dear Jealousy,

Fuck off. Fuck off fuck offfff.

Warm regards,
Nora.

+ + +

I'm on Work Experience next week.
Hah. Work. Experience.
I hardly need it. I'm working two jobs as it is.
I fucking hate school sometimes.

Well, despite my best intentions, etc. etc. I'm sure you see what's happened here.

Work. In the inimitable words of the Mos, I was looking for a job and then a I found a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable now.

Not really. I like to work; I enjoy toil. But this is certainly an entry level position and my counterparts are all younger than me and have less work experience. We look at our jobs differently: this is already my career, but for them, it may or may not be. For at least two, I know it is not; they're biding time until grad school this coming fall. But really, the way I do my work has very little to do with them. I'm finishing out my fifth week. There is a lot to learn and not a lot of time to learn it in, since adoption season cometh. I have two bosses, between whom I am expected to split my time evenly, 2 1/2 days' worth of hours per week each. This is...a challenge. Additionally, there are many acronyms being tossed around in the office, and I don't yet know what any of them mean--one acronym I should mention here, though: TPS report. No, really. I've had to fill out numerous TPS reports to request access to various IT utilities. Next thing: I bet I get a PC Load Letter error on the fax machine in the corner...

I got the job, and they're bringing me in $2500 higher than list, because I'm JUST THAT GOOD, y'all, I'm so very desirable.

I start on the 12th, so I have next week to set my affairs in order, tell my freelance clients that I'll have decreased capacity going forward, do my 2006 taxes, buy some work pants, and so forth.

The prospect of imminent paychecks is making me a little giddy...will I go to the record store or the comic book shop first? Do I need some new kicks? I may need some luxury groceries--like olives, juice, and danish butter (!!!). Or maybe I just need to see a matinee movie each day next week, with a big cherry coke in one hand and a box of hot tamales in the other.

I'll be heading up there around 8am. I'll be there pretty much every day until I quit or I die.

Who knew that sending a somewhat poorly constructed, nearly needy email to a temp agency at 7:00 pm on a Wednesday would result in a frantic phone call from that agency at 10:00 the next morning and a position for Monday?

But then, I've never temped, so maybe this is the usual procedure. They must be desperate for qualified candidates. I am very, very qualified for office jobs...but it remains to be seen how I will fit in with the hose-n-heels crowd that I have observed in the temping pool in the past.

No matter. I have old friends in town this weekend, through Tuesday, so I'm on "vacation" from my unemployment, job search, brokeass-ness, etc.

Now we are solidly into week three of my unemployment, and it's neither relaxing nor productive. It's not like a pleasant break from the norm in which I can enjoy the late summer weather, stay up late, drink in the afternoon, bike around town, and generally contribute nothing to the GDP. If I had an end point, maybe I'd feel a little more secure. If I wasn't new and pretty much alone in a new city in a new time zone, maybe I'd be feeling a little more confident.

The high from last week's rock-ass interviews has passed; now I'm looking forward to this Thursday's interview and the possibility that I'll hear back from the two contacts who are lagging behind in their response time.