False Alarm

Well, I was employed for a day. "A" meaning one (1), as in singular. My first day of work at my new receptionist job started today at 8:30am. At around 10:30am, I decided to end it. By 5:00pm I had successfully terminated the whole affair and jumped the company ship. What happened? I made a huge mistake. I thought that an office job might give me the financial stability (along with health benefits) that I need in order to be a writer and a student of writing full time. So I signed up to answer phones, thinking I could do some work on the job when things were slow. This was the mistake. It was not just the overall office environment that was a concern, but also the never-ending, horribly tedious, rip-your-hair-out-and-jump-in-front-of-a-speeding-Prius kind of work that they expected me to do for eight hours a day that had me running for my life. I spent the morning scanning, filing and answering the phone. Then I entered some figures into the company database. After that, there was more scanning to be done, so I was back at the machine that I was convinced hated me. It would work beautifully for everyone else in the office, but would jam and spit out bits of paper whenever I used it. You'd think with all this fun the day would have gone whizzing by, but time actually seemed to have turned against me as well and wasn’t moving AT ALL. I could see hours and hours of staring at the clock and yelling at the scanner in my future, and it was only 10:00am on day one.
I also must add that the girl training me for this position was 19 and leaving the company to go to college. It felt like one of my old students from the class of '07 was training me for the job she was discarding. She had the sense of mind to get out of there and get an education, so what was I doing working there as a college grad and a credentialed ex-teacher? But even as the feelings of self-loathing started settling in uncomfortably, I still had to be amused at the situation. Here was this very nice girl with pink tipped, swirly flower acrylic nails who could be my student telling me, "As you get more experienced at this, you'll start to notice like the details and get comfortable with it.."
My favorite bit of advice from my sage trainer was,
"Once you've answered the phones more and you have, like, some experience, you'll learn to recognize the names of like the clients and stuff. For example like that was Michael on the phone before, but I just called him Mikey. You can call him Mikey too once you've been here longer.."
Oh boy! Someday I can call him Mikey too?! And what was this girl doing talking to me about experience? I started getting experience in the job force long before this girl even learned how to spell "experience" or "acrylic".
Anyway, at lunchtime a nice man named Bob delivered free Mexican food, so I thought maybe things were looking up. But then I learned that we were all expected to sit at our desks and continue working while eating. This would of course allow the Mexican food smells to permeate the entire office. I just love smelling burritos all day. Everyone seemed fine with the idea of never getting a break, so they were definitely shocked by my announcement that I would return in 30 minutes after I had finished my lunch. I know they all watched me leave in judgment as they stuffed more guacamole down their throats, but I had to get out of there. I clocked out and almost ran through the door.
When I got outside, I could see that the sun was still shining, the wind was blowing, and all around there were signs of life. I started to relax. When I was inside, it felt like my soul was dying along with everything good and positive in the world. But the fresh air calmed me down and reminded me not to be so dramatic. I made a call to a friend and asked her if it would be totally out of line for me to quit a job on the first day. She told me I have good instincts, so I should do whatever felt right. I went back to the office feeling confident and ready to end the misery.
But before I could sit down to tell my new boss this job was a no-go, the lady with the cookies showed up. The lady was my staffing agent who had worked hard to place me in this horrible job. She bounded into the office with a huge pink box full of fresh cookies from the bakery.She startled all of us with her freedom of movement, cheery attitude and loud announcement that the cookies were a welcoming gift for me. With a smile that pierced my conscience, she said, "Just wanted to welcome you on board and say we're so happy this business relationship worked out so well!" I knew she was only that happy because she wasn’t the one who had to stay here. My boss came out of his office to shake her hand and the two of them started thanking each other for placing such a WONDERFUL person in this WONDERFUL position. They both looked at me with their arms crossed thoughtfully and talked about how my English-teacher resume was a little scary at first, but they were glad they had given the ol' teacher a chance. I looked back and forth between them and truly hated my life for a moment. Every cookie in that pink box mocked me and my uncomfortable situation. I had decided already that it was ok to quit a job on the first day if it's this bad, but can you quit when there have been cookies and handshakes exchanged on your behalf?
I decided to give this whole thing another go and try a fresh attitude. So what if I don't like my job? I'm just doing this to make money and then at night I'll do the writing I love, right?
But only half an hour later I was back to my original decision to leave as soon as possible. How can anyone be creative after work if the nature of your job is to turn off your brain and SCAN, COLLATE, FILE, SCAN, COLLATE, FILE. The only people to talk to in the office already didn't like me because I had the audacity to take a lunch break. That only left the phone to give me interaction with other living forms, but "Mikey" and the other clients only wanted to be transferred. I would die in this place if I didn't get out soon. I asked to take a five-minute break (gasp!) and walked outside again to call my staffing agent. Her voice definitely lost all its cheeriness when I told her this would be my only day on the job. She charged me with explaining the situation to my boss and asked that I try to keep the relationship between the company and the staffing agency alive, despite my conduct. I was fine with this. In fact I might feel a little less guilty about giving up so quickly if I could explain myself to the boss-man. I walked back into the office and asked to speak with him alone for a moment. The others in the office didn't know what to make of this. I could sense their ears perking up and the keyboard tapping sounds subsided for a moment. I tried not to look at the pink cookie box as I walked through the office to the boss’s door.
I took a deep breath, then told him I was sorry, but this just wasnt going to work.
For a moment he seemed insulted that I wasn’t overwhelmingly happy in his office, but then I gave him the boyfriend break-up speech: "It's not you, it's me..." and so on. I explained that it was hard for a mere English teacher to adjust to this kind of work and apologized profusely for taking up the company's time. He seemed to be ok with this. "Eh, no big deal", he said.
For the first time all day, I breathed easy and smiled. I decided to finish out the day so that the company wouldn't fall behind in the scan, collate, and file cycle that was so paramount to their success. It's much easier to do that kind of work if you know there is a very near end to it.
So it seems that my previous announcement of employment was a false alarm. Apparently I'm going to need to find a different way to pay the bills and still keep the writer in me alive.