Office
Cross posted to memory_muse
The year after I finished uni, I did temp work, so I saw a lot of offices. The first one was in a section of a company that was just about to be re-located interstate. A lot of the people I worked with had been there for 20 years of more, and I, having never had an administrative job before, was terrified. I was lucky, however, because the length of time that these people had worked together had turned them into a big, happy family: the woman who initially trained me introduced me to everyone on the whole floor, and no-one was ever sharp or condescending with me when I didn't understand something. I was there for less than two months, but the confidence that came with the experience of being paid for my work and valued for my skills, after three soul-crunching months of unemployment, was priceless.
The next temp job could hardly have been a greater contrast. The temp agency had got me the job with the claim that I would be there for 9 months to a year, but when I started, my manager would only give me an entrance pass for three days, and when that expired, it was renewed for only a week. Worse, the office was over-crowded, so I had to sit at the desk of whoever was away that day, and I had nowhere to to stash my coffee mug or the cup-a-soups I liked to eat for lunch. The icing on the cake was that I never got a password for the computer network: I had to wait for my boss to log the computer in each morning. The job lasted two weeks, and the agency rang me on a Saturday to tell me not to go back on Monday, claiming that the business was "re-assessing it's need for temporary staff". I don't know if this meant they were sacking me because I'd been seen looking at job websites at lunch time, or if this was their plan all along, but I know I was looking for ways out because I could not have stood to work there for 9 months feeling constantly like an outsider.
My next job was as a research assistant for a unit attached to a public hospital, and there I had my own office - sort of. As you walked into my "office", the right-hand wall was covered with shelves holding computer parts of various degrees of decrepitude. The opposite wall housed a plethora of outdated psychology manuals and a sink which successfully resisted all attempts to unblock it. Straight ahead was my "desk", which in truth comprised a large piece of wood on top of two stumpy filing cabinets. The only redeeming feature was a window that looked out over an old and now increasingly gentrified suburb of Sydney. The building was drafty, and in winter, freezing cold. I loved it. I loved the workplace, because of the collaboration, the intelligent and quirky people, and the weekly group lunches, and even in spite of the incredibly scary boss. I also loved my poky little office - because no-one could see if I bit my nails or decided to eat my afternoon orange in a particularly messy and slurpy way. I continued to love it even when I heard other members of staff referring to my office as "the sink room", and poking fun at the age and speed of my computer. And although I was glad to join the land of the living when a colleague left and vacated a desk in a larger, shared office, a part of me mourned for my little room full of crap, with its pretty view and its dodgy sink.
I think there are several things that these experiences tell me about life and work. If you work in an office, it becomes like some kind of home for you, and like any home, whether it is flashy or plain matters a lot less than the feeling and the relationships inside. No matter how well you do your job, and how well rewarded you are for doing it, I don't think it can be a good job unless you have a sense that you are part of something bigger than yourself. And finally, no matter how much you like your family or your job, it's important to find your own place in it, even if it is just a desk drawer full of cup-a-soups.
The year after I finished uni, I did temp work, so I saw a lot of offices. The first one was in a section of a company that was just about to be re-located interstate. A lot of the people I worked with had been there for 20 years of more, and I, having never had an administrative job before, was terrified. I was lucky, however, because the length of time that these people had worked together had turned them into a big, happy family: the woman who initially trained me introduced me to everyone on the whole floor, and no-one was ever sharp or condescending with me when I didn't understand something. I was there for less than two months, but the confidence that came with the experience of being paid for my work and valued for my skills, after three soul-crunching months of unemployment, was priceless.
The next temp job could hardly have been a greater contrast. The temp agency had got me the job with the claim that I would be there for 9 months to a year, but when I started, my manager would only give me an entrance pass for three days, and when that expired, it was renewed for only a week. Worse, the office was over-crowded, so I had to sit at the desk of whoever was away that day, and I had nowhere to to stash my coffee mug or the cup-a-soups I liked to eat for lunch. The icing on the cake was that I never got a password for the computer network: I had to wait for my boss to log the computer in each morning. The job lasted two weeks, and the agency rang me on a Saturday to tell me not to go back on Monday, claiming that the business was "re-assessing it's need for temporary staff". I don't know if this meant they were sacking me because I'd been seen looking at job websites at lunch time, or if this was their plan all along, but I know I was looking for ways out because I could not have stood to work there for 9 months feeling constantly like an outsider.
My next job was as a research assistant for a unit attached to a public hospital, and there I had my own office - sort of. As you walked into my "office", the right-hand wall was covered with shelves holding computer parts of various degrees of decrepitude. The opposite wall housed a plethora of outdated psychology manuals and a sink which successfully resisted all attempts to unblock it. Straight ahead was my "desk", which in truth comprised a large piece of wood on top of two stumpy filing cabinets. The only redeeming feature was a window that looked out over an old and now increasingly gentrified suburb of Sydney. The building was drafty, and in winter, freezing cold. I loved it. I loved the workplace, because of the collaboration, the intelligent and quirky people, and the weekly group lunches, and even in spite of the incredibly scary boss. I also loved my poky little office - because no-one could see if I bit my nails or decided to eat my afternoon orange in a particularly messy and slurpy way. I continued to love it even when I heard other members of staff referring to my office as "the sink room", and poking fun at the age and speed of my computer. And although I was glad to join the land of the living when a colleague left and vacated a desk in a larger, shared office, a part of me mourned for my little room full of crap, with its pretty view and its dodgy sink.
I think there are several things that these experiences tell me about life and work. If you work in an office, it becomes like some kind of home for you, and like any home, whether it is flashy or plain matters a lot less than the feeling and the relationships inside. No matter how well you do your job, and how well rewarded you are for doing it, I don't think it can be a good job unless you have a sense that you are part of something bigger than yourself. And finally, no matter how much you like your family or your job, it's important to find your own place in it, even if it is just a desk drawer full of cup-a-soups.