If you have a job without any aggravations, you don’t have a job.
~Malcolm S. Forbes
Uh oh. My time at the PD is winding down and my inhibitions are loosening their grip on me. Either that or the early hours are already affecting me…
A patron came in to contest a ticket, and I went out of my way to try and help him craft an appeal, at his request. I even directed him towards some student groups that are working to change the policy if he wanted to voice his views more broadly. While answering his questions as best I could this 18 year old kid seemed to decide to make me the focal point of his frustrations. He gave me a lecture on the subject of university policy, call me dumb, and interrupted and snapped at me several times. Even the front desk officer was taken aback by this young man. I really hate patrons like this, but I kept it together. Until…
He asked what tone he should strike in his appeal, and I recommended, “Well, I understand you’re angry but I wouldn’t be argumentative with the appeals officer about the policy, just lay out your facts as to why this ticket is undeserved. ”
“Of course I’m not going to talk to him the way I’m talking to you,” he said and rolled his eyes with a terrific sound of disgust. That brief hacking sort of noise teenagers make when you do something “lame.”
My eyebrow shot up. “Then why are you talking to me this way? Why is it appropriate for you to be rude to me, especially since I’ve been trying to help you get out of paying a ticket, but not him? Frankly I don’t appreciate that. ”
His eyes stretched and he sort of mumbled something before he grabbed the map of campus (I’d provided) and marched off without another word. The desk officer gave me a discreet thumbs up.
I’m not proud, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a brief rush of satisfaction! I may turn over a bale of paper next, or run barefoot through the office. The Revolution has arrived! But you know, a sensible sort of one. Properly managed and not too violent, we don’t want to make a fuss.
I scribble this to you, kittens, bleary and cranky from my desk at work. I’ve been here since 6:30am.
After months of applications, a few interviews, unreturned phone calls, and more applications, J. and I figured that there was no work to be had for him around here – not too shocking a revelation, but still pretty unwelcome. We’d decided to head out to the East Coast to spend some quality time with my family, who we don’t get to see often enough, and do whatever odd work we could find out there. Last week we started making concrete plans.
Which is, of course, when J. got a last minute interview and a job offer.
I could just pout. Not because I’m not thrilled and grateful he found summer work, I am! But because this has more or less been the pattern of our lives for the past year – we make a plan, it’s a good plan, we start working towards that plan, and fwoop! The rug is tugged out from underneath us. We’re pros at righting ourselves when our balance is tampered with, but still. I’ll be spending some time out there by myself, and we’ll spend a couple of weeks there together on our way to London, but I was really looking forward to my summer in the woods. Ah well, I’ve already started coming up with some schemes to make up for it.
The only bad part about this job of his is that it starts at 7am, which means I must be deposited at my office with enough time for J. to get to work. He gets the car because his shift ends in the early afternoon and I’ll still have hours of work left. My last month at the PD will have some long hours (and we all know that a morning person, I am not!). On the other hand, I now have another previously untapped hour in which to work on projects. That’s pretty great, to be honest.
It’s just already been a long day, and my trainee is struggling. But it’s Monday so I feel both she and I are entitled.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Trust. They seldom spent the energy to make busts in the ancient world of people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Except Caligula – he was cracked. (via)
I’ve been watching a parable in motion the last little while, minions, and the results of pondering on it have been varied.
I’m training my replacement at work. She is a very kind, good natured woman who loves her dogs and is a bit too generous to unappreciative family members. But she is getting old and is increasingly unable to do the job she has now, and the department (in an effort to care for its people) wants to shift her somewhere else without letting her go. It’s a very noble idea and I admire the sentiment behind it, but the application of it has been really frustrating to adapt to. Because, though she is a lovely woman, she lacks some basic work skills that people take for granted these days. I thought I would have to train her on responding to media requests, it turns out I’m teaching her how to cut and paste in electronic documents.
It’s uphill work and sometimes I get frustrated with her lack of focus and memory retention (she is older and not in excellent health), but working with her has been an insight into how I must look coming out of survivalist mode and into a new professional landscape. Here’s the problem I (and a few other friends I’ve talked to about this) am facing. I’m ambitious, I want to work hard, and I want to learn new skills. But I’m mediocre.
I’m not talking about personality or aptitude (although that may be a conversation to be had when my ego is less fragile), I mean that I am indistinguishable in many ways from a lot of other workers.
I work at a university, and every year the incoming class of freshman – though admittedly growing, in my opinion, more loutish every year – have skills that I don’t have. For the purposes of creating and marketing content, there are more ways now than there were when I graduated less than a handful of years ago. These kids understand them almost intuitively because they make up the world they move and operate in. I was born before the internet, the nephews and nieces we visited this evening have known how to operate smartphones since the could scoot haphazardly across the floor. Frankly that same dubious personality and aptitude might be my best selling points currently, because looking over the skills and resumes of friends (to say nothing of these freshmen)…I have got catching up to do!
When I say I’ve been in survivalist mode, I mean it. An entry level job where I have been able to gain some work skills, but precious few for the industry I want to work in, and even fewer local opportunities to pursue them elsewhere. There was no other work to be had when I graduated, and within two months of my graduation work got even harder to find. I was lucky I had the ability to put food in my mouth, so I hunkered down and focused on surviving – I’m only in retrospect realizing how stressed and scary it’s been, just surviving. I see how people get stuck doing it. I’ve always believed that to lever yourself up out of anything, poverty, ignorance, or bad circumstance, required a foothold of some kind, something to push yourself off of. I believe that now more than ever because I’ve been living without a foothold for a long time (with a good education even) and it’s rough. It’s limiting. It doesn’t allow you to pay enough attention to peripheral developments that can help you.
That’s what happened to my trainee. She learned how to do one thing and one thing only. In the meantime things developed (like email and word processors) and she was so busy surviving on her one skill that now she can no longer do it, the road to learning to do something else is a hundred times more challenging for everyone involved.
Moral of the story: never quit adapting, minions. Mediocrity is optional.
To that end I’m reaching out to friends and acquaintances I admire who can help point me in the direction to gain skills I lack. I’m using every interaction I have for the MP to try and learn something useful and use it to be more effective. I am trying to remember how to be creative and more proactive after a few years of monotony and prescription. I’m trying (and gah, the sentimentality of this hurts physically to type) to be more optimistic and brave than I’ve needed to be for a long time. It feels a bit scary and uncomfortable, to be honest, like stretching muscles and parts that have atrophied when I wasn’t looking. I’m not special at all, and that’s okay. It just needs to be remedied.
Alright, that’s it! Everyone out of the confessional! Er, unless you have some wise words or musings to add in which case let’s just quietly snag those wafers and wine to munch on and slip back in to chat.
I spent this week doing some victim escort duties for the investigations department, which is always a task to make you feel glum I’m afraid. I’ve also spent some time training my eventual replacement, which has been both a challenge and a lesson. This woman has been doing one thing and one thing only for 30+ years, letting a great many technological and practical professional advancements pass her by. Suddenly she needs to catch up on some extremely basic things (I’m talking cutting and pasting from one document to another) and she’s struggling. My resolve to learn some new programs and skills has been reinforced, believe me!
At the same time, I’m exactly a month and a half away from being done at the PD and the prospect is becoming more and more exciting (if financially perilous). I think J. and I will draw up some battle plans this weekend and get to work on them. Here are your links:
This was an excellent story about, in my opinion, holding on to your humanity with both hands when circumstances are screaming at you not to. People: inherently decent.
So, in addition to finishing out one job, working on another, planning two moves in the next six months, and trying to take on some training and other professional amplifiers, J. and I decided to read our way through this list. I think I may have some masochistic tendencies.
What is your relationship to stuff? I showed up at university with two suitcases, in a few months J. and I will be moving to another country in pretty much the exact same fashion.
So, there’s a new pope. The process of choosing one is a thousand year old process that we only know the very basics of. Here some cardinals give a bit of personal reflection and anecdotes about the week.
A really cute short film. I had an experience just like this as a little kid in Germany (I believe). I was walking alongside my parents looking at shop windows, suddenly I reached up to grab my mother’s hand – only to hear my mother call out to me from several feet behind. I glanced up to see a rather startled woman who was not my mother and darted straight back to Mum embarrassed.
There have been a lot of hard but positive steps for some local feminist movements that I’m involved in, so in recognition I bring you – this fabulous thing I found. Break your rule I implore you and for once read the comments!
The world is amazing, historical and archeological treasures beneath our feet! I once found a partially finished knapped flint in a dried up riverbed in Texas, and the village we lived in England is famous for a trove of ancient metal goods that someone found in a garden. Clearly the message is get digging!
The last two days have been gorgeous – hands down the brightest, clearest, warm-but-still-comfortably-cool-est days in months. Couples were draped across each other all over the campus lawns, disregarding the still prickly and half brown grass in a desperate attempt to soak up as much Vitamin D as physically possible before the inevitable downward trend (which weather.com assures me is imminent). Skirts and trousers were rolled up to expose pasty legs in need of color, inviting the usual commentary from the self-righteous. Students were playing lawn games and screeching like children. It’s as bad as Britain around here, the sun comes out and we go bonkers!
Alas I got to admire all this from behind the windows of the county buildings, my office, and the student center. I am really looking forward to my summer of transitional employment: I plan to tramp around in the woods and eat outdoors as much as possible.
As to more practical matters, I’d resolved to put in some serious time and effort to become more tech-savvy and multiple-medium capable during this same hedonistic summer, but Google is beating me to the punch. Google Reader is going away and I need something to replace it with. I’ve already checked out Netvibes and Bloglovin’ but I’m interested in a broad base of commentary. Techie minions to the front (Savvy and Venice, query your husbands too) and tell me what apps, tools, and services you use that I – but a novice in the ways of all things current – need to know!
“I’ve never had a problem with drugs. I’ve had problems with the police.”
~Keith Richards
Stand down, darling, the kitchen is safe!
Things have gotten uncharacteristically serious lately here at Small Dog Snappy Comebacks and Humorous Life Stories Inc.! Regular programing will resume immediately.
I came into work this morning to find a fine white powder covering my desk. Honest to goodness my first thought was, “Great. I don’t know how to clean up cocaine. Who spilled this?” Luckily it turns out repairmen were just crawling around our ceiling space last night and knocking dust loose.
Yesterday a small museum on campus currently being renovated defied the odds and physics when a supposedly inflammable material caught fire. No one was hurt and the area in question was basically a construction site so no collections were even in the area to be damaged. All in all, a hugely surprising but manageable emergency. What followed, based on communication from concerned citizens:
“The museum is on fire!”
“Thank you, we’ve got first responders on the way.”
“Did you guys know the museum is on fire?!”
“Yes, we’re responding now.”
“My daughter just called me and told me the university was on fire!”
“No, sir, just one building and it’s been contained.”
“OMG I just saw on Twitter that the university has burned down, are classes cancelled?!”
“You’ll need to talk to your professors but I’m going to go out on a limb and say not a chance.”
“I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.” – W. Somerset Maugham
Picture: a man with a good reason to feel unequal to his tasks and tired. Not pictured: me, grumbling about going to the gym. (via)
The Pope’s resigning today (something with only semi-historical precedent that makes medieval history buffs like me giddy with the newness and compels us to dive into dry tomes for more information). I’ve decided today to resign something as well… the month of February. Retire it. Let is sink slowly into a life of contemplation and ring in the new month with pomp.
February was rough this year. The usual blah-ness of winter combined with a lot of stress at work, mixed with a bad case in particular, a dash of unpleasant surprise with our landlords, and just a soupcon of perpetual grumpiness meant that I spent Februrary cranky. Some years I get a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder and I think I came down with it in January and February. What’s more I allowed myself to become discouraged and glum, which is a hard cycle to break when it’s freezing cold and dark outside.
No more! I’m diving into Mad March Hare-ness with abandon!
Tonight I have a ticket to hear an academic and personal hero speak. I have a new game plan for some personal projects that aren’t paying out just yet, but I already feel much better about. I’m shuffling off some the easy selfishness I’ve fallen into and helping out some friends. I’m not eating ice cream for dinner. Progress already, I feel.
Speak up minions, what’s a good way to counteract discouragement and the winter blues?
I’m putting together some pieces about what I’ve learned from some of the less typical aspects of my current job as it winds to a close, but it struck me that as I’m gearing up for a new job (hopefully a career) in the near future, I’m already getting some insights into the brave new world of post-university employment.
Working on the Mysterious Project in particular (still secret, details coming soon) has been eyeopening. It’s been a crash course from an insider on the nitty gritty details of an industry I hope to work in some day in some capacity. It’s absolutely invaluable, frankly a lot of fun, and if I could do it full time I would in a heart beat…but it’s also giving me a view into how a lot of the world works and the findings have been surprising.
My day job can be roughly described as being the “exclusive personal assistant” to forty separate people, in addition to day to day operations for the department. I’m constantly juggling priorities, assignments, and shifting duties. The job I have now is not the job I was hired four years ago to do in a lot of ways. But in spite of almost constant upheaval (between big cases and department crises), every email is answered and every phone message is returned. It’s not even an option for me not to.
Working on the MP means constant phone calls and emails – and I have been shocked at how few are responded to. My prior internships and jobs (NATO, and International Student Services, even research assistant!) all required quick turn around time and explicit acknowledgement of messages. I didn’t realize that some professions didn’t have that same expectation! It’s aggravating in the extreme to hear, “Oh yeah, I got that a month ago but I haven’t got around to it yet,” when I’m holding myself to a policy of same day (preferably same hour) response time.
The day job also requires pretty concrete time frames. “C., I need this done by X day to be ready for Y court date.” On it. “C., this project takes priority over everything else until it’s done.” Understood. “This isn’t a big deal, but could you tell me when you could have it done by?” “I will have this to you by end of day/week.”
I was assured an answer to a question last Friday for the MP. Nearly one week later, nada. They’ve now assured me I’ll probably hear something this week, but I’m not confident at all they’ll do so without more follow up from me.
Work on the other side of the police department counter is going to be alright. More than alright, I’m really looking forward to it, but it’s been odd to see a completely different work paradigm from the one I’ve used and functioned in since I was 16. It’s never convenient to realize that there are other operating systems out in the universe, it means you have to play catch up. Luckily, I’m more than ready for the challenge!
“One cannot spend one’s entire life running into bathrooms when danger calls!” ― Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
As my time here at Noneofyourbusiness University PD winds down, I’ve got to thinking about what I’ve learned working here. Sure my typing is faster than it’s ever been and I can set up last minute blood drives, but there are a lot of little things you pick up at a job that have nothing to do with your day to day responsibilities. Here are some unexpected lessons I’ve learned dropping off and picking up laundry – which involves a lot of time in the men’s restroom.
Knock first. Some surprises aren’t pleasant.
People take you largely at your own estimation. I flat out frightened more than a few boys who wandered in and found me unexpectedly found me hanging gear on lockers, believe me I never thought it would become part of my job description either, but I learned that simply acting like you know what you’re doing is a great deterrent to questions and complaints. I hope one day to test this theory by simply walking into a high security facility.
Things are only strange until they become routine. These days absolutely no one is surprised to see me going about my job in the bathroom, and the guys are all pretty laid back about it. Life’s curveballs turn into your new reality pretty quickly, might as well learn to roll with the punches. (And mix metaphors as necessary.)
Dogsbody work is rough, and the people who do it should be appreciated. I routinely lug 30+ lbs. of clothing around, the hangers have cut my hands, doors have slammed on me, and people (in misguided attempts to be funny) have neglected to hold doors when I’ve asked, in spite of the fact that I’m performing a service for them. I hate it. Which now means when I see somebody struggling with a hard task, the moral thing to do is lend a hand if I can.
People will blame you for their own errors, like telling the Chief that you are responsible for their lost pants when they have been hanging in his home locker for weeks (I might take that anger to my grave). It’s a fact of life. Remember how grouchy it made you and try to make sure you’re never guilty of the same behavior.
Find the humor. It make be a thankless chore, but there’s nothing like the look on a seasoned, grizzled man’s face when you skip merrily out of the men’s room with a chipper, “Good morning!” to make it a little less onerous.
Small Dog Syndrome 