So here I am. Roughly a year and change after leaving my cushy office job to pursue my newfound dreams of teaching I find myself back in the office chair at a cushy temporary job at yet another financial firm.
My main responsibility at this place is to look neat, answer phones and greet guests as they come into the office. When I'm not transferring callers I get to play data entry clerk and type in bar codes and item descriptions for a seemingly endless stack of records that need to be filed. On my off time I get to surf the internet and catch up on the lastest news (Top Kill only killed the hope of staunching leaking oil, Gulf of Mexico is screwed) and gossip (Heidi and Spencer faked their breakup surprise surprise). And to top it all off, I actually get paid for it! Very exciting considering my excessively anorexic financial status of late.
Compared to my student teaching stint (where I graded papers, prepared lessons, created tests AND coaced the academic club for absolutely nothing save the pleasure of finally getting a provisional teaching license) this job is a walk in the park.
While I sit here trying to look busy I find my tallying up the pros and cons of corporate office life
PRO
- Coffee pantries (this particular office has 12 different flavored creamers AND free granola bars!)
- Air conditioning (though I am wearing a blazer, I am comfy in my 68 degree office)
- Office supply closets (I love shopping here, if only for my desk. It's like low cost retail therapy)
- Wearing heels (and then taking them off under the desk. It feels nice. Especially with air conditioning)
- Surfing the internet (since I have to be here until 5:30 and actual work only takes about 2 - 3 hours I have oodles and oodles of time to spend Googling stuff. Like superflous, calories in a cobb salad, and Marina Abramovic)
CONS
- Redundancy (After a few weeks doing the same thing everyday begins to suck, unless you like it in which case it is awesome)
- Windowless prisons (most offices I've been in have been windowless caves that cut you off from the outside world. Perhaps to ensure that you are unaware of the passage of time...hmm..)
- Office politics (Wherever you go there is bound to be a boss, a co-worker or a colleague who is just plain unhappy with life. The kicker is that you get to spend 40 hours a week with them until one of you quits or gets fired. Which sucks, because really guys who wants to spend most of their lives with cranky people?)
And perhaps the single biggest con for me is that whole working to live, not living to work thing. For those of us not fortunate enough to be born rich the reality of life is that we need to earn money for things like food, shelter and the occasional vacation. If you've have to it might as well be doing something you like to do.
Which brings me back to teaching. Which I really really really like. Now if only I can get paid to do it....
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