Pre-Unemployment

I have to go to work 4 more times. While it winds down, I’m being struck by a bit of pre-nostalgia, and while there were always things I liked about my job, I’m realizing that it’s neem way better than I ever gave it credit. I have friends with micro-managers who watch the clock and are aware of how long they’ve been in the restroom, a friend who has to have her timesheet approved by her boss on a daily basis. I have friends who have little or no internet access, a friend who can’t have a plant on her desk because of her ranking at the company (but coworkers in desks nearby can have plants and receive personal phone calls). I have friends who can’t stand the people they work with and friends whose jobs have cliques that they aren’t welcome into. I have no shortage of great friends and people to hang out with at my job, and I’m grateful for that, and I know I’ll maintain my connections with them.

Frankly, the cubicle life is not for me, but there are a few things about this particular job I loved.

MY BOSS: I’ve had many jobs with good managers, bad managers, psycho managers, and I know a good one when I’ve got one, and this one was the best. He has done the job for years and years and therefore was the kind of manager who could do my job better than I can (which is  a rarity!). He did 99.9% of my training and was always patient and kind, impatient and annoyed only once or twice.  He treated me with respect and checked in to see if I was in the weeds. His encouragement, kindness, and trust made me want to learn the job and be productive. (Then the company was sold and he became my co-worker again, but that didn’t diminish my admiration and respect for him).

INTERNET ACCESS: Nothing is blocked that I’ve discovered and I’m not monitored (to the best of  my knowledge). When it was slow or if I really needed a break from the crap I was working on, I would play a turn in Wordscraper, post a Tweet or a Blip, check my email. Sometimes I’d grade some quizzes and enter the grades online.  My boss knew I did these things and chided me occasionally, but it only mattered to him that I got my work done. And I did. I have friends who have no access besides the company intranet and others who do have access, taunting them like a cupcake in a cupboard, but who were explicitly told that if they went to any website beyond the five they needed for their jobs, they were in deep doodoo.

FREE FEMININE PRODUCTS: It took months for me to discover this (I wish someone had told me), but the tampon and pad machine in the women’s restroom by the cafeteria doesn’t require a coin. Just turn the crank and the tampon comes out! Granted, they’re old-school Tampax (the crappiest tampons known to womankind), and they have way too much packaging (a wrapper and a cardboard tube– is all that necessary??) so I generally brought my own, but it was still helpful to have them there in a pinch and it’s a nice gesture on behalf of the workplace.

REMOTE DESKTOP: True, when you’re used to big dual monitors at work, it’s hard to work at home with just one puny laptop screen and the performance is slower, but the option to work from home is a nice thing. There were giant snowstorms and plumbing emergencies that kept me home and remote desktop prevented me from having to take sick time or vacation. w00t!

NO TIMECLOCK: At this job, we’re expected to put in our 40 hours a week (I’m salaried), and I never had a designated start or stop time. If I want to go out to lunch, I go out to lunch. If I want to go to Stone Creek coffee at 10:30, that’s what I do. I found out in April that I was being laid off, and I’ll admit that in the last few weeks, I’ve definitely taken advantage of the freedom and the fact that my new boss is in Boston, but overall, it goes back to the non-micromanaging attitude my previous boss had with me. A caffeinated writer is more productive, afterall.

THE PATHS OUT BACK: Behind this office building is a cluster of woods with paths and wetlands. In the spring, there are countless species of wildflowers to admire. There are frogs and chipmunks and skinny little snakes. There are birds and mosquitos and deerflies. It’s fantastic to have access to such a thing, and with the relaxed dress code around here, I never worried about getting dirty.

In a month, I’ll have another thing to add to the list with nostalgia: a paycheck.

HIMYM: Not since Ally McBeal have Mondays been so tolerable

As a pop culture junkie and borderline geek, I am certainly NOT one of those people who “doesn’t watch television.” Actually, I get annoyed with people who say they don’t watch TV or don’t have a TV because usually those are the people who simply want people to think they don’t watch TV, thinking that the lack of TV somehow makes them more intellectual.*  In reality, the absence of TV doesn’t make you smarter; the lack of other things (like, oh, reading, communication with other human beings, and doing Sudoku) makes you stupid. Some shows are better than others, of course, and sometimes a fun, well-written sitcom hits the spot. And for me, examples of those shows are Scrubs, 30 Rock,  and How I Met Your Mother.

Best show you're not watching.

Last night’s episode was an example of what a sitcom should be: inside jokes that play off the personalities of the characters, comforting predictability with a little twist, and even some humor based on stereotypes. Last night HIMYM even came through with its characteristic Canadian stereotype humor and with a terrific bit of  ”kidding on the square.” (That’s where you’re telling the truth, but you say it sarcastically because you want the listener to think you’re joking. I do it all the time when I joke about my sex life and debt).

Since Alyson Hannigan announced her pregnancy, the show has been playing with how/if they might write in a pregnancy for her character, Lily. But now both HIMYM female lead actors are pregnant, as Canadian hottie, Colbie Smulders,  recently announced her pregnancy too. Luckily, if they choose not to write hers into the show, it will be easy enough to keep her hidden in the booth at the bar, and just maybe Robin will get another news job where she can be safely hidden behind a desk.

We'll be seeing her, but not much of her.

In the year between undergrad and grad school, I had a job that I detested, and Mondays made me depressed.  Not like the usual Monday blahs I get now, but severly bummed out. And I would look forward all day to watching Ally McBeal on my snowy little television in my apartment in St. Paul. This is the story: I was a long-term temp placed at an insurance company in the middle of a huge class-action law suit. Turns out, in the 80s, a bunch of crooked insurance agents realized that they could use dividends earned on one life insurance policy to pay premiums on additional policies. This put extra commission into the pockets of the agents and rendered the original policies useless so when the person died, there was little or no payout to the beneficiaries. There was indeed a paper trail on all of this, scanned in by some unfortunate soul. I used excel spreadsheets to trace the funding of these fraudulent policies, and a bunch of interest was added on and many checks were cut. It was a slight consolation to me that the harder I worked, the more the company was screwed.

It was soul-crushing work.  At the time, I thought it was merely having a cubicle that destroyed my gentle spirit, but it was that job.  It was a depressing conglomerate that hired temps on full time if they were male, had smoke breaks with the managers or went drinking with them after work, or went golfing with them on Saturdays (preferably all of the above).

I was not hired on, and was thrilled when the job ended and was even more ecstatic when I moved to Tallahassee, was teaching and in school again, and got cable.

Mondays aren’t nearly so miserable for me now; I sometimes dislike parts of my job, sure, but I like it overall. And with loved ones and strangers out of work not by choice, that’s a pretty good place to be.

*That reminds me of a friend I had who was one of those “I don’t like TV” people, but whenever I wanted to know what was going on on Days of our Lives, I knew she could give me the skinny. I never had the balls to call her on it and she never seemed to figure out what I was doing, even if I asked her about it right in the middle of one of her anti-TV rants. We’re all hypocrites in some ways, but that was just rich.