A few months ago I received a random call from a staffing agency in Chicago. They wouldn’t tell me where they got my resume and wanted to interview me for a legal assistant position at a firm. Despite being somewhat shaded out by this, I figured What the hell?
If you don’t know me here’s some background. After four years of college at Marquette University in Milwaukee, my brain was recovering from the years of chemical enhancement. In this vulnerable state my brain, and myself in counterpart, decided to go right back into school for education.
I’m going to change the world, man. I know I can show those kids that school is cool.
Like I said, vulnerable brain from chemical enhancement equals ridiculous life decisions. It would be one thing if I thought that the pension was good, summers are relatively free, and it’s somewhat stable. Nope, chemical enhanced brain thinks
Grading papers will be, like, uh, totally fun.
So I start these classes at the local university. These classes are easier than a drunken chick at her last good friend’s wedding.
Oh lord I’m getting old! I’m going to sink these cocktail sauce covered nails into the first male that passes me. Okay, the one after Uncle Chuck.
Classes led to student teaching, which was very difficult. By the way grading papers is utterly mind numbing. Chemical enhanced mind has recovered enough by this point to come to this realization. Yet, all along my academic path everyone told me that I chose a great program.
Spanish teachers are in great need you know, you’ll have a job so quickly!
And then the economy fell to the floor like that easy drunken chick from the wedding and the government decided that we don’t need teachers anymore.
Why do the kids need teachers when they will never find a job anyway?
That being said I think you can assume by this point that I can’t find a job as a teacher. I’m not complaining because I don’t have to deal with high school students all day. You know you’re getting old when you look at high school kids and just laugh at how stupid they are. At the same time, you laugh at how stupid you were when you were in high school. It scares me night and day that I have started to agree with my parents about adult-like things. All of these kids – even the ‘smart ones’ are stupid. And that’s not to say they’ll all be dimwitted the rest of their lives, everyone is just generally stupid in high school. Real-life examples of high school stupidity:
There’s no good reason to drive your Mom’s minivan a hundred miles per hour.
Why did you jump out the window?
My hair will totally look cool purple.
Want to jump out of this van? No? Okay, we’ll just ride on the roof.
Yeah bro, we’re going to go drinking by those tracks where all the rats live.
Let’s go drive around and steal peoples’ pumpkins. Then throw them at their neighbors’ cars.
Going to see Scary Movie 2. You in?
Maybe your high school years were less destructive in terms of health and public property damage, but that just means you were abnormally mature.
So before I started this rant on school I was on the way to a job interview, right?
Right. So I go into this staffing agency downtown and it actually is not a scam! They make me perform a few tests to make sure I’ve seen a computer in the last fifteen years and tell me they will get back to me with a placement. They did and I find myself working at a non-profit daycare center in the city. The assignment is one-month long. Two weeks at the administrative office and two weeks at the school center doing data entry and meeting with a few clients from time to time. The staffing agency's placements are the start of good in-between jobs until I can find something better. Easy enough, sounds great to me.
Now I have never been in the typical office environment before. Ironically enough, it’s like being in high school. They give you eight hours to finish work that will take you maybe two hours and you are surrounded by a) stupid people b) people you don’t know, don't want to know or just straight up ignore c) the few people you have something in common with or d) people whose arrival prompts you pretend to do what you’re supposed to be doing.
Now I can make this observation because despite my assignment being for one month, I have now been at my assignment for two months. Here’s the problem. The non-profit keeps extending me by a week. Originally coming into the assignment, my strategy was simple:
Work and get the hell out of there. Restart next morning.
Because of my plan I was cordial to most folk and engaged in mindless small talk, but I didn’t bother to learn all of their names.
Why? My brain is already full of useless junk. I’m only here for a month. I’ll have to make room to learn these names, and then I’ll forget the Star Spangled Banner. That’s not okay with me because when I go to Hawks games, I want to look patriotic.
Maybe this makes me a bad person. Maybe I’m somewhat anti-social. Maybe I’m just prioritizing and allowing my brain to work at peak efficiency. Either way, after being extended over and over again, I only know about twenty five percent of the people’s names who I see every day.
Right now, I look forward to the next job I get. But I’m sure once I’m there for a month or two, there will be another one of these long rants. I may be a lot of things, but I’m definitely a very young old curmudgeon.
Ive been at my job over 5 years and I still dont know everyones name.
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