So obviously I had my big day of work today. First day back at a real job for really 6 or 7 years. It was odd, and very nerve-wracking. The whole day was rather boring. The company I was working for had not previously had a new employee for a whole year, today they had nine. They were not at all ready for us. Me in particular it seems, as they didn’t even have my name until the evening before so I didn’t have anything, a computer or login or anything.
This day of work really got me thinking of the condition of work. Nobody likes work (unless they are doing something that they actually love), but everyone deals with it. Despite spending much of the day staring at a blue cubicle wall, I didn’t necessarily mind. I spent the day thinking how much better this was than my previous jobs of selling shoes or working in the grill at McDonald’s. So much less pressure, less of a physical toll on my body, and far more pay. It is truly odd that in order to get the decent jobs, we often have to go through the crappy ones. And even worse, those crappy ones are largely crappy because they pay so much less than the good ones.
This made me think, perhaps those crappy ones are a way to condition us. In high school, we can’t necessarily complain about how bad those jobs are… but perhaps they make us appreciate the ones we have so much more. You know the ones we tend to end up with for a longer period of life.
My roommate works what I would consider a much better job than I have now. She gets paid a decent amount more than I do, they get free soda, free movies, free food, she isn’t too stressed out, the people are nice, they are very flexible on when she works, and I think they even give discounts to some apartment complexes in the area. I think this is great. The main complaint she has is that they don’t have enough work for her, yet from what I gather, they have more work for her than I had today and I was fine with today, I would prefer to do something, but would rather do nothing than be swamped. Yet she hates this job. She thinks it is the worst job she ever had, whereas I, and many others I have known in previous years, would kill for such a job as she has.
The difference may be that she has pretty much always done what she does. Her first job was gotten via an in at a company her dad worked at. Previous to that she had been a baby sitter. Maybe why she complains so much is that she didn’t get beaten in by McDonald’s and what not. Maybe if she had, she would love this job. Maybe if I had the kushy past that she has, I would complain when I sit around for 4 hours doing absolutely nothing but staring at walls.
I don’t know, but I do find the whole experience rather strange. I still hope that tomorrow they have more for me to do than today. I feel like I’m wasting their money which is an odd thing for me to care about.