"Welcome to Paradise"

In response to Molly  yes, I do have a job. Not a career kind of job, but a job that pays the bills and so far hasn’t prompted me to do anything rash like jump out windows or attempt to have my manager fired.

Well, strictly speaking, that’s not totally true (the part about management is kind of true in this job as well- do managers exist that aren’t complete f*ckwits?) but its progress for sure.

On one of my very first days here the girl that was training me said something along the lines of “welcome to paradise” because I expressed awe that we were allowed to just go ahead and order lunch for meetings, that supplies were ordered willy-nilly and that people seemed to like their HR department. Not just like ,but seek out and laugh with the HR department (probably because that’s who orders the booze for all the parties).

Despite having once referred to HR reps as corporate prostitutes, I’m now wondering if there is space for me in this department. Or the Corporate Learning Centre (which I would probably have thought of as some kind of brainwashing scam but here they offer cookies). Only here though. I still believe they mostly exist to protect corporate bottom lines, not the people that they work with.

Where am I going with all this? I guess what I’m trying to say is that I sense a fundamental shift in the way I view my working life and nowhere is this more apparent than in my dragon boating.

Not only is this physical exercise (something I’m apparently allergic to normally) but it involves hours spent on the water (with nowhere to go) with the people that I work with. Before, I couldn’t even stomach eating free cake around the people that I called my colleagues (using the term in its loosest possible interpretation) and now? I’m wearing sweatpants, throwing my hair in a ponytail, and grunting with the effort of pushing the paddle as deep in the water as possible around these folks. And? Sometimes my mascara runs.

The strangest part of all is that I like it. I look forward to it. I try to recruit other people because “it’s so much fun” and “the people that are doing it are so great”. What is the matter with me? Who is this person I have become?

Even though I’m stuck in kind of a sh*t position (no matter which way you slice it, Reception really can suck), in general, I really like it here. I like the fact that I get every other Friday off (as a reward for getting here at 7:30 every day and working til 5), I like that they organize dragon boat teams and curling nights and Christmas parties that actually serve alcohol (you didn’t know that my last place wasn’t for the alcohol? No booze ever) and that they even have a social conscience (blood drives, food drives [not even just at Christmas time] and all sorts of runs to end poverty and disease).

I think I’m trying to tell you that, on most days, I like coming to work.

And I’m still trying to get used to that feeling.

Of course there are still days when someone beckons me over with the curling of a finger, a gesture filled with condescension, or when the Squirrel does/says something really petty and ridiculous. The Dinosaur has her head so far up her a$$ her eyes are brown so she can be a real challenge to work around. But I’m not the only one that sees these things. Other people are aware and they are trying to help.

And in the end?

That makes a world of difference to me.