Jobs

The prompt for this week's Sunday Scribblings was jobs: first job, worst job, dream job.

As I have said before on my blog, I have a career by accident. To me jobs have always been that which you do to get money so you can live, and also to get out of the house so you don't wind up climbing up the walls. If I was domestically inclined and we could afford it, maybe I would be a homemaker. But I am a terrible housekeeper, and I like to have money of my own, so that is out of the question.

1- First job: When I as little, my parents had a small store where I worked. To me that did not really count as a job. My first real job was at 16, a summer job at the Berwind branch of the Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito Manuel Zeno Gandía. I was an office clerk, doing a lot of filing for the most part. I was paid very little, but I loved it.

2- Worst job: My worst job lasted about three or four months, I think. I worked as a secretary for this software developer guy who was a total douche. He was a terrible administrator of his business and had zero people skills. He was downright abusive to his employees when he was in the office, which was not very often. Once he called me into his office excitedly. "Mira lo que te tengo aquí" (look what I got for you here), he said. What he had was a complete mess of folders and papers strewn all over the floor in his office. Obviously the dude had been looking for something and felt the urge to throw all his shit on the floor. And who better to pick it up than his secretary?

The same guy had the nerve to call me into his office to falsely accuse me of spending all my day making personal calls on the office phone. If he even remotely paid attention, he would know I am most certainly not a phone-chatting person. He was stressed out and cranky about who knows what, and decided to take it out on me. I am pretty conciliatory in life and mindful of keeping on the good side of bosses. When you need the money you learn to be. But this time I could not take it. The boss was full of shit and I was not going to admit to something that was downright untrue. So I called his bluff and said he was wrong. He said "what kind of a world we live in when a man can't call his secretary into his office and scold her?" I told him I was quitting, grabbed my purse and walked out. I had never before done something like that, and I have never again had the need to do it again. It felt so good, putting that jerk in his place. It felt even better when his second in command kept calling me begging me to come back to work. But there was no way in hell I was going back to that dump.

3- Dream job: I don't have ONE dream job, although there are quite a few things that I would love to do. For instance, I would love to be a software tester, a super user, the kind of person who is given software in development to play with it, figure it out, find the bugs and kinks and report on ease of use and other factors. I would also love to be a freelance writer of short stories. One that I would love to do in the future, maybe as a volunteer if time permits, is to be an interpreter/patient advocate for Spanish-speaking hospital patients and their families who do not speak English. Years ago, when I lived in Wisconsin, I once volunteered in this capacity and I would like to have the opportunity to do it again someday.



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