Day 1: A Deal With the Devil

I am a "creative type." I enjoy brainstorming, conceptual tasks, music, cartoons, jokes, and handicrafts. For some reason, I haven't been able to get my foot into the door of an industry that will (1) allow me to exercise that creativity, and (2) pay me money. I have been searching for that kind of work, but all I've been able to do is muse: maybe I could be a pop-culture critic like the Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub...maybe I could be one of those marketing campaign whiz-kids like Helen Hunt in What Women Want...maybe I could change the world of movie reviews by evaluating the quality of a film in song, say, to the tune of "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon?
(FYI I am actually trying that last one: http://speakfrenchoakland.com/sarah_sings_the_movies_to_the_tune_of_werewolves/)

But these creative, out-of-the-box jobs are the most sought-after, and in this economic climate, many of them have been cut. Thus, for those of us who don't have the financial luxury to remain unemployed and creative, we need to hold down jobs that are remunerative but SOUL-SUCKING: desk jobs, retail jobs, screwing caps onto toothpaste tubes, pet-sitting for hypoallergenic cats in the posh apartments of jerks who have "made it," answering phone calls, making phone calls, transferring phone calls, updating databases...

I took one of those jobs today.

I am writing this in the evening after my first day. My spirit hasn't recovered from the beating--it is still weeping in a corner, licking its fresh wounds. I wish that I had the clarity, that healthy remove, to be able to write about the experience in a sober, good-humored voice, but I am afraid that this inaugural blog post will have to be what it is: the rant of a bitter, remorseful, newly admitted inmate who had no idea that the ball and chain affixed to her ankle would feel so heavy and so demeaning.

Here is what happened.

I walk in and I'm shown to my cubicle. Then I'm introduced to a fellow administrative assistant who will be showing me some of the ropes. She is identical to the rest of them--in her early thirties, friendly, extremely good at what she does. She wears flat, opened-toe shoes and a roam-around phone headset. She is full of saccharine cheer. THEY ARE ALL LIKE THAT. THEY ARE ALL EXACTLY LIKE THAT.

She shows me the database. Her (gasp...OUR) company manufactures most of their goods in Chinese factories, so she shows me the prices that we quote when we ship directly from China, or when we ship to our warehouse and then to the customer. She says that big items cost more, duh, not only because they're bigger but because you can't fit as many into one of those containers that travel from China to the U.S., first by ship and then by truck. This interests me because I recently watched The Wire, Season Two, where a criminal clan works that Baltimore port system so that they can import illegal things such as drugs and prostitutes. My colleague is talking to me about how many pallets of garden hoses you can fit into a container and I'm thinking that one of those containers full of garden hoses might have a false back, and behind that false back there might be a gaggle of Easter European women being shipped from China to America to be sold into sexual slavery. This is interesting to me. I thank heavens that I had watched The Wire, Season Two, because if I hadn't this business about the overseas shipping containers wouldn't have piqued my interest and I would have been sitting there, glassy-eyed, suicidal.

My colleague starts explaining something about the differing profit margins. My lip starts to tremble. Something inside me has snapped. I realize now that, while I was talking myself into taking this job ("My money worries will end"..."I'll learn new things"..."I'll make time for my other creative pursuits"...), I WASN'T MAKING A DEAL WITH MYSELF! I was making a deal with the devil. Whenever you compromise joy for money, you enter into an agreement with Shaitan. Do you remember that movie Bearskin? I'm sure you watched it when you were in grade school. It's one of those grade-school movies that gets lodged in your brain, that you carry around with you for the rest of your life, that color your entire experience of living. So in this film, this struggling war veteran enters into negotiations with the devil, agreeing to abstain from washing, shaving, or praying for SEVEN YEARS, during which time he must wear a bear pelt. If at the end of that time he is alive, he will be able to clean himself AND he'll have all the money he'll ever want: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVws9-lIP24

I made a deal with the devil. I will endure the yoke of this harrowing work experience for MONEY. So that on the other end, I can go back to school, write a book, learn how to speak Hindi, and travel to some exotic land. I am Bearskin, and this job is my bloody bear pelt. I WILL WEAR IT. I am BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRRSSSSSKKKKKKKKKIIIIIIINNNNN!

Anyway, more about my first day at work.

Lunchtime finally arrives and the place is in the middle of nowhere and I'm bawling like a kindergartner on her first day of school so I drive to a mini-mart and sit in the car for a while. I call my mom, dad, brother, and boyfriend for moral support. Because it's a sweltering 85 degrees outside and 100+ in the car, I get out (still bawling) and lean up against the side of the mini-mart. While I'm soliciting some valuable fatherly advice from my dad, a man in an El Camino low-rider pulls up. While I'm bawling and scrunching my entire body up into a ball, steadying myself somewhat against the cinderblock building, this man goes into the mart and comes out and gets back into his car. He can see I'm in a state. And on the phone. But that doesn't stop him from getting out of the car and putting a cup of STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM on my knee. "Take this," he says, giving me a wink. "It's deeeeeeeeelicious. Like you."

Here's the thing. This could have been an expansive, heartfelt gesture, a reaching-out to someone who was obviously going through something. But: I'm not so sure that the strawberry ice cream had come from the mini-mart. It was half-open, and it looked like one of those cups that you get from the cafeteria, with the flat, tiny wooden spoon and the paper top. What's more, I think he was coming on to me. I didn't know how to react. I thanked him with a bashful nod. Then, for whatever reason--because I wanted him to leave, because I wanted him to know that he hadn't given his ice cream to an ingrate, because I was hungry, because I was insane, because I was falling apart--I ate some of that ice cream. It was really good.

Return to the office parking lot. Put on make-up. Sit there, panicking, chest heaving, trying to drum up the zest to return to the building.

I need something...I need a pro and con list that will testify to more pros than cons. I need to start thinking of pros! To start fabricating pros! I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed pros. I am smart, I am a creative type, I've fabricated 25-page papers on Zola, I CAN MAKE UP REASONS TO LIKE THIS JOB, RIGHT???????

Um.

One...

I can wear whatever I want. Flip-flops. Okay, good.

Two...

I have my own printer, which means that I can print out things without anyone being the wiser. Tickets to concerts, DMV forms if I ever need to go to the DMV with my forms already filled out, random notes to myself. I even found some yellow paper in one of my cabinets, so I can print yellow things.

Three...

After three months I will be able to go to the doctor, the dentist, the psychiatrist and the gynecologist so that they can clean my thyroid, my teeth, my psyche, and my lady bits, respectively.

Four...

I am working on Four.

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I shouldn't be complaining--I have a job. But I can't help feeling like a casualty of the economy. Or my education that prepared me well for academia but ill for the professional world. Or a casualty of technological progress. I would be happier as a tenant farmer. Yes, we should mourn and lobby for those who are unemployed, but can we share a little sympathy for those who have TAKEN JOBS THAT MIGHT KILL THEM??????? Please consider me. I will return daily with tales of my struggle to cope for ONE YEAR with this unpleasant situation. Buy American.