Nepotism and good timing got me a job at the office where my dad works. He does sales or customer something. I mop floors. At no point will I complain about having paid employment. I find it somewhat amusing that I am currently employed in a position I could get if I dropped out of high school but I see nothing wrong with my job. It is fairly mindless and mostly involves watering plants, tying myself up in a vacuum cord and hunting down the criminal who keeps stomping his muddy feet all over the kitchen area. I also do some manual production. Stuffing envelopes and getting orders together. I had a month until I leave for camp and I needed something temporary. The guy before me got fired because "he had a brain the size of a flea" and here we are.
This is all fine and dandy. I get up at 5:30-5:45 am and I am home by 4 which gives me an hour to read at the forest preserve down the street before the dog walking crowd makes their rounds. If I have time which I haven't this week. It works well with my schedule, I'm getting paid well for what I'm doing, and I get to spend a couple hours a day with my dad which is pretty cool.
I'm trying to remember the last time I was spoken to like I was stupid. This does not include mansplaining. But like the other person truly believes that I lack the mental faculties to comprehend words larger than two consonants. I have my moments but in general, I'm fairly intelligent. As I become more and more comfortable with that and don't simply act unintelligent (for a variety of reasons) people talk to me less and less like I am. It makes sense but it has also been a while since I picked up on someone who thought I was inferior due to intellect. Age, gender, SES, sure. Intelligence, nope.
It is quite interesting meeting people as the daughter of their coworker who was about the graduate with a master's degree and just returned home from an internship in Rwanda and then interacting with them as basically a janitor and how that changes the way they speak to me because it does. They go from asking me for book recommendations to smiling and averting their eyes. Roughly half of those who do talk to me do so in simple sentences.
I won't bother going into details about the guy who pills food on the counter, looks at me, puts his garbage down next to it, and walks out of the room. Seriously, what self-respecting human over the age of four DOES THAT?
My favorite comment so far was on the my first day. A man came up to me and said, you are so pretty, why are you cleaning offices? ... Excuse me sir, but what on EARTH does that mean? What would you suggest I do? Go smile on the streets? That would make me either a beggar or a prostitute and I'm not interested in either of those situations. I was so confused that I shook my head and walked away. The same man later said he thought I was 16. That's not creepy or anything.
The point of all of this is, I get to leave. In two weeks I will be on my way to camp and then hopefully on to a job that I can appropriately use the 6 years of school I just finished. But most people who are working in my position don't have that option. In general, people don't choose to wash floors over just about any other job. This job is frustrating not because I empty the same recycling bin day after day but because the people I work with treat me as if that is all I am or all that I am capable of. I hate to think that people spend their lives doing this. No one deserves to be treated as less than based on occupation. Or really anything else if we are going to get down to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment