Life in Technicolor

As my time in a “real job” is coming to a close, I think about how these past 4 years have had an impact on my life. I wish it hadn’t taken me this long to get my ass in gear, but I think I’m glad for the experience all the same. Each year brought different work experiences, as I hopped around the company from one position to the next. If nothing else, this job gave me a great-sounding resume.

I don’t know what my experience would have been like at a different company or a different city, or even at a different state altogether. From what I hear, my work life has not been much different from other people’s corporate experiences all over the country. If that’s the case, I want nothing more to do with it. I don’t want to become one of those workaholics who check their work email at 10pm or later every night, who stress over font sizes and sticker placements and other things that honestly don’t matter that much. I don’t want frantic phone calls at 4am from people who are freaking out about spreadsheets and database errors. I can’t bring myself to care that much, nor do I want to. There is so much more to life than whether a UPC ends with a 5 or a 4.

And all that crap messes with your head – it really does. I have met so many people driven to near-insanity by all this inane, meaningless nonsense. They start caring WAY too much for this job, spend way too many waking hours thinking about it, and it consumes them. Like I overheard a woman complaining to her manager that she wasn’t allowed to work the Saturday before Christmas. Complaining! She was actually visibly angry! Are her family and friends so horrible that she doesn’t want to spend any of her free time with them? And that’s not to mention all the petty, backstabbing, bitchiness that comes out of some people in this environment. People get angry, because at some point, they realize that they care so much about this job, but the job doesn’t really care about them. They’re expendable, and people lash out at their coworkers because they have long since forgotten how to take control over their lives. They’re stuck at this dead-end job – have been for years, probably – that conditions you to think that Right Here is safe, and nothing could possibly make you happier Out There. All this, despite the fact that, depending on the economy or the company’s stock price, they could be laid off and Out There at the drop of a hat. Without warning. Without preparation.

Still, it’s not all bad. I’ve made some friends and really expanded my understanding of who I could potentially get along with. There’s this lady – she’s brash and loud and tactless. Her grammar is terrible, she says “axe” instead of “ask”, and thinks Disneyland is only for kids. She’s occasionally rude, always argumentative, and often quick-tempered. But, you know, after I got used to her… I think she’s awesome. She works hard, she’s absolutely hilarious, very friendly, and hides a genuine kindness beneath her rough exterior. Working here has taught me so much about different types of people. I’ve learned how much patience I can have with people of varying backgrounds, personalities, and intellects. But, (more importantly, I think) I’ve discovered how much more patience I have yet to learn. It’s humbling, because here I was, thinking how tolerant I am of annoying or difficult people. Then I’m assigned to share a cubicle with an utterly irritating person. So now Tolerant Me is constantly raising my voice and making snide comments and wanting to throttle my cubicle-mate. I want to be more patient, to let all the annoying things just slide off my back. But I think there’s a limit to everyone’s patience, and I know that if there is more patience for me to learn, this just isn’t the environment for it. I’ll probably go crazy first.

A coworker and kind-of-friend asked me whether I’ll miss this place. I wasn’t sure how to answer. People expect you to say, “Yeah, I wasn’t expecting it, but I think I’ll really miss working here.” Instead, I answered that I wouldn’t miss the work, but I’ll miss the people. Which is half-true, I suppose. There are some people I’ll miss, but I think most of them I won’t. For most of them, I’ll think of them when reminiscing on times long past and say things like, “I used to work with this lady named Meg. She was nice.” Or “Remember my cubicle-mate? Boy, did I want to punch him in the face!” As for working here, I think the best thing I could say about it is that I know what I’m doing, I’m good at it, and I draw comfort from that fact. But I will certainly never wish I could come work here again, nor will I ever wish I could go back “to the good ol’ days” at Technicolor. This was certainly a learning experience. But the 4 years are over – it’s time to graduate.