Blogging about Work

So a year ago tomorrow I had my second interview for my job. I left that interview feeling excited about possibly working for the company that I do and excited about possibly leaving my job at Target, because if I would have had to work there one more day I would have taken that bulls eye a little TOO seriously. A few days after my interview I got an offer letter from my company and (obviously) accepted.

I know you shouldn’t blog about work, but I’m past caring about my job. Any excitement I had about working here went out the window months ago, when I witnessed my first firing. Since then I’ve felt like I’ve been walking on eggshells, and now that I’m back from maternity leave, it’s even worse. I’m in a constant state of annoyance and/or boredom. I don’t do what I got hired to do, which is to be a “web content writer.” I don’t even work on the website anymore. I write lame ass letters to “strategically” market to companies that never get mailed out and propose ways to organize our email listing that never get implemented. I retrieve and distribute the mail every other day. I sit in meetings that are about the same boring, repetitive ass shit several hours a day. I find myself not caring if I have a job or not. I’m just a glorified mail girl, after all.

I resigned myself to the fact last summer that my job will never be fulfilling and the company that I work for will never get its shit straight. I’m still here however, because it’s EASY. I’m well paid for the small amount of lame work that I do. Not SUPER well paid, but well paid for working in a small Western Pennsylvanian town. And I have benefits for my daughter. Plus a whole 2 weeks of vacation this year and nine paid holidays.

So what am I bitching about? My dad spent 36 years working on the railroad. He was outside every day, all day, in the heat of summer or the cold of winter. Rain or shine. He was jumping off trains to switch the tracks and broke his ankle once on the same day that my mom found out she was pregnant with me. You can still very clearly see the scar on his ankle and that was almost 30 years ago. Did he like his job? Maybe, maybe not. But he never bitched about it. My mom worked in a nursing home for 20 years. She hurt her back numerous times from lifting people in and out of their beds. She had to stick her finger up people’s asses to give them enemas. She had to deal with people backstabbing her all the time and RNs acting like she was a piece of shit because she didn’t have a nursing degree. Did she LIKE her job? Was it what she always wanted to do? No. Not at all. But she did it, and she did it well.


Can I really bitch that I sit in front of a computer all day that has unrestricted internet access? That I never have to endanger myself by jumping off of a moving train or do something as disgusting as digging the poop out of an Alzheimer patients butt? I have no fucking right to complain. At all. I left a job where I dealt with rude people all day and had to lift 27 inch TVs into peoples cars. At 5’5 and 140 pounds (when I worked there, not now) that was no easy feat. I hurt my back AND my knee working at Target. I had condescending bosses who pissed me off because I knew that I had more education under my belt than they would ever have. And the worst part about that was dealing with people who treated me like a piece of shit because they assumed that I was uneducated and stupid just because I worked in retail.

Today I’m feeling like I’d rather be back there. Because despite all of the bullshit, all of those bosses are gone now, and I had a job that actually DID like, if you were to take out the “dealing with the public” and “working on the weekends” part. I was an essential part of the company. My department couldn’t function without me. I had a leadership position and I learned how to make people respect AND like me at the same time. I worked hard and kept myself busy always. Everything was clearly spelled out for me and although a lot of my job was mindless bullshit, it made my day go fast. Plus I had friends that I could joke around with there. I’m lacking ALL of those things here.

Do I WANT to go back there? No, not at all. The truth is that I need to find something that I’m going to feel good about doing. Something that utilizes the many things that I’m good at and gives me purpose. I have no purpose now.

The point is that I do want my daughter to someday look at me, the way I look at my parents, and know that I worked hard so that she could have all the things that she wanted.

I’ll get there eventually. I’ve pinpointed the problem, and the next step is rectifying it.

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