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“We’re looking at October to bring a new person on.”
I sat there kinda looking for eye contact. Also trying to avoid it. Not really sure if it reflected better on me to look her straight in the eyes or just type something random and pretend I was doing something interesting.
There’s one word for my job: Boring. It’s just slow. She knows it. I know it. There isn’t much left for me in my job. Yet I hold on because I got a mouth to feed (myself) and by the time literally anything gets through HR I could be in a nursing home.
It’s not even like I’m dying here. It could be way worse. My employer is rated wayyy higher than most on Glassdoor. But it did make me go back to my office, sit in the corner for a minute and just whisper to myself like a weirdo.
“How did everyone get so damn boring?”
The problem with jobs is not only that they can lack fulfillment — It’s not only that they either give you way too much or way too little to do — It’s not that they will fight tooth and nail to pay you less than you deserve.
None of those.
For me, it’s having to rely on inconsistent and uninspired people. People who don’t really want to be here. People who clearly got stuck in the first job they found, made a few moves and now wait out the time until retirement.
Every day I feel like there is an internal battle to not let myself get like that. To know that if I can create something far better. Something I can care for and nurture and help grow that will actually feel like it’s making some sort of a difference.
My co-workers sleepwalk. My supervisor sleepwalks. Heck, even our clients are sleepwalking through their time with us.
If it wasn’t for the coffee I don’t know if people would be breathing, y’all. But hey, maybe that’s what we all need. To lose our breaths, choke for a second on a piece of dust and suddenly get a damn wake-up call.
Until then, though, we’ll just keep sitting here with the white walls and filled up browser histories. Hopelessly waiting for 5pm to roll around, numbing ourselves with some food and the television, just to start it all over again.
This place isn’t literally empty. Not at all.
But everyone else is.
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This post was previously published on www.medium.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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