My first job
“This isn’t the type of place where everyone goes to happy hour after work,” the Creative Director at the agency where I was interviewing informed me.
“Uhh, okay.” I said. I wanted a job, not a drinking buddy.
But the me of six years ago wouldn’t have felt the same way. When I first came back to Maryland after spending four years in Vermont, it was a bit of an adjustment. Gone was the melange of hippies and snowboarders that I was used to seeing on a daily basis. I was back in my old stomping grounds but with nothing to stomp on. I had some friends from high school still in the area but four years and 500 miles changes a person. So I set off to find new friends.
I wanted to wait tables. I saw that as an opportunity to meet new people. And it was. I suddenly became engulfed in the server culture. I had a whole new group of friends and I liked it. But I wasn’t doing anything with my life and although I was okay with that, my parents, who paid $120,000 for my four smoke-filled years of college, were not.
So I got a job. I worked in the marketing art department of a DC newspaper. This was not the big newspaper. This was the “other” paper. I guess kind of like the “other white meat.” the one that no one really liked. Unless of course, they were a remember of the religious right. Or in a cult* I got lucky, in a way, because the art department was a fairly liberal bunch. We didn’t really fit with the rest of the people who worked at the paper.
It sounded somewhat glamourous if you forgot about the whole cult thing. Working for a DC newspaper. This was it. I was doing something actually related to my major. I would make new friends here. I was the baby of the department at 22. Although there were people that were also in their twenties, it too was not a type of place where everyone hung out after work. You picture DC and you picture the monuments, the mall, bustling sidewalks where people run in and out of starbucks. You picture friends and collegues going out for drinks in Georgetown or Capitol Hill. That DC exists, sure, but it wasn’t the one that I worked in. The paper was not in a good area. It was off a highway that connected DC with Maryland and the only place you could really walk to was a gas station and believe me, you wouldn't want to. We parked in a fenced in lot, commonly referred to as “The Cage.” In order to get to "The Cage," you had to walk past several warehouses that might or might not have had squatters in them. "The Cage" got broken into more than once.
The main problem with this job was not the area or the lack of social opportunities. It was the lack of work. Since the other DC paper was a million times more popular, everyone placed ads in it instead of us. There were 7 or 8 of us working 10 hour days with no lunch break sharing about an hour worth of work. It was boring. We didn’t have the internet for a while. There was a small computer in a back room that had AOL and we could periodically check our email on it.
I hated that job. I hated it fiercely. I hated the conservative nature of the company. I hated my boss who would occasionally make flippant anti-Semetic remarks. I hated being bored for so long.
So, I guess that absence does make the heart grow fonder because six years later, I think back to that job and think about how much I laughed. I have never laughed so much at any other job as I did there. Perhaps we were all desperate; we were so miserable that there wasn’t anything else to do. But we laughed. A lot. And I miss that.
* It was really owned by a religious cult. Bonus points if you can figure out where I worked. If you know anything about the DC area, it’s pretty easy to figure out.
“Uhh, okay.” I said. I wanted a job, not a drinking buddy.
But the me of six years ago wouldn’t have felt the same way. When I first came back to Maryland after spending four years in Vermont, it was a bit of an adjustment. Gone was the melange of hippies and snowboarders that I was used to seeing on a daily basis. I was back in my old stomping grounds but with nothing to stomp on. I had some friends from high school still in the area but four years and 500 miles changes a person. So I set off to find new friends.
I wanted to wait tables. I saw that as an opportunity to meet new people. And it was. I suddenly became engulfed in the server culture. I had a whole new group of friends and I liked it. But I wasn’t doing anything with my life and although I was okay with that, my parents, who paid $120,000 for my four smoke-filled years of college, were not.
So I got a job. I worked in the marketing art department of a DC newspaper. This was not the big newspaper. This was the “other” paper. I guess kind of like the “other white meat.” the one that no one really liked. Unless of course, they were a remember of the religious right. Or in a cult* I got lucky, in a way, because the art department was a fairly liberal bunch. We didn’t really fit with the rest of the people who worked at the paper.
It sounded somewhat glamourous if you forgot about the whole cult thing. Working for a DC newspaper. This was it. I was doing something actually related to my major. I would make new friends here. I was the baby of the department at 22. Although there were people that were also in their twenties, it too was not a type of place where everyone hung out after work. You picture DC and you picture the monuments, the mall, bustling sidewalks where people run in and out of starbucks. You picture friends and collegues going out for drinks in Georgetown or Capitol Hill. That DC exists, sure, but it wasn’t the one that I worked in. The paper was not in a good area. It was off a highway that connected DC with Maryland and the only place you could really walk to was a gas station and believe me, you wouldn't want to. We parked in a fenced in lot, commonly referred to as “The Cage.” In order to get to "The Cage," you had to walk past several warehouses that might or might not have had squatters in them. "The Cage" got broken into more than once.
The main problem with this job was not the area or the lack of social opportunities. It was the lack of work. Since the other DC paper was a million times more popular, everyone placed ads in it instead of us. There were 7 or 8 of us working 10 hour days with no lunch break sharing about an hour worth of work. It was boring. We didn’t have the internet for a while. There was a small computer in a back room that had AOL and we could periodically check our email on it.
I hated that job. I hated it fiercely. I hated the conservative nature of the company. I hated my boss who would occasionally make flippant anti-Semetic remarks. I hated being bored for so long.
So, I guess that absence does make the heart grow fonder because six years later, I think back to that job and think about how much I laughed. I have never laughed so much at any other job as I did there. Perhaps we were all desperate; we were so miserable that there wasn’t anything else to do. But we laughed. A lot. And I miss that.
* It was really owned by a religious cult. Bonus points if you can figure out where I worked. If you know anything about the DC area, it’s pretty easy to figure out.
posted by Lee at 9:42 AM
1 Comments:
Now, I picture you in a dark room, chanting with Adam Sandler "The Nighttime is the Right Time." and "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, F* the sun, I F*in Hate it, Long Live The Beast...."
:)
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