I've been thinking about jobs a lot lately.
Mostly because I'm currently working two and am still looking.
People knock crappy jobs a lot. And I don't mean crappy jobs where your coworkers don't bother to refill the office coffee machine, I mean crappy jobs where you sweat and get filthy and wear dorky uniforms and lift heavythings and do lots of cleaning.
It could be any number of jobs... food service, low-end retail, factory work... but the kind of job I'm talking about is the first job kind of crappy job. You know, the kind where the only thing you have on your resume is stupid clubs and activities you were involved in in highschool. The kind where the "past work experience" section on the application is left more or less blank and your future lies before you. The kind where you're initially indignant at the way you are compacted and quantified upon entering the job market.
There's a krackel bar on the desk and it smells really good... mmm, chocolate.
A lot of people dish shit about these first jobs, these crappy jobs. But the fact of the matter is, they're good things. I remember my first job, two years at Taco Bell up on Sunset Avenue. I hated it and I loved it. Most of my coworkers were amazing fun, the work wasn't hard and didn't require a high degree of responsibility. Of course, the uniform made me look forty pounds heavier and I went home every day smelling of tacos and bleach, but... meh.
It taught me a lot. It taught me a lot about working. About hard, dirty work (and let's face it, for most teenage citizens of America, that's as hard and dirty as it gets), and about pride.
I hate to sound like a Marxist, but I'm far more proud of those two years at Taco Hell than I am of my myriad secretarial and office jobs. I don't know why. I sneer at a lot of people my age who have it easier, with plush jobs in offices and new cars and nice clothes... not because I'm jealous (believe me, I'm the type to admit to being jealous, too), but because I feel like they don't DO anything. And I know that those of you who do work at offices will tell me how WRONG and STUPID I am, but I know that of all the office jobs I've worked, I never really considered any of them hard work. Interestingly enough, I also never met anyone at an office job that I would call a "friend".
I think that office work may just not be physically or mentally challenging enough (and before you tell me that crappy jobs aren't mentally challenging, I feel a lot more challenged mentally by making a dozen sandwiches while trying to keep up with dishes, watch the drive through window and remember what backups need to be made and in what order and so on and so forth, often having to watch the time to make sure I keep on schedule than by organizing a database of sales contacts)to hold my attention. I've never LOVED a job that took place in an office. To date, my favorite jobs have been in a convenience store and in a retail store.
There are a lot of levels to the word "success"... I don't mean to imply that I intend to spend the rest of my life hawking wares at the local mall or slinging sandwiches... I won't... but I am saying that there's nothing wrong with these jobs in the general sense. I figure if you're happy and productive, you're pretty much succeeding.
Maybe my view of life is oversimplified. Of course, maybe yours is overcomplicated.
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