Exercises in Futility: The Backstory

Office Job by ed7in5 via Creattica.com

Exercises in Futility is the working-out of the story of the last 3, or so, years of my life. A lot has happened: I moved over 300 miles away from my family for a new job that ended horribly, redefined myself as a person, fell in love for the first time (with that person turning out to the "the one"), and learned some hard life lessons that have shown me what is really important in this life. And if I stayed out all night, more than I should have, and met some fantastic, crazy new friends on my journey there, so be it! Let's listen in, shall we?

Stagnant, stale, inert, stationary, unmoving; These words oh so accurately described my life just over three years ago. I was 23 years old, living with my parents and working as a temp in Gillette, WY. I was, and still am, unmarried and childless or a “failure” according to this small town of less than 40,000 people where there are more drive through liquor stores then churches but the judgment still flows as freely as the booze. I was living with my parents, along with the younger 2 of my 5 siblings, on 40 acres about 5 miles west of town. I'd fallen into the very familiar role of "second mom"; running my younger sisters around to practices, when my parents couldn't, and volunteering with their high school band. 

I floated through my days and weeks with no direction other than to do it all over again tomorrow. I'd accumulated all the trappings of mid-west success; The latest cell phone, a brand new car, as many trips to Maurice's as I could stomach and cash left over for the boredom trips to Wal-Mart. My parents had raised us all to work hard and do our best and I loved nothing more than fulfilling other people's expectations of me. Naturally my competence (i.e. ability to read and count change) stood out to employers and by 23 I had topped out, for a female in the heavily industrialized economy, attaining my first “corporate” management position at 21. I really had no where to go but out.

Months before, I had quite my job as Membership Director (second in command even) for the local health club which, among other un-pleasantries, consisted of training a sales staff of apathetic teenagers to sell gym memberships to coal miners, oil riggers, ranchers, and their self-possessed wives. My boss was a 40 something man who hired woman for all the other management positions, which would have been commendable if his motive hadn't been his perception that we'd be easier to intimidate. I'd only been hired  because I was the cheapest candidate. This job provided my first introduction to the corporate world, mid-west though it was. The way I interpreted it, it just provided a clear set of rules that everyone was supposed to follow. I'd always been good at following the rules, so  figured I'd found the prefect work environment.

Turns out I had a lot to learn. Needless to say, the year I spent there laid the ground work for the paradigm shift to come. I quickly grew disenchanted with my Management Position (caps intended) as I watched my boss get bonuses for my good ideas and hard work while cheat on his wife on the clock. It's not something I'm proud of now, but I eventually stopped doing parts of my job because 1) they were boring and 2) If I did a good job my boss would just take credit for it anyway. So I bounced.

After a short stint as a cocktail waitress at the bar all other dive bars are modeled after, I went to Adecco and signed up as a temp. I liked the idea of just being a "worker bee" for a while, just put my head down and work. No responsibilities, just productivity! My first gig was filling in for the admin assistant for an oil company who was on maternity leave. It was mostly filing and only lasted a little over 2 months. My second temp job was about 40 miles out of town at one of the areas many coal mines.  I was hired out as the “Office Gal” for an engineering company, based out of Denver, CO, that had been contracted to build a new conveyor system for the mine.  At 6:30am M-F I would drive the hour out to the coal mine, sign in at the guard shack, and drive the haul road (next to 75 ton haul trucks!) down to the work trailer. They were supposedly close to completion when they hired me, but what was supposed to be a 2 month gig, filing and sending correspondence to the corporate office, turned into 8+ months.

The ability to reason and think cognitively came in handy again and I made a strong impression with the management on site. During a 2-week family vacation to California (after my position was no longer needed) I got a call from the construction manager, Mike*. Apparently, at the end of every project, they would give the client a set of binders with all the testing and certification documentation and all the information they needed to run and trouble shoot the conveyor. Nobody at the Denver office wanted to wade through the boxes of files to find what was needed. Since I had spent the last month on-site going through allll the files to make sure everything was in its place (it was either that or plot word domination...the work really dried up at the end), they thought I'd be the perfect person for the job and wanted to fly me out to Denver when I got back from vacation. 

I immediately accepted. I remembered that the corporate rep, who visited the job site regularly, had told me he would put in a good word for me with corporate should I ever move to Denver. I had really enjoyed working for this company so far, the sheer scale of the machines they engineered was soooo cool! I come from a long line of engineers and my nerd-brain geeked-out regularly.  We agreed I would fly to Denver the Monday after I returned from California. The remainder of the vacation was amazing, even more so because I felt the winds of change turning in my favor. I knew big things waited for me in Denver.

*All names have been changed

to be continued....