I wonder why some of us want to remember and tell our life stories. I do like looking back and thinking about all the people I've met in life and experiences I had. Today, I found myself thinking back to my first job after college.
My dad really wanted me to go to college. He and Mom took me on college visits, helped me with my applications, and excitedly supported my college journey in countless ways. I LOVED my college experience, and as my father suggested, I studied anything I was curious about which led me through courses in watercolor painting, drawing, comparative world religions, pilgrims, prophets, and lovers, liberation theology, psychology, sociobiology and more. It was an eclectic mix of subjects with awesome professors. I learned a lot. Yet, when college ended, I didn't know what my next steps would be.
A friend of my parents set me up with a business interview, but at the time I had a narrow view of what business was and didn't do well at the interview. Later, I spent hours typing up a resume at my uncle's house because he had a typewriter that worked well, and then I drove up and down the highway dropping off my resume at companies I thought might hire me. I had no idea how to look for a job or what I really wanted to do. Eventually, a manager at a local office supply company called me up and offered me an interview. I was quickly hired to be an order processing clerk at the company. I worked as an order processing clerk in high school so I had some experience with the task.
At the job, the woman clerks sat in two parallel rows of four tables each. At each table sat two women. The boss at the time sat up front in an office behind a glass window. He looked out at us as we worked and gave directions mostly from his window perch (there must have been some kind of speaker system) when he noticed us doing something wrong. Meanwhile we typed away and processed the orders. The job was horrible.
The boss was a tall, skinny guy with a mustache. He had a wife and two children who would visit often. He was flamboyant in dress and activity--very much an amusing character when he was in a good mood. When he was angry, his whole body would flail. His wife was a shortish, chubby woman with dark hair and his two children were similarly chubby and cute. The one valuable lesson he taught me was to leave my table desk in the kind of order where someone else could easily pick up where I left off if I didn't return the next day. That lesson came in handy later in life as a working mother and teacher who sometimes had to have a substitute at the last minute due to my children's illnesses.
The women I worked with were nice women who ranged in age from late teens to their sixties. None of them were college graduates, and they were all hard working. We ate lunch together in the company canteen. Our conversations generally focused on relationships, dinner preparation and exercise. The women thought I was a bit strange, but they were kind to me as I was to them.
As weeks turned into months at the job, I became more and more disgruntled. I didn't like the job, didn't readily relate to my colleagues and saw no future in it. That's when I decided to make a move. Just like I didn't feel comfortable at the workplace, I also didn't feel comfortable in my home city. Most of the women my age were married and I wasn't meeting or spending time with people I related to. I decided to move to nearby Boston where more of my college friends lived. The decision required some cash which I didn't have so I made the choice to ask a local bank for a $700 loan.
I zipped off to the local bank during lunch one day. I remember running into the bank so I could get the task done during the lunch hour. I made my case for the loan and they gave it to me. I was elated. I had not told my parents about it, but I already had a friend who agreed to move with me.
With the $700, I was able to rent a basement apartment near Boston. Later I brought my art portfolio and resume into an employment agency. The woman at the agency quickly sent me on an interview to a wonderful architectural firm. I was hired and that was the start of a bright new chapter in life--a chapter where I met people I related to, learned a lot of new skills, and enjoyed my new environment. Eventually the great job in marketing at the architectural firm led me to graduate school to study my lifelong passion which was education.
Clearly the loan was $700 well spent and the decision to move to Boston, the exact right move at the time. Looking back though, the office supply store was a good teacher to me as most experiences are.
Though I lost touch with the women I worked with there, I did find out that my boss had been living a life untrue to himself. He later left his wife and found himself a loving husband. He endured some struggles along the way, but recently I read his obituary and learned that he had many happy times after that. The boss' anguish which I noticed as I worked there makes sense to me now, and I'm still grateful for the wonderful, helpful life lesson he taught me. Onward.