Life, Work & Wonder

Tag: career

  • I Miss File Clerks

    PROMPT: What technology do you miss and why?

    My first white collar job was at a mortgage company in 1986. I was an assistant to the Quality Control Manager, meaning my job was to organize and prepare loan files for her to audit to ensure the company was following proper loan procedures.

    Every day my boss would give me a list of four loan files she wanted to review, and my job was to get the files, make copies of those files, then organize them in the way she preferred so that she could efficiently review them.

    It was, in a word, a tedious job. I had to wear a tie, worked from 8:00am (not 8:05 but 8:00) to 5:00pm (not 4:55, but 5:00) with exactly a one hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks, and the job itself was just drudgery. But there were two things I liked about the job: my manager, who was skilled and compassionate, and the file clerk.

    The file clerk was the best piece of technology I ever used in a role.

    When we needed a file, I simply filled out a brief quarter-page form in ink, walked it over to her desk, dropped it in her “in box,” and then when she had retrieved the file she dropped it on my desk with a “hello” and a smile. That was it.

    There was no searching. No trying to remember what the file was named. No use of any kind of editor to reorder the pages. I simply filled out the form, the file magically appeared on my desk, and then I could get to work by simply sifting through papers.

    My job back then was tedious. But so is the modern world. Trying to remember passwords, and application names, and file names. Have to search emails for links, and dual authentication, and trying to find things on a tiny screen. Back then, the file clerk did all of that for me. The hardest part of my job besides the drudgery was clearing out the occasional paper jams when I had to make copies. And never — not once — did I have to work overtime. No one I knew worked overtime. Partially because at 5pm the file clerk and all other clerks hit the road, and there was no one available to process any work that we completed anyway.

    So yes, my job was drudgery, but the convenience of the file clerk was amazing. We don’t live in a world of convenience. We live in a world where the inconvenience was just redistributed, and ultimately are required to work more hours.

    So when I’m asked what technology I miss most of all, that’s an easy one. I miss the file clerk. Patty, wherever you are 40 years later, I miss your skillset!

  • The Beauty Of Sunday Work

    We worked yesterday, on a Sunday. Because Larissa and I are real estate agents and working on a Sunday is just part of the job. Which honestly makes me grateful.

    I’m thinking of 2019. I was working on a $4 million opportunity for my company, and on the Wednesday before Easter Sunday I got a call from the Executive Sponsor. They’d decided to go with us, he told me, but before they signed the deal the CEO wanted to meet with our CEO. Could our team (including my boss and CEO) meet with the CEO’s team (including the entire Executive team) in two weeks? Of course we could!

    But here’s the problem. Here we were, on the cusp on a $4 million contract that would make my boss’s team numbers for the year, and he was just so afraid that what was technically a formality (CEO handshakes) would somehow go awry. So he insisted we work over the weekend preparing.

    So Easter weekend that year was spent working on a lengthy word document that we could give to our CEO. Among all the standard details about the opportunity and the company, the document included long profile descriptions (including links) for every executive who may attend the meeting. Want to know where they went to college? Where else they worked at? What hobbies they partake in? Their spouse’s background? It was aaaaaalllllll there. It took hours and hours to put this document together, and that was before we started formatting it, which my boss was obsessive compulsive about in the best of times.

    Oh my gawd.

    It was so frustrating, so maddening, such a waste, to work that Sunday. And I had no control over it since I knew to refuse would probably cost me my job since that was the type of company it was. Of course we won the opportunity, but it had nothing to do at all with that document or its formatting or its creepy detail that we invested an entire weekend in compiling or even with the work of my CEO who was actually painstakingly and shockingly quiet and awkward in that CEO handshake meeting.

    That memory created some pain for me for a long time for reasons that go beyond Sunday work.

    But yesterday was different. Yesterday — and working yesterday — was in a strange way redemption seven years later.  Because yesterday I felt sooooo grateful looking back on that frustrating Sunday in 2019. Because the work I was doing was important for our client(s), who were regular people, and more importantly the work was essential and I was doing it not because of a micromanaging detail-obsessed-on-a-pathological-level boss but instead because I myself was choosing to do it. And there is beauty and tremendous satisfaction when we work 100% by choice.

    So yesterday was Sunday. Much of America was off, especially in lieu that it was a holiday weekend. But Larissa and I worked. And I didn’t mind at all and fact it helped me come to peace (redeem) that weekend in 2019 because I realized how much of a better place I’m in today.

  • Reflecting On My Job Search

    I’ve always been a bit of a prima donna when it comes to jobs.

    Not that I want everything at a job. Or treated like a superstar at my job. But that I just have certain things I don’t want from a job.

    I don’t want jobs that start too early. Or have a windowless office. Or require me to do something I don’t have an aptitude for.

    I don’t like jobs that have too much process. Or have ebb and flow where it’s boring sometimes and hectic others, with zero control of my schedule. Or sit in a Bullpen with a lot to do but where people are distracting me. And I hate “locked” jobs where I have to work in an office 8 to 5 every day with no flexibility to my days or schedule minus pre-determined vacation time.

    I’d love to say this is new. That’s it’s my age. But it’s not. I’ve always been this way.

    Time was I really thought I hated working. But it turned out that I hated working hourly jobs with time requirements and where I was a drone.

    I learned when I went into teaching and into sales that I’m actually an incredibly hard worker. And very determined and quite good. When I’m given flexibility and freedom to do what I think needs to be done.

    I went into real estate. And like it. But it isn’t paying the bills. I need to pad this income. So am looking at supplemental jobs. And am driving myself crazy in the process because so many jobs are either micromanagement hell (one has two syncs per day to keep the manager updated on what we’ve been doing) or have fixed schedules in an office that are 40 hours per week.

    Here is to continuing my search. And not giving in to a job that will make me unhappy. Because I’m 58. I’ve done more than my share of jobs that make me unhappy. And life is just too short, especially at age 58.

  • Living A Different Life Than My Parents (AKA My Parents At My Age)

    PROMPT: What were your parents doing at your age?

    I was always 5-10 years behind my parents.

    By the time they were 20, my parents were married (to each other 🙂 ). They started careers at 21, having kids (me) at 21 and they owned a house by 22. Later, they upgraded their house by age 27, started earning decent money at 30, and making great money at age 40.

    Me?

    I was married (for the first time) at 25. Started my career job at age 29. Had kids and a house at 30. And started earning decent money at age 35.

    Always I was about five or ten years behind them. And that was okay.

    By some miracle I caught up to them by age 40.

    At age 40 I had some lucky breaks in my career, and I too suddenly started making pretty great money, just like my parents themselves had done at 40. Mom was proud of me, telling me that I was farther ahead of them by age 40, but the reality is we were about even.

    Then life took me on a different path for me.

    I got lung disease at 43. What started out as some fatigue and breathless when I exercised at age 40 was diagnosed as potentially-fatal lung disease when I was 43. That irrevocably changed the course of my life.

    Whereas my parents spent their 40s having fun and accumulating money for retirement, I spent my 40s managing my health and holding on for dear life to my life and my career.

    I spent countless hours in the doctor’s office. I lost a job, then found and lost another job. Meanwhile, after 5 years of trying to push and horse whip me back into my past successes despite my lung disease, my (now ex) wife lung gave up on me and moved on, first emotionally and then completely.

    By 50 my parents were living their greatest life and could retire at any time.

    By 50 I was job hopping, making half what I’d been at age 40, job hopping, managing my health as a second job, and hoping I could scrape enough together to retire by age 70.

    In short, by age 50 my parents had been a LOT better off than I was.

    And that’s okay.

    I’m not my parents. My life is not my parents’ life. I was blessed because life could have just used my lung disease to kill me, but instead it spared me and I learned that I am a survivor, a battler, and surprisingly resilient.

    And, overall, happy. Happier than I was at age 40, for sure.

    I’m remarried. I won’t retire rich but by age 70 I’ll be okay.

    In short, I was behind my parents, then caught up to my parents, then life pushed them ahead while knocking me back. And all in all I’m grateful. Because at the end of the day, all that matters to me is carving out some joy, managing my stress, and being alive.