Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Having nothing to do at work.

Okay, at my new job, there really is nothing to do. While my boss is out of town, he gave me an assignment to do something...but the person before me already did it. However, the person who did it before me did it in such a weird, illogical way that it took me five, long, frustrating days to figure out it had already been done. It was depressing. I volunteered to do something for someone else, and I was allowed to.

Now, I would be fine with having nothing to do...but...there's a huge reason why it bothers me. Everyone in the office can see my computer monitor. When they walk out of the office [which they seem to do about once every 10 minutes], they all have a chance to see what I'm doing.

Do they look? Are they checking up on me? I have no idea. I catch myself trying to get a glimpse of what is on someone's computer screen from time to time.

Regardless, I still have to sit there and pretend I'm doing something. Luckily, there are only five weeks left before I leave this gig. It's only temporary work for a school requirement.

But what has this taught me? Don't be responsible for other people telling you what to do. Does this lesson help me in regard to my current situation? Not really, because I can't go up to someone and say "I'm going to decide what I'm going to do today" -- because there is no person to say this too. I'm just left all alone with nothing to do, but with the paranoid feeling that someone is watching me.

So I am going to create my own jobs or job. There is a lot of resistance against this in my family. They think I should get some "stable" job with the government so I won't get fired, get health benefits, and so on. But what would be the point of that?

I've already socked away a lot of money. I want to buy property, like a condo, so I can have a place to live where other people [Condo board excluded] really don't have any say in what I do. I want to live, discover, have fun. Having some office job, while perhaps "stable" [I don't even believe that's really accurate anymore when people get laid off all the time -- government workers included, but maybe at a lesser rate] is the opposite of living, discovering, and having fun.

My relative is like, but you will meet new people! Well, I met new people at this new job, and while they're "nice", it's not like some huge new social outlet. I'm beginning to suspect that some of the people are gunning for each other. But I'm not going to get into that.

However, this job was important because it taught me several things, as seen in the list below:

1) I don't like people keeping tabs on me.
2) I don't like having to be stuck in an office until a designated but arbitrary time.
3) I don't like having nothing to do, or having things chosen for me to do that are a) poorly thought out, b) boring, or c) unnecessary.
4) It's not fun to spend the whole day with people, but feel uncomfortable or weird around them.
5) I like working with people -- sometimes.

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