Situational Irony

I had a lot of conveniently empty time in which to think the other morning while I was battling nausea and a runny nose at work. I had some initial thoughts earlier in the morning that revolved mostly around the fact that this was the fourth morning in the last five that I had thrown up and of course not actually eaten anything for breakfast before heading off to work. Once made sense to me because I started a new job Monday morning and  extreme nervousness had previously had this effect on me. Four out of five, though? That seemed excessive. It seemed like my body was trying to communicate something that my logical mind had not yet figured out. And it had something to do with my new job, obviously. Taking the job had seemed wholly rational at the time and I doubt I'd make a different decision even if I could rewind up until that point three weeks ago.

Some of the things I thought about had nothing to do at all with the situation at hand but rather trying to get into the right mindset in order to even consider it. I settled on a mostly logical and partly math-driven decision making process. I started by doing some calculations of what my earnings were with and without this job. I calculated how much it was costing me to get there each day. I calculated the amount of time I spent traveling between my job and apartment and between that job and my other job. I calculated the hours I had spent actually in my apartment in the last five days. I calculated the number of hours I had genuinely enjoyed in that same time period. I calculated the approximate cost of getting my license and acquiring a car and sketched out a conservative timeline for that process to take place in. I ran into one of the same sort of logic spirals I had used as a counter-argument for why I hadn't bothered to get a second job when I first started living in this city. In order to have a second job I would need a car (true of this situation with the new job because of its location) and in order to afford to have a car I would need a second job.

Considering the slippery nature of the logic spiral and some of the less intrinsically calculable facets of this situation (including my happiness, the value of my non-work time, the fact that Linda would be much better at this job than I was, the fact that the very nature of the job riddled me with anxiety, the detrimental effects of having to get up early every morning would have on my mood and health, and the fact that I will soon be moving) I concluded I should make sure that this was within the bounds of reason before becoming fully committed to the conclusion I fairly inevitably came to. Actually, that's not true at all. I was pretty committed to the conclusion by the time I came to it. I just wanted to make sure that I was not acting irrationally while being blinded by my logical constructs. I was also fairly certain of this. I just thought I should check on the finer points.

The conclusion I had come to, though, was that I should stop working at my new job and Linda (who has for the past few months been a coworker of mine at my book-shuffling job) should do it instead because it was, in fact, the kind of job she was looking for when she'd settled on the place I work and she'd be much better at it. The downsides were few in that I thought that it might fluster my boss at the book-shuffling job and I might not get to work with Linda anymore. The only real obstacles to this conclusion were how to explain this to Linda without making her feel guilty about it (this was foremost in my mind despite it theoretically being lesser than the second obstacle) and also how I should go about explaining to my new boss that I didn't really think I wanted to be employed by him anymore. Previously when leaving jobs I always had genuine reasons for doing so such as my mother requiring back surgery and needing assistance (though that wasn't the whole truth of why I really left Amato's) and moving to another city. I was also in no way desirous to give a 'two weeks notice' as it were but neither did I want to actually quit. I considered whether the phrase 'I don't think this is working out' would be too much of a cop out or if it adequately encompassed my calculations regarding the situation without explaining them all explicitly.

Despite my inability to consult about this problem with another rational human being beforehand I was immensely relieved when my new boss made just the kind of leading statement I had in no way been expecting. He said: "You know, the hardest part about my job is when I have to do things like this." And I knew exactly what he meant by that. I was a little put out that I didn't get to break up with him first but the statement he followed with invited what would probably be a response he wasn't expecting. He followed with: "But I just don't think you're going to work out here." I agreed with him before he'd even finished what he was going to say. I think my firm agreement confused him because he started to launch into what felt like a prepared explanation of his motivations until I interrupted him again by agreeing with his assessment and after another half a phrase he seemed to realize that I'd actually been agreeing with him and no explanation was required. After that the sort of things you have to say in that situation were said. I told him to have a nice afternoon and left. We parted by mutual agreement.

I knew when I got to my book-shuffling job a short time later that the first thing Sue and Linda were going to ask me about was the other job. So I headed them off with saying something phrased roughly like this: "Well, he and I regrettably came to the same conclusion from different angles today. My logic had much more to do with the fact that it was not economically better for me to work there and physical illness due to the job itself and his logic seemed to have far more to do with the fact that I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, a mind reader." I shrugged. I was going to stop working there anyway so what did it matter that he felt I should, too?

Linda asked me a short time later if it would be alright with me if she contacted the guy at the garage and saw about getting that job. I assured her that it would be fine. I spent all morning trying to manipulate things so Linda would work at the garage and I wouldn't and in spite of the fact that none of my machinations were even so much as set in motion they came to pass. Classic situational irony.

Job Applications? Why bother?

I haven't decided if I am just inordinately lucky or if I have some kind of super-power but I realized when I was telling someone about my new job that not only have five out of my six jobs been great jobs but I've only ever even applied to one of them.

Jobs had:
Movie Theater
Music Theater
Amato's
Data Entry for the University of Maine
Book Store
Automotive

Job: Movie Theater
Acquired: Because my mother was working there when they needed to hire someone new and nepotism is something hicks in small towns do.
Pay: 50-75 cents above the State-mandated minimum wage.
Duties: Cleaning, selling tickets, doing concessions, changing the marquee, cash-up, inventory, answering the phone, talking to people.
Perks: Free movies, free popcorn, free fountain soda, cheap candy, ability to read while getting paid if otherwise not busy, Christmas bonus, time off if/when I needed it.
Downfalls: Customers who did not understand that it was a one-screen, customers who wanted to pay with plastic, customers who wanted to buy tickets in advance, the fact that the theater was sloped and not tiered and any soda spilled ran down hill, seven day weeks in the summer.

Job: Music Theater
Acquired: Because my friend was their regular light-person and he knew I could do lights (I used to for productions at our highschool where I learned by doing).
Pay: A dollar above state-mandated minimum wage at the time.
Duties: Lighting
Perks: Free dinner, free fountain soda, free shows, attractive actors to look at, ability to play Pyramid solataire (because it fit on the counter under the light board better than other versions) while working.
Downfalls: Lighting system occasionally overheated and flipped the breakers which made me have to quickly throw on the spot-lights, turn down the master some, and run and flip the breakers back on, I was not an official employee, I only worked when the regular person was off, and they tended to cancel shows without any warning even to me.

Job: Amato's
Acquired: I knew the manager and she agreed to hire me on the spot.
Pay: A dollar twenty-five above state mandated minimum wage starting out and was given a fifteen cent raise after three months.
Duties: Making food, prepping food, prepping vegetables, washing dishes, washing counters, prepping dough, taking things out of the freezer, lifting heavy things, sweeping, mopping, cash-up.
Perks: None. I didn't even get a discount.
Downfalls: Cameras, not allowed to eat food for free, no discount on anything, worked by myself primarily, did not get breaks because of the previous, was not allowed to sit down, was required to serve customers until nine but it took nearly an hour to close up and corporate got mad if I stayed after I was scheduled, co-workers, hot oven, cooking in a fast-paced situation, the grease that permeated everything, the cement floor, and customers.

Job: Data Entry for the University of Maine Acquired: The scientist my father had worked with on a fishing research project needed someone to turn physical logbooks into spreadsheets.
Pay: There was 1,200 dollars budgeted to pay someone to do the data entry.
Duties: Turn logbooks into spreadsheets.
Perks: Work from my own bedroom, task took a total of eight hours.
Downfalls: I couldn't keep doing it.

Job: Book Store
Acquired: By application.
Pay: State-mandated minimum wage.
Duties: Checking in books, magazines, newspapers and gift items, putting away books, magazines, newspapers and gift items, checking inventory in assigned book and magazine sections, straightening book and magazine sections, writing blog posts, making up displays and windows, helping customers find books, recommending books, checking people out, doing back-stock, some vacuuming and dusting, doing cash-up, and watching the customers.
Perks: Reading free books, discounts on store items, and talking to people who like books.
Downfalls: Dealing with customers who have no concept of reality, living with sometimes annoying coworkers, trying to figure out where to draw the line... for everything.

Job: Automotive
Acquired: Was informed of the job by a regular customer in the bookstore, told what it would involve, and was warned that the owner was very crude. I went in knowing I was capable of meeting the job requirements and confident that crude was something easy enough to deal with after living with a commercial fisherman for nineteen years.
Pay: One dollar and fifty cents above the state-mandated minimum wage.
Duties: Opening mail, using Quickbooks and spreadsheets, answering the phone, doing billing, filing, updating the website, updating the company Facebook, smiling at people.
Perks: Nice pay, relatively easy work, would make a good future work reference, have permission to read when not otherwise occupied.
Downfalls: There are no buses that go past there and I may have to actually get my license. I have yet to work here but I suspect that 'dealing with customers' is probably going to be the biggest downfall.

Those five jobs that I didn't apply for but got anyway compared to the fifteen other jobs I applied to before I was hired at the bookstore and the several other applications I sent places since then that I never even got a call back on... Well, it makes me think that filing out applications might not be worth it.