Today is Administrative Professional Day. I realized this last night about 6:30 which required an emergency trip to Bath and Body Works to get gifts for my two assistants and Dave’s assistant. I don’t really like Bath and Body Works, but in the town I live in, there aren’t a lot of options at 7:30 on a weeknight that doesn’t require driving 25 minutes. I would rather have gotten gift certificates for a swanky restaurant or an upscale store at the mall, but I did manage to scrape together some decent gifts from the old BBW.
(Sidenote: My senior year of college, I worked at the Bath and Body Works in the Mounds Mall. On my breaks, I used to eat the hell out of the pepperoni breadsticks at Luca Pizza along with a giant cherry coke and I wonder why I was fat in college.)
So I got the gifts and was dismayed to discover that the only Hallmark store in town has gone belly up and was boarded up. So I had to run to Kohl’s to find gift bags to wrap the decent gifts I managed to scrape up from the BBW. I was happy to discover that Kohl’s entire gift bag stock has been marked down 50%, but worried that means they won’t be carrying gift wrap anymore. Where the frick am I going to buy wrapping paper now? Might this require me to actually plan ahead when gift giving? That might be a problem for me.
All the running around for Administrative Professionals Day caused an involuntary trip down memory lane. Please come with me to a time approximately 12 years ago. I had graduated from college with a Bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in writing. I was aimless and unfocused and had no idea what sort of career I should pursue or even what I wanted. I was 22 years old and after some long painful months of unemployment, I landed a job at USA TODAY. Now you would think based on my degree that I would be doing some sort of writing or something that anything to do with that, but no. No, I my position was titled “Customer Service Associate” or “Customer Service Coordinator” or something like that. I was taking phone calls from home delivery customers who had complaints about their service along with a sundry of other office related tasks. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but since I wasn’t really quite sure what my dream job was, I went with it.
12 years ago Administrative Professionals Day was known by a different name. You might remember it. It was called Secretary’s Day. Okay, to recap, it is 12 years ago. I am working at USA TODAY. I have a degree but no direction. I started there in March and it is now April. 12 years ago. I am about 22 years old. I don’t like my job and am dealing with the letdown of clawing my way through 4 years of college only to find that I feel even more aimless than when I started only now I am $15,000 in debt with student loans and I making about $11/hr. Oh and I was driving a purple Ford Escort (a color I did not pick out but that is another story). It is Secretary’s Day and I come to work to find that I have been given flowers. Because I am a secretary. I didn’t know I was a secretary until that day and I called my mom blubbering. Oh my God, if I could travel back in time and slap that little girl upside the head. I would have told her to quit that fucking job and go find something that she loved to do and do it. I also would have told her to stay away from that guy (you know what guy I’m talking about).
That was not a good day. And now you know way too much about me.
4 comments:
I remember that time...and I also remember the car AND the guy...so glad we are still friends!!!
Some lessons aren't learned easily. I coulda, shoulda, woulda too, but in all honesty... it all worked out well. :)
What a great flashback! I just love your style of writing, can you please a write a book :-))
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