No, I'm not picking up the stapler. It is still safely out of reach. Thinking back to why we are so shocked by the harsh realities of our 30s, I think college is the culprit. Those blissful four years (or five or six in some cases) seem like a hazy memory of magical beach vacations. You know you experienced it. It went too fast. You made quick friends, had quick relationships and before you knew it you were packing your suitcases again. Except this time, it was permanent. While there wasn't sand in your suitcase, college ended too fast much like great vacations. You were leaving your college dorm or apartment for good. Your photo collages were memories in the past; the spaces in the frames were filled with pictures of nights in warm bars, arms around friends you couldn't live without, smiling the confident grin of someone who has not yet been told to hire a petting zoo for a work party (for adults-seriously). We expect our 20s to be those years we "climb the ladder" -which is really more corporate bs we believe because otherwise putting up with a boss that thinks hiring a petting zoo for adults constitutes a work party while your budget for said party=0 -is not only demotivating, it's flat out embarrassing.
Find a petting zoo. Call that person I told you about 3 days ago who has that thing I need (yes, that really happened. more than once). Open my email I just don't know how it works (also a true story). My internal monologue usually consisted of asking if you can't open your email how do you expect to manage an entire company/store/office, but unlike college, I couldn't drop the job if I didn't like it/get up early enough. And then, somehow things change.
You move on and hopefully up. You establish a routine, happy hours on Wednesdays, Mad Mex Fridays and Houlihans Saturdays (dating myself). It reminds you of college, where ritualistic traditions such as Dawson's Creek, Newlyweds and Shales on Tuesdays were as important as attending class. Except, you couldn't skip work and still bring home a paycheck, working after a night out was much more difficult than Western Civ after a night out (remember not sleeping at all and getting home and going to class) and pajamas were no longer acceptable daytime attire. You graduated from AIM, mastered MySpace and stopped remembering that you used to actually receive calls and not just texts on your phone. Staying in was no longer taboo. Then the economy collapsed. College didn't prepare us for this, although history certainly did. In a strange twist of fate, older Americans were looking for second, part-time jobs or taking a position that was at least three levels below their experience-just to make ends meet. Then it happened. You have worked a couple years and put your time in; took a promotion and became a supervisor. Only, this time, your employees weren't more junior or younger than you. In fact, some were the same age as your parents. How can anyone expect US to tell our PARENTS what to do at work? To approve lunch breaks?! Coach them on their selling style?? I didn't learn that on the Bluff. And then it hits me. Much the same way I felt about a former manager asking me to open their email and rent a petting zoo is probably the same way they felt about my organizational system and my never ceasing perkiness. While smiling at me, and nodding, they too probably wanted to staple things to my head. Which begs the question, just who is really in charge?
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