Sorry for the Internet MIA everyone, but I have joined the great washed ranks of the gainfully employed. I am now a white-collar worker drone; part of the maddening crown, a contributor to the rush-hour traffic. I now do monkey work for $12/hr in a very nice building for 40 hours a week. I’m living the post-graduate dream right now. But, as it’s my first 40-hour a week job, and another 10 hours on top of that for commute I’m still trying to figure out how to juggle my schedule to fit in doing everything I enjoy doing and still have time for 8 hours of sleep (now that I actually need it), home chores, and re-engaging my brain after the boring work I do. I beg your indulgence in this transition period.
This job has taught me some interesting things. Namely, it’s kinda nice to be financially solvent (I make in a week what I might have made in a month at my other job). Also, I am apparently not supposed to say to people I do “low level monkey work” within earshot of the boss. It’s “Data base compilation and verification”. But, even though I really am living a dream that a lot of people would kill for, I still have a few complaints. 1) Even though this is a full-time, open-ended job, it’s still “temp work”. I got it through an employment agency. This means no benefits, no workers compensation should I get hurt (unlikely), no unemployment benefits if I get laid off, and no company “bennies”. It’s temporary only in a legal fiction, but that legal fiction still stands. 2) I don’t really need to work 40 hours a week. 30 hours would have been just peachy. I also don’t have that option. Along the same vein, I have no idea why I have to commute to do a job I could easily do at home and they could have a cubical open. And, I really feel terrible about complaining about this job at all, because I HAVE a job, and it’s a nice job. That makes me wonder if that’s one of the barriers to labor reform in the first place- the double-edged sword of “at least you have a job” and the threat of being called lazy if you value your private time.
Finally, an article to sink your teeth into, written by someone who had more intelligent things than I to say.
Hey, grats on getting that job! And yep, those adjustments to try and work a healthy mixture of employment and having a life into the same day… that’s a trick we all have to work out. Good luck!
They’re working on it in Europe – it started with mothers getting the legal right to flexible work, and filtered out from there. The agency problem is horrible though – again, a legal solution is probably required, but god knows what.
And yes, congrats on your new solvency!
This also made me cranky when I worked a job that could as easily have been done from home. (I do some in-person desktop support and have to employeehandle our servers regularly, so this is no longer an option.) I believe that it comes down to control: my employers simply didn’t trust me further than they could throw me, as a matter of policy. People working from home are harder to intimidate, harder to monitor, and harder to control.
All that is clearly more important than the benefits of working from home, e.g., no time-wasting, road-clogging, energy-burning commute, more easily flexible schedules, weather-independent appearances at work… yeah, it makes me nerd-rage. Yet another brilliant inefficiency of our godlike free market.
(Oh, and as others have said, congratulations on your newfound solvency. I remember how awesome it was the first time my income exceeded my expenses.)