I don’t even know where to start but maybe that’s because I don’t really have anything to say today. After a couple of months of 1) living in a weird, nomadic holding pattern and 2) wondering if I would ever see the light at the end of the tunnel on my current work prodject… Well. Ka-whomp! 1) I am no longer in a holding pattern and 2) I am in a lull at work. It’s a temporary lull and these things happen sometimes. But it is a horrible time to be in a lull because… I am struggling to find things to keep me occupied at work but it is excruciatingly hard to concentrate… Because without anything interesting to focus on, I keep looking ahead to this weekend’s major prodject, wishing I could get started on it NOW!!! The bottom line is that my life is extremely unbalanced right now. It been that way for the last couple months but this version of unbalanced is an abrupt shift to the opposite of the last couple months. Hopefully this won’t last too long. Because I do not do well when I am not busy, even if busy means sitting in my cube with my feet up on my desk (oh, not really) thinking about how something should work. Because that is what designers sometimes do.

The first job I ever had was at the Tempo store up in Sault Ste. Siberia. I ran a cash register. I am terrible at job interviews (KW ≠ perky, KW = VERY awkward) and had failed at every attempt at getting a job I had ever made and so I was very surprised when they called me up, even though my old coot had arranged for me to interview with Mr. Drysdale. I can just imagine that phone call (or whatever it was). “My awkward ninny of a kid needs a job. Will you hire her?” They did hire me. Of course, the day I started that job, I had a horrific sore throat and a fever. It was a Tuesday and Mr. H was training me and, at the end of the day, he said, “Come back Friday.” Like, you are sick. Go home and get it out of your system. Not an auspicious start to my first job.

I was a total klutz at running a cash register for a couple weeks and maybe they might have faarrrred somebody else. Somebody whose dad wasn’t a buddy of Mr. Drysdale. And then something clicked. Running a cash register turned out to be right up my alley. I was fast and accurate and friendly, even when I felt like clocking somebody with my bag stapler. (Note that this was way before there were scanners and things. I had this huge mechanical cash register with rows and rows of numbers and had to enter every item’s price and one or two other associated numbers by hand. Aaannnnddd I had to calculate the sales tax more or less in my head.) Eventually, Mr. D decided to move me to the office, where I did customer service stuff and bookkeeping tasks. I liked that stuff too and I was also good at it. And sometimes, when there were long lines at the cash registers, Mr. D or Mr. H (or the dreaded Mr. P) would ask, “Hey KW, can you go open up a register and get some of those people out the door?” And I would. And I loved it. Some of the people waiting in line recognized me as a very fast, accurate cashier and would scramble to move to my line.

But I still remember my early days as a cashier. If we did not have any customers — and there were plenty of slow times — we were supposed to “look busy”. That was fine if there was actually something to DO. Like help the [wonderful] woman who handled the nearby “health & beauty aid” department stock or straighten shelves. If there was nothing to do, well, I fidgeted. How many times can you straighten your bags or whatever?

In other words, I have a killer work ethic. And that’s a great thing to have. Except when it kills ME! If I am being paid to do a job, I feel like I need to be working. Today? I finally told the Long Suffering Cat Herding Person I was leaving a bit early. It was okay with him. I knew it would be. He isn’t quite ready to hand some things off to me and it’s not like I have to be available for customers at this job. I sit waaaayyyyy back from them. But I still felt guilty about not spending the last hour of the day at my work. I wish I could say that I was productive here at the Landfill. Not so much. A little bit of laundry and some mail and that was about it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.