Thursday, March 30, 2006 | by nathan

My Soul-Sucking Job (A Rant)

So I have three jobs. Two of them pay, and two of them I enjoy with some regularity.

1) Graduate Teaching Assistant for Video Productions Classes - pays well, I enjoy.

2) Editorial Department Intern for the Oklahoma Gazette - pays nothing, I really enjoy.

3) Computer Lab Assistant in Gaylord Hall Convergence Lab - pay is shitty and has dropped since I started, I hate.

I was super excited when I started grad school and got a job in the computer lab. It is a beautiful lab, with twenty some-odd of the latest Macs to hit the market (they are always changing -we just got a bunch of new iMacs with Intel processers in here). There are five wonderful plasma screen TVs (I call them Scholarships 1-5, as that money really should have been allocated toward a scholarship fund and not toward TVs that are not allowed to be un-muted and which stay on ridiculous cable news channels at all hours). There are tall windows which let in the light. You can see a picture of it here. My seat is at the small table to the left of the picture.

As I have continued in my employment here at Gaylord I have taken a $.50/hour pay cut, which wouldn’t be that big a deal except that they also cut our hours; when I started, I was working a solid 20 hours a week. Now, I am working 9. Some days the pay only just covers the gas it takes to get down here.

Also, I have to put up with the kind of shit that I long, long ago quit putting up with. I have detailed these adventures in some detail here before, but trust me when I say you have only seen the snowflake at the tip of the iceberg. Here is a common example.

Skinny Sorority Bitch: [throws her driver's license down - not sets, throws - on the table next to me, and in a snotty voice says] I need a computer. 

Me: Ooookay. Well the thing is that you have to have a student ID. They’re really coming down on me for taking other stuff.

SSB: [snorts haughtily through her nose] Wull, the guy who was here before took it.

Me: [shrugs the "I just work here" shrug that we have all used at one time or another] We’re really not supposed to. I’m always the guy who gets in trouble for that.

SSB: [voice getting loud] So you really can’t take it? ‘Cause I don’t have my student ID.

Me: [only slightly sympathetic] Yeah, sorry.

SSB: [voice loud now] This is bullshit.

Me: Your voice just got loud.

SSB: Whatever. [Turns and walks away.]

Here’s a favorite example:

Silly Crazy Person: [comes in carrying a huge Big Gulp full of Diet Coke]. I need a computer.

Me: Okay, but I need you to leave the drink outside. [We have a place outside the door where everyone sets their drinks. Any given day there are 5-10 bottles of water, Big Gulps, etc. out there]. 

Silly Crazy Person: [snorts unbelievingly]. I can’t have this in here?

Me: It’s just that these are $12,000 computers. If you spill that on one…

SCP: But I paid two bucks for this!

Me: You don’t have to throw it out. Just put it out there and if you need a drink, stand outside for a second.

SCP: Eww! I don’t want to leave this out there! 

Me: Your voice just got loud.

SCP: Can’t I just leave it back here with you? 

Me: No, sorry. It’s got to go outside. 

SCP: Just right here, behind your desk? What’s the harm in that? Then I can stand up here and drink it.

Me: [getting irritated beyond what I can reasonably manage] Outside. Gotta go outside. 

SCP:  So I have to leave it outside? I can’t leave it up here with you?

Me: No! 

The day after this conversation happened, I got an email from my boss saying that someone had complained that I was rude to them in the lab, and that I had better watch it. I did not respond to the email. It bears mentioning here that the week before, we were threatened with our jobs if one of the bosses came in and found someone with a drink at their computer.

I have similar conversations when people want computers that aren’t facing the windows when the sun is coming through them, but as this usually happens when every single computer is taken, I tend to ask them politely which computer they would like. "Just point to an empty computer that’s not facing the sun, and I’m glad to move you there." I could handle this better, but here and we have arrived at my point: This job is slowly sucking the soul out of me.

One of my students just came in a few minutes ago, and while she was here a guy who I’ve never seen (one of the perks of this job is that you get to be on a first name basis with all the journalism students) comes in and starts punching the keys on a computer. I decide that, rather than shout where he will hear me, which would embarass him, I will let him struggle for a minute until he looks up and sees that I am sitting at a computer with the words "Computer Lab Assistant" emblazoned on the side. He doesn’t, and finally I decide to say something.

"Hey, Dude!"

He looks up.

"You need to sign in, and I need your ID."

"Oh, I’ve never been here before."

"Are you a journalism student?"

"No."

"Well, if you’re not a journalism student you won’t even be able to log in."

My student, Caroline, looked at me and said, "Don’t you hate having to say that to people?"

I shrug. I just work here. "No. When I come in here, all human empathy tends to leave my body."

I wasn’t rude to the guy; I just wasn’t overly friendly. I didn’t go out of my way to make him feel better about not being allowed to use the computers, and  I really didn’t offer him an apology. But occasionally, as I have learned, my way of doing things like this is often misinterpreted as rudeness, when it is not intended as such. I’m just not here to be anybody’s friend. I don’t like it when people talk loud, or act rude, or shoot me the "I’m an OU student and my fraternity/sorority says I am not only special but entitled" look, which I think they are taught is intimidating.

At Wake being Greek was absolutely not a big deal. Rush was in January, and so by the time everyone pledged, you already had friends and there was no pressure. So, I didn’t join. Some of my friends did. Two of my favorite people both joined and then rapidly dropped out; I like that in a person. 

I learned in high school to not put up with a lot of bullshit. When you get weekly threats to have your ass kicked, or some of your friends talk about you behind your back while they are in the same room, within hearing distance, and loudly, you develop - not a thick skin, exactly, but a kind of unwillingness to meet people on a level of fakeness, or entitlement, or ‘I’m-better-than-you’ defense mechanism.

This is why I am not always popular with the gays; I have lost my ability to bullshit. This used to manifest itself by me saying whatever thought sprung into my head. An example from my retail days:

Mean Assistant Manager:  You know, Nathan, you’re really coming along here. Especially considering that your first week working here, I kept telling Becky (the manager) to fire you and find a real keyholder.

Me: Do you even hear yourself talking? How do you think it’s okay to talk to people like this? Do you have parents?

Or this one, when Julian was working in the lab and I was sitting with him:

Silly, Silly Young Woman: [comes in, staring around wide-eyed, looking daffy. Agape for a full thirty seconds before asking] Is this a computer lab?

Julian: [agape, and silent, begins to laugh]

Me: This? No, this is a laundromat.

I still do this from time to time, but am more likely to hold my tongue now. Not because I want to be liked, mind you, but because one day it dawned on me that I have known people in my life who feel an obligation to share their every thought with the world, no matter a) who cared, or b) whose feelings were hurt, and I have never got on well with those people for very long.

See, but when I come in this lab, that tendency immediately comes out in full force, and as much as I want to squelch it, I almost see it as a vital tool for the kind of work I do. People forever try to make me feel mean, or uncool because I won’t bend my actions, or the rules, to their every whim - damn the fact that I want to do my job well so that I can keep it. But like I said, I’m not here to make friends, and I am definitely, definitely not here to be cool. I am here to earn my paltry six bucks an hour, which almost pays for my gas every month, and to make sure that everyone has a computer that works, that hopefully does not stare directly into the sun.

And then people email my boss and complain that I was rude, and I get in trouble, because no one seems interested in my side of the story, as in the case of Silly Crazy Person and the drink.

The point: I am looking forward to May, because after a year and a half, my employment at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Convergence Lab will be over, and I will be happy. Until then, pray that I will put down my defenses a little bit, and give up just a tiny little teaspoon of resentment against this job and any students who will be mean or stupid when they come in. 

Voldemort created Horcruxes by killing people - this was the action required to split his soul into seven parts. He could’ve saved himself a lot of time by working here. That’s all I’m saying. 

It's Not Right But It's Okay