mrs-roboto's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help Wanted - Great People, Fun Atmosphere, Lots of Perks.....My Ass! Yesterday my friend Tony and I met for our biweekly lunch. Tony works in the human resources department of a huge legal firm about six blocks from where I am employed. We've been meeting up for lunch for the last two years. It's a ritual I look forward to because it a) gets me out of the office and b) it gives Tony and I the opportunity to discuss important things like "what a pair of shoes say about the man wearing them" and "the Caesar haircut - who brought it back in style, why they did, and will it ever go away." Anyway, recently Tony had begun exploring new career options and I knew it was only a matter of time till our lunches would be no more. You see, Corporate America was not really Tony's bag of tricks so when he announced a that he'd found a new job with a "really high fun factor" I was not surprised. When I first met him we were both in travel industry or to be more specific the cruise ship industry. I was drawn to this type of work because it offered an escape from the hectic life I was living in NYC. Tony was drawn to it because of the "opportunity to meet new people and have new experiences." That's right, cruise ship jobs don't offer great monetary gain or a real sense of accomplishment or any of the other benefits of a real career. What they do offer , according to employers, is a "really high fun factor." Now "fun" and "job" have never been two words that I string together. Call me crazy, but for me kayaking is fun. Hanging with my friends and sipping martinis is fun. Lying in bed on Sunday morning next to Pete with the paper and a latte - that's fun. Work - well that's something I do to get by and pay the mortgage. And I by no means dislike my current job but should I win the lottery, I won't be coming into the office anymore. That's just the way it is. Still, when I was living on board the cruise ships I wanted to believe it was going to be "fun" and for the first two months, it sort of was. I got to see some places I had never seen before and I got to meet some pretty cool people. But at some point it hits you that you can never get away from your coworkers and that you never leave your job. There is a moment when you realize that you are a 23 year old woman, sleeping on the top bunk, in an 8' x 8' room that you share with two other girls and you haven't been alone in over a month. You haven't read a newspaper in weeks and you have no idea where the latest Real World is being filmed. Your night life consists of constructing a kayak-like structure out of cardboard boxes and "decorating" it with crayons and tinfoil while rehearsing a corny lip sync number to perform at crew entertainment the next night. And then it really knocks you on the head! You will spend the next two months traveling between the same seven ports of call with the same 23 people while eating the same planned meals and watching the same ten or so movies onboard the vessel. Maybe, you flip out and leave or maybe you just do what I did - torture the other crew members for my own entertainment and drink heavily. Anyway, the "fun-factor" is gone and what you are left with is a just a job. So, in conclusion here is a list of words and description used in help wanted ads that should make a red light go off in your head: 1."really high fun factor"- see above Tony, I hope your new job includes less of the above and more real fun! And congratulations, I'll miss our lunches but we'll replace them with Friday night margaritas, okay? 10:29 a.m. - 2002-08-01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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