The Office

I get to take an hour for lunch.  I didn’t even have to work a double to get it. They let me leave my desk and everything. I mean, I’ve done the nine-to-five before, but even there we ate family meal…at our desks. Toto, it looks like we’re not in the restaurant industry anymore.

There’s a running satire of office life on continuous play in my head every day that I spend on the eleventh floor.  I should probably try to stifle the outward giggles (and often winces) when I remember that no one’s joking – they really just asked me for the RFP reports (or did they say TPS reports? As long as I’m not worried about my quota for pieces of flair…). It’s only been a week, but it’s already feeling quite different from the work environments that I’ve grown accustomed to over the last few years, where the concept of personal space is neglected, prank emails a weekly occurrence, and inappropriate banter a necessity for effective communication. I would have thought working on the office side of the restaurant biz would have prepared me more for the corporate grind, but I guess the little barbed wire enclosed cinder block office/bakery/catering/storage facility in the heart of Roxbury is not as much of a paralleled microcosm as I may have thought. Who knew I’d long for the smell of freshly baked bread and pastries or the lack of privacy in the small, open room where we worked? (you’re right, I always knew – I’m a sucker for free baguettes). And, the corporate world is quite the change from life directly on the restaurant floor, but I’ve just replaced my restaurant lingo for the typical office jargon (Monday meetings in place of daily briefing, printing proposals instead of checks, and taking final word from the publisher, not the chef).

I wouldn’t say it’s all dry in the land of cubicles and copiers. I work for a great team of women – whose personalities I’m starting to discover behind the professionalism and really get a kick out of. At my welcome lunch, I must have been giving them my involuntary one eyebrow raise as I sat back and listened to office gossip and girl talk (a dangerous habit of mine- I’m convinced my left brow has a mind of its own), because they were sure they were scaring me off. Quite the contrary – I’m just wondering how long it’ll be before this sweet, shy, new girl thing wears off and I start to scare them.

I guess if I really think about it (my felt-lined cave is a great place for pondering), I wonder, are all of our various professional lives really as different as they seem?  I'm beginning to think not.  Sometimes people put in more hours on the job and require more dedication to their trade, but I really think it boils down to the individual and not the industry.  There are certain aspects of some jobs that are more physically demanding than others, but I’ve witnessed the umpteen hour days of office joes answering up-to-the-minute emails from their smart phones well as the restaurant pros putting in double upon double, on their feet all day.  One thing I have noticed is that what separates the workaholics from the rest is not always about trying to get ahead.  There’s something more personal about it that I can’t quite put my finger on, but I think the perfect mix of passion and insanity is the recipe for this behavior.

For now, I’m enjoying my new role that comes with enough necessity and responsibility to keep me busy day to day.  I haven’t figured out if there’s no spark between this job and me or if I just need to settle in before something’s ignited. But I keep having to catch myself from wondering, what is it, exactly, that I’m doing here?