My Day 9-11-2012
Much like the people from the World Trade Center towers, I work in an office. In a cubicle, to be precise. In a 20 story building overlooking a river on one side and a major downtown metropolitan area on the other. It’s not the tallest building I’ve worked in. In 2001, in fact, I was just a few blocks away from my current office in a 33 story building I can see from our windows. That building, eerily enough for those working in it at the time, is also part of a “twin tower” set of buildings. But I digress from the point of my story.
My day starts out just like most people. Get up with the alarm before sunrise, shower, get dressed and ready for work. Feed animals, grab a cup of coffee on the way out the door. On trash days, I run the trash bags or recycle bins quickly to the curb just before the truck arrives on our street. When the days are shorter in winter, I’m leaving for work while it’s still dark out — in summer, just as the sun is rising. Like most Texans, my commute consists of driving alone in my car through congested, construction-laden streets and highways. (I’ve been told this is the least energy efficient way of getting to work, but for many of us, there are no other options. Even co-workers live too far apart and have too different schedules to make carpooling an option. This is the way it is.) In the late summer days of August and September, I’m faced with the full moon through the windshield as the sun comes up behind me. My commute takes me through no less than 4 suburbs of the city that is my destination. Each of the small towns’ citizens have their own style of driving. The first drive as close to your bumper as they can, urging you forward in their mad rush to their own jobs. These are younger, career-minded people in newer and more expensive cars. They moved into homes further away from the city, in new and growing subdivisions with two-story houses and tiny yards. They are always in a hurry. Next come the work trucks, logos on the side, with 2 or 4 men inside — all but the driver still sleeping. Last, in the town closest to the city and one of the oldest in the area, drivers are slower, more laid back and in older model cars and trucks. The drivers are older too and often drive slower than the speed limit. On their way to jobs they’ve held for 30 years, they’re in no rush to begin the cycle again. All the while, construction zones threaten to slow traffic to a crawl as we wind our way together to our various destinations.
Finally, after 30 minutes or an hour (or more), I arrive at my current place of employment. It’s like many others I’ve worked, and not much different than any given office in any given city. We’re lucky that we do have a badge-access covered parking garage. In past years, I’ve had to walk blocks to a paid lot, parked in rain, hail, or snow, having to clear my windshield before starting the journey back home. I appreciate the covered garage. I grab my lunch and my badge, which is my access to the building as well. Greet the security person stationed by the door. In spite of seeing the same people each day, they also need to see your badge as you come in. Something interesting I learned years ago — building security personnel are always the first to know who is about to be fired. Inside the elevator, I must use my badge again to get to the 10th floor. I head to the breakroom first. If there’s fresh coffee already made, my boss has arrived ahead of me. If not, I start the coffee in the industrial coffee machine using packets purchased in bulk. Mud, we call it, and everyone has their own flavored creamer lining the door of the refrigerator. I take my lunch with me to my desk rather than add it to the already packed shelves of week-old leftovers and lunchbags. Our office building also has a nice cafeteria on the bottom floor, but for those of us on a budget, it’s easier to bring lunch than pay the $6 — $12 for a burger or dinner plate. I’m not a permanent employee, but instead a full-time, on-call temp (meaning I get a steady paycheck, but without benefits and on any given day I can be sent home when the work slows down. it’s a position that is becoming more common with many corporations.)
My day is typical of any office position I’ve held in the past. Check email, follow up on questions, concerns or problems of managers, co-workers and so on. It’s pleasant in that our office is not a call-center. There is still the office politics to deal with. Hierarchies, and (often unnecessary) protocols. This job must first be approved by that person — who has already seen and approved it three times before. That job requires the input of two other teams before it can even begin. Managers, supervisors, VPs and others insist on meetings to discuss the workload that, more often than not, slow down the workload. “Business casual” attire means dress slacks are ok, open-toed shoes are not, with Casual Fridays allowing jeans and sneakers. The “company” expects employees’ participation in community fundraisers, offering incentives such as wearing jeans all week or half-days off (unpaid for temps like myself). In spite of the “corporate atmosphere”, it’s a pleasant company with much less political tugs-of-war than I’ve experienced in the past. (I will always say “in spite of” when it comes to corporate atmosphere. There is no corporate office anywhere that runs smoothly, without plays for political power, head-butting, or in the worst situations, people undermining the work, position and even knowledge of co-workers. I’ve experienced all of it — from the best to the worst. Teams and team goals will always clash with each other, as the very thing that makes a corporation grow creates situations where the right hand is not always aware of the impact they have on the left hand, and vice-versa.)
Office life is what it is. You work with people you would not be friends with in any other aspect of your life, and your co-workers become your friends. Like with a family, you don’t get to choose who sits in the cubicle beside you. Either you get along or you don’t — and if you don’t, you grow weary of your job and everything about it. Nothing teaches diplomacy better than working in close proximity to several other cubicles. When people ask me how I can be friendly and open with strangers, the answer is that I have to do it with every new job, with each new office, in an endless possibility of potential life-long friends or hostile environments surrounded by bitter employees. Most fall somewhere in the middle.
There is nothing glamorous about working in a cubicle. It’s the desk-equivalent of assembly-line work. Each day the same as the last, running into each other into an endless blur. My job consists of production work not taught or dreamed of in college courses. Get it done fast, get it done right, and get it done on schedule. You don’t want to see errors come back from the quality control team. You don’t want to see last-minute changes come in from the creative team. My natural curiosity and geeky tendencies make me check in with the analytics team to see the results of my work. They’re more than happy to share, in spite of the fact that I have no control over the content of my work. I do what I’m given to work on, regardless of whether it makes sense from a customer’s perspective. Company policies (and politics, again) take precedence over customer expectations. Office workers aren’t out there saving people’s lives. We’re not curing cancer. We don’t typically *do* anything that is life-changing or critical for others. In some cases, our work is seen and noticed by the general public, both online and off; in other cases, it’s not. It may be noticed if it isn’t there, but it’s rarely actually *missed*. I’m one of the lucky ones, that I truly enjoy the work that I do. Office workers go to work, spend all day in obscurity in a cubicle, and go home again. They come from all walks of life, all faiths, all races and all backgrounds. They have families and pets. They spend their weekends with family, friends, alone… going to movies, playing sports, playing with their kids or their pets, working on personal projects, watching TV, volunteering, caring for elderly parents… They blend together en masse during their commute and in buildings across the country. They harm no one. They are not a threat. These are the people — the ordinary people — who became a target, having done nothing more than living their lives and going to their jobs.
Today, 9/11, we will again see TV specials following the first responders, commemorating the priest who refused to leave his post as chaos surrounded him. We will read article after article discussing the impact on politics, and journalists urging politicians to stop turning the tragedy into a political agenda, while making it an agenda themselves. First responders, politicians, rescuers all become the central focus across the country, far removed from the offices themselves that are no longer standing. I sit in a cubicle even as I type this. Life goes on, the daily grind continues, the commute is the same. Life in a war-torn country, with generation upon generation of hate and mistrust is further removed than even the buildings that fell or the planes that crashed. I have no understanding of one religion fighting another. Those are things for movies of the past about soldiers fighting for ancient lands. If there is any message to my endless rambling today, it isn’t about Peace. It’s about the names. The names of the office workers. The people who were just like me. The real message of 9/11 isn’t “beware of terrorism”, in spite of what politicians and journalists would have us believe. The real message of 9/11 is Tolerance. Understanding. And remembering the names.