[I don't count my flower shop days as my first real job because I never worked more than 15 hours per week, and those 15 hours felt much more like play than work every week. Man, take me back to the floral scene, please.]
Like most normal people, I hesitate to post things about my job on my social media accounts. There are future employers out there! I'm FB friends with my current boss! And most of my coworkers! I can't just spread whatever I want all over the interwebs!
But I think we can all accept that we have things we love and things we don't love about the things we do in life, and the things we do in life include our day jobs. If some future employer comes here and sees that there were parts of my last job that I took a moment to complain about, so be it. I can't not post anything at all (sorry for the double negative), so I'm going to go ahead and say a few words. It'll be just like we're at the funeral for my now dead day job. Here we go...
Things I will NOT miss:
I will not miss the quirks of this old campus building. For example: the bathroom situation. It's like roulette, stall style. Four available stalls become one stall when two of them do not lock and one of them will get stuck shut while you're in there and trap you forever. But plot twist! The toilet in the one working stall sporadically opts not to flush. And yes, that's ew. And there are more old building quirks where that came from!
I will not miss the dress code. We went from no dress code (which rocked) to dress code with casual Fridays (new boss meant new rules, but that was fine) to dress code without casual Fridays (which was an arbitrary decision implemented to make our lives miserable, as far as any of us ever knew). Apparently, nothing brings out the rebel in me quite like a man five steps up the corporate ladder suddenly sending me home because I was supposed to wear fancy pants every day of the week. At least pretend you have a reason for this madness! Ugh. Okay, I'm over it. [I realize that dress codes are a normal part of pretty much every job, so I am actually quite glad to have now built a pretty solid professional wardrobe for myself. It was just the principle of the thing.]
I will not miss the strict working hours. I have worked at this job every weeknight until usually 7:00 (sometimes 6:00, sometimes 8:00), and while that's of course not the latest shift anyone in the world has ever had to work, it really didn't jive very well with Joe's early morning job since he needed to be sleeping about an hour after I would get home. When was I ever supposed to make dinner? I know, my life is so hard.
I will not miss the daily email at 5:01 AM reminding me that there are things waiting to be graded that day. Sorry, but if I don't have to be at work for a few more hours, I'm gonna go ahead and not think about it until I get there. The fact that I can completely set aside my job when I'm not clocked in is pretty much the biggest perk of an hourly wage job, and you're RUINING IT FOR ME HERE! Sorry, didn't mean to yell. I'm a grouch at 5:01 AM. But it gets better: that email will continue to come at me every morning for the next month because apparently it takes a while to get me out of the computer system. Yum.
Okay. That's enough complaints now. Is that just enough of a post on its own? Meh, I'm going to keep going. You're a trooper if you're still reading. Let's move on to...
Things I WILL miss:
I will miss interacting with students on a purely one-on-one basis. Teaching entire classes is a little (okay, a lot) scarier for me than individual tutoring. I'm sure my fears will fade as I gain practice teaching larger groups of students (yay student teaching!), but I will just always have a soft spot in my heart for these needs-based teaching sessions with individual students. Don't make me leave tutoring in the dust!
I will miss the easy access to the BYU Creamery outlet. Discounted food just across the parking lot? Yes please. I once bought a dozen and a half bakery-style sugar cookies for $1.50 (total!) because they were Halloween shapes and it was November 1st. And purchases were tax-free if you used your student card. Tax-free purchases always make me feel downright liberated.
I will miss the free time. My hours were set each semester, but there was quite a bit of flux between busy and slow times. During slow times, I could have everything I needed to do for the day finished in the first 10 minutes of work and then have 3 hours and 50 minutes left of my shift for answering sporadic emails, doing homework, blogging, and listening to Pandora. Then I would have my entire evening free to spend with Joseph! Where else in the world will I find a job that will happily pay me for these things instead of sending me home early to do them on my own time?
But most of all, I will really miss my coworkers and my boss. I could not have landed in a better group of people. You will never find a more understanding or sympathetic or genuine boss than Keenan, who told me before I left tonight that he just cannot wait to write me a letter of recommendation someday (what?). And don't even try to find a funner group of people than the BYUIS High School TAs because you won't. We've had conversations that have made me laugh, cry, and laugh-cry. And I am a noticeably better person for having interacted with the coworkers I've had for the last year. Can I just bring them all with me to my student teaching position next semester, pretty please?
So there you have it. The good, the bad, and probably too many details about the ugly. While I don't think I'll miss having this job tomorrow or the next day, I am pretty sure you'll be able to find me reminiscing about those stupid roulette bathroom stalls by February. And when that day comes, I'll feel so glad to be able to come back and read this lovely, funereal post. Thanks for letting me blab! I'll try to keep my next few word counts down to make up for it...
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