drawls and Dilbertdom

8/18/99

Today started out almost as crappily as yesterday. I got to work tired, forced myself to be uncomfortable, did lots of things that I wasn’t sure of, and then got over it. I hate not knowing what I’m doing. New jobs scare the crap out of me. Why else do you think I’d have stuck with those crappy retail jobs I had for so long?

Today the person who’s assigned to train me was in. This girl is 19, naturally blond, very cute, and ever-so-popular with the plant workers. All the guys in the place are in love with her. She also has the twangiest twangy drawl I have ever heard. No shitting—this is the Southern accent that Northerners only hear in their dreams. I was captivated. She’s a talker, too; all day long talking on the phone, to coworkers, or to herself, if there’s nobody else around. She’s in the next cubicle over, and all day I marveled at her accent.

This job is where I’ve finally felt out-of-place, though not in a bad way. Warner Robins is a military town, so tons of people here are from other places. Everyone who’s grown up here is used to all the mixed up accents. But I work in a tiny little town about 20 miles west. The plant workers and office staff all have fat drawls, just like in the movies. And they noticed my “Yankee accent” right off the bat. Already I’ve been asked at least four times, “Where are you from?” If I say, “I live in Warner Robins,” they say, “Yeah, but where are you from?”

It’s funny, too—I mentioned this to John earlier—in the North, when you’re imitating or quoting someone, you drawl it. “And so he says, ‘So, whut ‘ur you gonna do ‘bout it?’” They do the same thing in the South, even though they drawl to begin with. The girl working with me did it today. I didn’t think there was a drawlier drawl than hers, but I’ll be damned, she did it. “Soooooe, this parvart hay cawls up an’ say-uhs, ‘Aaahhh’llll betcher loookin’ gooood todayyyy....” Extra twangy, even.

My job is dry, to put it, well, dryly. Lots of mindless data entry, lots of faxing. At my lowest point this morning, I thought, “Good, I have a master’s degree and I’m listening to country music and stuffing envelopes for 6.50 an hour.” I’m not really such a snob about the music, or the money, but I was so tired this morning. I spent a good few hours calling vendors today, expediting part shipments. Did I mention that’s what I do? I work in Parts-Sales for a big branch of an even bigger corporation, sorting, faxing, calling. It’s like all the good parts of my grocery store job, without most of the bad parts. Conspicuous lack of customers.

There are new bad parts, though. Ten hour days. Repetitive motion strain. And, when I get home in the evening, I have less desire to upload my journal entries, because I’ve been staring at a screen for most of the day. I still have an urge to write my entires, just not to type them.

My biggest chore so far is cleaning out my cubicle. It was vacant for two months, so it was a magnet for the crap that nobody else wanted in their own cubicles. Plus, the position I’m filling is the one that’s responsible for the filing of said crap. My desk was covered with about six stacks of invoices, each stack close to two feet high. These stacks need to be sorted into other stacks, and then those stacks need to be sorted into small piles, by letter, and then those letter-piles are to be arranged numerically, NOT alphabetically, and then those piles are to be integrated into the book, by letter, numerically, and THEN, finally, the book’s invoices will be filed into the file cabinet. By letter, and numerically. I tackled this today. In between doing all the things that I’m supposed to be doing, but are tough when my desk is covered with stacks of crap.

I sorted, sorted, arranged, and integrated up to letter J today. By the time I left at 5:30, there was another pile beginning in my incoming basket. This task is almost daunting. Also daunting: I found out today that the girl training me is a temp, just like me. She’s been a temp for over a year. My prospects, then, are good and bad: I’ll always have work at the company, but I’ll be a temp forever and ever. I don’t plan to stay here long enough to find out.