Quality Control

I applied for the position because the world was in the middle of a pandemic and remote work was desirable. My friends that worked there assured me that I was qualified. There was some apprehension on my part about working my very first office job in my thirties, after a parade of food and customer service gigs. Jobs that I could work while pursuing my artistic interests of being a comedian and a writer. I didn’t have a “career” in the traditional sense. But now I was going to have one of those jobs with a computer and benefits and a title that makes people go, “Ooh, what’s that?”. Maybe there would be some potential at this place. Maybe it was time to work an “adult” job.

The job was at an outsourcing company that had somehow set up an office in West Virginia. The unspoken reasoning was to save money by paying workers less in a poorer part of the country and, boy howdy, they do. Rumor had it that the CEO once let it slip on a conference call that she considered us “cheap labor.” In fairness, it did provide a lot of jobs for folks, and we love bringing jobs into West Virginia!

My job title was Document Processor and, honestly, I don’t want to waste much space trying to explain what that entails. Basically if a lawyer had a Word or PDF document they were having issues with, then they would send it to the document center for us to fix or clean up. There were other tasks, of course, but that’s the elevator pitch. It’s not quite paralegal work, not quite secretary work, not quite IT. It’s a little bit of each, but not enough to make you an expert in any. My interview went fine; I lied on my application about being familiar with Excel. In reality, the first time I used it I said, “Oh wow, it does math?” I don’t feel any shame about that, everyone has to bluff a little. I had a college degree and I could speak well, that was good enough. I would eventually learn that a college degree and the ability to write like a grownup may have made me overqualified. Having a mildly steady heartbeat would have been enough.

My training was in-person, inside a mostly empty building in an office with no windows. But I didn’t mind; after training I’d be working remotely! The woman who trained me seemed quite stressed. She half-apologized for not wearing a mask during the pandemic, as she was an asthmatic and a proud cigarette smoker. She also wasted no time in bad-mouthing her coworkers and expressing her annoyance at the Black Lives Matter movement to me. I knew this woman would not be my friend. But I wasn’t in my twenties, I didn’t have to become besties with coworkers anymore. 

I completed my training early, not because I was terribly good at it, but because they really needed people to be on shift (in hindsight, so many red flags). I was given my equipment to take home and was moved on to second shift, afternoon to nighttime. Our client had offices in London, so my account offered twenty-four hour services.

I was hoping the wit and humor I’d spent years sharpening would charm my new coworkers. Unfortunately, I bombed. Again and again. People didn’t want my brand of humor. They wanted to hear the same complaints about lawyers that they make every day. They wanted vague insults directed at management. They wanted to discuss the quality of Marvel movies. It was not my crowd.

I would ask questions in the Teams chat and no one would answer me. This happened multiple times. Not only were my jokes bad, I was also being ignored regarding my work. I became irritated with my virtual coworkers as a collective. After months of this I gave up on communicating. I started showing up and starting work, not even bothering to type “hello” when I logged in. I’d leave at the end of the night without typing "goodbye" and no one said a thing. I chose to become the nonverbal entity that was apparently expected of me. I figured assimilation would help me get through it.

“How’s the job?” people would ask me. “Fine.” I’d answer, because there was nothing else to say. “Do you like your coworkers?” “They don’t talk to me.” People’s faces would fall when I told them that, but I could only shrug. Maybe this was what office jobs were like? It wasn’t like a restaurant, where communication is important. Maybe in an office everyone is supposed to be, you know, kind of a prick.

Somehow I kept working there. It was remote, and that was the saving grace. I had paid time off and health insurance, both new concepts to me. This was what an “adult” job provided for people. I could tough it out, I told myself. I made myself a regular at breakfast spots in town. I got some work done and eventually self-published a book. I took up running. I was living my life, my job just wasn’t at the center of it. It paid the bills.

The more attention I paid to my workplace, the more unsatisfying it became. It was hard not to become cynical in that environment. For one thing, it seemed normal to assume everything everyone said was a lie. On my first employee evaluation I told my manager that I had no interest in “moving up” in the company. When I told a friend about it he said that was a “bold move” but I never thought of it as a move. It was simply the truth. Middle management in an office looked incredibly unappealing to me. All the people angrily chainsmoking out behind the building were managers. 

I’m not trying to sound like I’m holier than thou. I’ve just found life to be easier when you’re able to be honest more often. I read somewhere that people who say they lie often report higher levels of anxiety, and I believe that to be true. All that stress about being caught in a lie, keeping your stories straight. I have enough anxieties, there’s no need to make more. I didn’t view this job as some sort of HBO drama where I’d have to be really clever and vicious to get ahead. There was no way I was in a chess game with Management. It felt more like Candy Land, at best. 

Which brings me to everyone’s biggest complaint in the corporate world: “Management.” The implied “they” when someone says, “They want us to do this stupid training” or “They don’t like it when we do this” or “They don’t care about us.” Everyone needs a faceless entity to get angry at, something to blame for every last problem in their lives. Who specifically was making these rules we hated? Didn’t matter. It was always “They.”

In all my previous jobs I knew who was calling the shots. Everyone respects a manager that is able and willing to work alongside their employees. That’s just Management 101. Apparently no one took that course here. Supervisors and managers gave off the same energy: “You need to do all this work and fix all these problems because I’m very busy right now.” And because we worked remotely, who could argue? Once a coworker called a supervisor to ask her something and it was obvious from the background noise that she was out shopping at Walmart. 

I didn’t like having remote managers, people I never had to see but constantly had to hear from. I prefer having my managers be within striking distance. Not that I would ever actually hit someone, but I like it to be possible.

The Walmart-shopping supervisor was eventually replaced by another, Roger. On one of our first phone calls he wanted to discuss my career goals within the company. By this point I’d learned that there was very little to gain by taking on more responsibility, so I very honestly said that I felt I didn’t have any career goals. See? That pesky honesty. After hearing all this he gave a forced sigh and said, “I worry about you.” I cackled out loud at the absurdity of being worried about someone for not caring about their menial desk job. Roger did not care for that cackle.

Perhaps you are wondering if maybe I was a bad worker. Sure, I didn’t enjoy the work, but I could do it. My attendance and punctuality were great. I could write emails without using AI, a skill I didn’t know I had until I read some cringeworthy stuff in my inbox. I passed Quality Control checks most of the time, I rarely received complaints about work. I firmly believe that I was not a bad worker, especially if you’d like to grade on the curve of the average employee.

I was surely better than the nonverbal guy who would ignore the inbox even though he was paid to watch the inbox. I was better than the woman who once took two hours to rename ten files and another time fell asleep during her morning shift (I suspect, but cannot confirm, that she was on drugs). I was better than the new hire whose background check apparently didn’t find her previous charges of child neglect. Sure, everyone should get the chance to turn over a new leaf, but none of them were able to pick up the job fast enough. How cruel to give them hope and then watch them fail when they really shouldn’t have passed the interview. All these people were eventually fired, for justified reasons.

Who wasn’t fired? Among others, an overnight worker who somehow inserted her personal text messages into the notes of a job ticket without realizing it. Or another overnight worker who lost his temper one night, punched his monitor, stormed out hours early, and came back the next night like nothing happened. Both of those people quit on their own terms, because I assume you need twenty strikes to get fired and they only had nineteen.

Late in my time there (we’re about four years in by this point), I had the unfortunate experience of working with a habitual liar. You probably know the type: an endless variety of health issues that they’re suffering from, an excuse to why their work was bad, a whole saga explaining why they’re late to work every single day. This woman had a job that started at 3 pm, was mostly remote, and still could not start on time. Who is always late to work when working from home? One day she claimed she was late because she “saw a baby duck that needed rescuing.” I believe that day I laughed myself insane. This could not be my “adult” job.

I tried to laugh about it, as if I just had a quirky workplace. But over the five years there my mental health had been chipped away. I felt I once had personality, had ambition, had a zest for life. I found myself at a place that had robbed me of each. Our jobs don’t define us, sure, but here I am spending nine hours a day either bored with mundane work or pissed that some jerk above me was making the work harder. I was waiting for a moment when things would improve, but it never came. I was trapped in a never-ending cycle of hope and disappointment.

Management changed hands once again. Roger, once a supervisor who didn’t talk to anybody and never worked on a job in the queue, became our account manager. He was promoted because the managers above him didn’t want to bother with applications and interviews; he was already working at the account, so he could probably run it. He was definitely proud of his ability to organize an inbox, but it takes more than that to lead people.

Roger had that “I don’t care if people like me” attitude and, by gosh, no one liked him. I’ve never understood that logic. If a manager is a little gruff or strict, sure, but if your employees actively dislike being around you then what do you gain? Nobody works better for someone they hate.

The unseen corporate managers told Roger that the account was going to pump up the days in office to begin a new hybrid format. Oh no. My favorite thing about the job was going away. I tried to keep an open mind; maybe working in the same physical  space would be ok. Maybe talking over the Teams chat was a barrier that could be removed and I’d feel better in person. 

Wrong again, oh that pesky cycle! Turns out that working in the office was just really dang weird. We were all sitting at our desks, working in silence. Communication still happened mainly on the Teams chat. On our computers! We were commuting to the same space to keep communicating online! How did no one grasp how insane that was?

We inquired who specifically wanted us to work in the office; maybe we could talk to them and present our side. Of course Roger didn’t have an answer for us. Apparently “they” are impossible to trace when it comes to difficult questions. The return to office order could have been given by a cockroach piloting a robot suit for all we knew. 

Roger told us he wanted to create a seating chart for the office, like for school children. Originally we were told we could choose our desks, but then 24 hours later he’d emailed us a seating chart made without our input. I was on day shift by this point and day shift took up the left half of the room. I was assigned a desk on the right side, surrounded by the empty desks of people who didn’t come in until the evenings. This couldn’t have been an accident; Roger wanted to separate me from the group. Punishment for having a smartass mouth and being somewhat likeable, I was sure of it. I was in my mid-thirties, being sat in the corner. I refused to sit there and he backed down. I hate how much that small victory meant to me.

The office was not an optimal environment for me, which if you’ve read this far then you probably expected that. While some coworkers were cool, as a whole the vibes in the room were generally angry, tense, and hard to navigate. Something about being there so many times a week made me itch, and it wasn’t the bedbugs someone had brought in. (Ok, in all honesty that happened after I left, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s so very true.)

On top of everything else, I also had to face the reality that new hires were being paid starting rates above mine. Zero experience, fresh out of college, previous arrests, etc. I thought being a good and loyal worker would get you rewarded because, you know, that’s what everyone told me about jobs like this. The screen-puncher and the duck hunter were worth more than me? Ok then. Eventually I gave up trying to defend my worth. 

I wanted to leave, but of course the “job market” sucks. It especially sucks when you don’t know what you’re looking for. I didn’t think I wanted another office situation; it had been nothing but weird and awful, and I could only assume they were all like that. I also couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for my work, could barely list my relevant skills on a resume. I had learned a few technical skills from working there, but nothing I felt was worth bragging about. I was working in a field that I only entered because of a global pandemic. I didn’t even know these kinds of jobs existed, let alone what their endgame could be.

I tried interviewing for another account, just for curiosity’s sake. The open position was for a Marketing Associate. Sounds fun! I’m creative, I like working with people, I assume those are good qualities to have in a Marketing Associate. Roger called me to “warn” me that he didn’t think I was qualified for that position (unprofessional, Rog!). I interviewed anyway. The job was basically updating information in a marketing company’s database. If a client’s address changed, you updated it, and so on. Repeat a hundred times. It was simple data entry. There was nothing creative about it. You worked by yourself, but also in the office. “Not qualified,” my ass. I looked at my face near the end of the Zoom interview and thought, Wow, I look so bored. I thanked them for their time. I had no followup questions. It was time to get out of here. (In case you’re wondering, they did not offer me the position).

It became clear that to get out I’d have to make less money. “You don’t want to struggle!” a friend warned me. I was now in an abusive relationship with my job. “I don’t respect you or like you, but what are you gonna do? Leave me?” It was scary, the idea of leaving everything I’d leaned on for five years behind me. But forty hours a week going someplace you hate, for people that don’t respect you? I didn’t need that. Maybe if I had a family of five to support I could grit my teeth like Homer Simpson. But it was time to remind myself that I actually like myself.

I got a different job. I emailed Roger my two weeks’ notice. I had heard that sometimes when you send notice, management may try to find a way to keep you from leaving. Maybe they find that raise you were looking for or ask, “What can we do to have you stay?” Not me! Ten minutes after sending in my notice I received an email reply that said, “I understand. Thank you.” By the next morning my position was on the company job board. A five year “career” ended in mere minutes. Honestly, it was silly of me to expect otherwise.

During my two weeks’ notice Roger confidentially told a shift lead that, “[he] was going to try and help Isaac get more money but he’s already put his notice in.” Oh really? Funny how he’d never communicated that to me. Another widely unprofessional thing to say to another employee, another lame attempt at avoiding responsibility. Not that anyone believed that, mind you

But oh well, my notice was in, my course was set, my middle finger was poised for a farewell. I worked my entire two weeks’ notice as some point of pride; I was going to give the most professional exit ever, more professional than they deserved. Not that anyone cared.

Then I was free. Freedom is scary, the unknown is scary, but I’d been there before. I’m now working as a line cook at one of my favorite breakfast spots in the city. I have to get up before the sun, I’m on my feet for hours at a time, I have to scrub the bacon grease from my pores after every shift. I have a full board of tickets, I have three or four hot pans rolling at one time, I crack an insane amount of eggs. I panic and I holler and I laugh myself silly when it gets to be too much. My coworkers are able to hold a conversation. My boss says “thank you” almost every day. It was a bit of a scary transition but, what do you know, I’m able to live without seating charts and Excel goals.

I’m fully aware that I was dealt a bad hand for offices. I was kept abreast of what was going on after I left the account; around twenty people had left within six months of my departure. It wasn’t just me! I’m sure the office will eventually become staffed again and bounce back, or at least appear to. It deserves to be closed, frankly, but if there’s one thing that working there taught me it’s that people can last a long time with a lot of nothing.

No disrespect is meant to the thousands of office workers out there, I tip my hat to you. Also no disrespect was intended to the field of Document Processing; if you enjoy it, good! It’s good to find something you can tolerate 40 hours a week for years at a time. Sometimes it’s cracking eggs, sometimes it’s going through a document to make sure there are two spaces after every period (this is the equivalent of buying your groceries with a check; slowing everyone down for no reason).

I took what lessons I could learn and moved forward, even though to some it may look like a step back. A “good” job can look like anything. As of now I can drive to work without a pit of dread sitting in my chest. I’ll take it.

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