Like I said in the first part of this series, I’ve been working on this Godforsaken book at work. At some point it became my job to do the patchwork required to put the book together: Coordinating the copyediting and proofreading, working with the designer on the cover, and with the printer on the file format and typesetting, and with direct marketing list brokers for marketing it, and with our PR guy for touting the hell out of it.
Let me amend my first sentence, the book is not Godforsaken, it’s actually quite good, or will be quite good when it is done, I’m told. The content is first rate. I wouldn’t know that, however. I’ve hardly read it myself, save for the thousands of redlined words.
This situation has become a wonderful metaphor for the concept of losing one’s perspective at work, entering into a profession with the expectation of immersing oneself into something fascinating, seeing that there are “dues to pay” in the form of lackluster busywork, and then getting so immersed in this busywork that you forgot why you are at your company or what you wanted to get out of it in the first place.
I briefly described this feeling to my co-worker, the one I described in the last segment of the series. She has a good grasp of English, but less of a grasp on our sayings.
“You look too much at da treese,” she said. “Or is it da forest?”
Still, I understood what she was saying. I’ve been in “tree” mode for so long, practically analyzing every piece of bark that I hardly know where I am. I feel lost.
Something usually reminds you that you are lost, jarring you to remember what you initially wanted, and the feeling of dissonance between your current and your desired state can be unsettling.
For me this happened yesterday. I was slaving over book details for the lions’ share of the week. The phone rings constantly in our office, and fortunately we now have enough people where I can occasionally ignore it and let someone else pick up. My co-worker yelled over her minicubicle to me:
“Jory dere is somevone on de phone for you!”
I had a doctor’s appointment in an hour and needed to finish what I was doing. Irritated as all hell to take the call, I put on my hands-free set and contemplated whether to respond to my phone’s blinking red light.
My voice is friendly and deceptive: “This is Jory,” I say.
The person on the other line was a woman, one that I had contacted pre-trees phase, when there was more visibility in my job, when I was excited about my work and wanted others to know about the firm. I had spent countless hours trying to drum up business for the firm by contacting new prospects over the summer, and hardly getting any response. But now people were calling back and were—dare I say it?—Interested.
“Tell me more about the firm,” she said. I had 15 minutes to spare, so I tried to make it quick. I rolled out my 25-word-or-less description that I had often used when I was leaving messages on prospects’ voicemail, when I knew I had to boil down the company’s value proposition into a 30-second window. When I finished there was silence. She wasn’t racing to get off the phone. She actually wanted to hear more
I don’t know what happened after that. I just remember looking up at the clock, seeing that I had just spent 25 minutes on the phone with this person, and needed to go. We agreed to chat again the following week, after I sent her some information. I hung up and started to frantically gather my things.
“I luf what you say!” my colleague said. I looked over the row of cubicles where the voice came from. Her head emerged from the last one: “You are so goot at talking to people. You just tell dem stories about other people and den dey are in-tress-ted. I write down every-ting you say so I can tell dem dat too.”
As I ran out the door, I remembered why I bothered to come to this company. I like talking to people. I like connecting their needs with some solution. I love to tell stories.
Whether here or someplace else, that’s what I have to do.
Consider this, even if you are not happy with your workplace, there are SIGNS that show you what you are meant to do. Maybe you are meant to do something else at the same company. Maybe you are supposed to use your current company as a springboard. Maybe you are supposed to be a stand-up comedian, and your cubicle mates make a great sample audience.
Time is never wasted at a job if you can see the forest for the trees.
Comments