Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Things are beginning to look up a bit. A couple weeks ago I got hired to be a temporary (3-6 months according to the description) CD archivist at Slack, Inc. The company is local, about a six-minute commute from my front door to theirs, but is large and respected in their industry. Slack is a publisher of medical journals, magazines, newspapers etc. to over 26 different publications. My job, which is tedious/repetitive but calming in that I really don't have any bosses breathing down my neck, is officially titled "Archivist." Essentially, Slack began creating back-up master copies of every single issue of every single publication starting around 1997 (or earlier/later depending on the specific publication) onto blank CDs, and fairly recently came to the realizations (a) CDs do not last forever and these "master copies" will inevitably be useless, and (b) storing 10,000+ burned CDs (and every month, 26-30 more) gets to be very space-consuming and unmanageable. They have hired me to take each individual disc and copy all the files over into the appropriate folder on their B Drive: Journal or Newspaper --> Publication Name --> Year --> Month.

That's a whole lotta files.

As boring as that job sounds (and it can be at times), it's got a whole lot of upside. For one, the workday is technically 8:30-5 but I'm only officially supposed to work 7.5 hrs/day (they want to keep me at 37.5 hrs/week to maintain part-time status by their company's standards), which means I can actually leave at 4:30 if I choose to take a 30 minute lunch break. Or, if I feel like bringing my lunch and scarfing it down, I could (conceivably) take a 15-minute lunch break and leave work at 4:15. You get the drift. Secondly, the Senior VP has already told me that it's perfectly fine by him if I listen to my iPod all day long while I do the work. I sit in a cubicle, my first experience with doing that by the way, and transfer disc after disc to the mainframe. It's not like I'll be talking to anyone for any real reasons other than pleasantries, nor does it require absolute concentration (although it does require more than one would initially think). Furthermore, since some of those CDs can take anywhere from 3 to 12+ minutes per disc to copy, I have a pretty decent amount of downtime while I can't do anything. In 4 work days I've already read 350 pages of the 520-page novel "What is the What" by Dave Eggers. It's very captivating and pretty hard to put down. I don't feel like explainging its synopsis so look it up on Wikipedia. In short, it's about a biographical story of a real person who was a Lost Boy of Sudan.

I have to admit, being in the corporate world is a weird and silly feeling. It's business casual, which is nice, but commuting to a rat maze of cubicles is not where I thought I'd be. In honor of my first-ever day working in a cubicle, last week I put 'Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta' on my iPod while sipping black coffee on a sluggish Monday afternoon. I couldn't help but grin to myself as I thought of the numerous times I've seen Office Space but have never been able to relate to the jokes with personal affection. I still haven't for many of them, but you'd be amazed at how quickly one picks up the nuances of a corporate office environment.

Six days into my job (which, for the record, cripples my motivation to update this blog since I'm staring at a computer monitor for close to 8 hours a day before even coming home. Also my laptop recently got a virus - probably porn induced, but c'est la vie - that has rendered the time-waster useless; it surely hasn't helped me updating, which I'm doing from the family comp), I've gotten to know a few co-workers pretty well. The ones I've gotten to know the best are older, let's say in their late 40s through early 60s, but there are a couple in their early to mid-30s I've become acquainted with. They all have some uniqueness about them, though words probably don't paint the pictures as well as desired (I will use aliases so that they cannot find this blog via Google searches of their real names):

Tony, Senior Vice-President - A short man, 45ish, with silver and white hair that looks like it could have been shaved off a Silverback's spine. He is a squirmy little guy of a man, about 5'10" and walks kinda like a bobblehead while he snakes through the cubicles. He's so short you can't see him coming until he's right next to you since the cubicles are 6 feet tall. It kinda freaks me out to turn around with my headphones on and see him standing behind me, trying to get my attention. All in all a good guy, but definitely the quirkiest person I've met thus far.

Diane, co-worker - Long brown haired woman of around 34, she is a free-spirited bird who will talk your ear off if you let her. She's not textbook pretty and not textbook unattractive; it's weird how she's good-looking in a different way, much of which can probably be attributed to her personality. Diane has a thin build and, presumably, no children yet even though she's married. I know some women are blessed and can look reasonably fit even after birthing mini-thems, but I somehow doubt Diane has any. She seems way too relaxed and not mom-like enough. In any case she's fun to talk to when the job gets boring.

Pete, co-worker/left cubicle neighbor - Pete, 55ish, is a very friendly man whose hair, or what remains of it, is stark white. A father of two daughters of roughly my age, he'll ask you how you're doing and make some jokes with you. He's very good at whatever it is he does apparently, because he told me how he alone out-sold a nationwide team of over 150 employees at his old textbook selling job. I think at Slack he has to do with the re-sales of old publications. Pete was the first co-worker to really reach out to me, on about the third or fourth day, when he walked over and said hi and asked me where I was from. I hadn't really talked to anyone at that point but he made me feel more comfortable.

Sheryl, co-worker/right cubicle neighbor - 65ish, friendly as fuck and a bearer of loud laughter. She's super nice and very maternal in nature. Sheryl's told me that she has 11 grandchildren from 6 months through 14 years old, although I'd have never guess she was a grandmother let alone one who has 11. She was in charge of this year's office Super Bowl pool, and on my second day there asked me if I'd like to participate ($5 per square, the 10x10 grid type of pool - no I didn't win anything). I said sure, bought a square and from then on we've hit it off well.

William, company utility guy - Even though this balding, 48ish thin man works in the shipping/mailing section of the company I see him often, for the CDs that I archive are stored there. I've had to borrow random shit from him already but he's a bitterly funny guy, the type where he'll curse around you and make fun of people who clearly lack common sense. We always have a good 30-second conversation as I load up on the next batch of discs.

There are others who I interact with daily but these five are the most interesting. I'm looking to find a full-time position at Slack, Inc. so that when this temporary one runs out I can stay and keep my routine going. It's so much easier starting a new job when you're already familiar with some of the people who work there, the layout of the building and the general commute/what's expected of you. Plus it'd pay better than what I'm making doing this, which isn't terrible considering the skill it involves, but I know that I could (should) be making more.