Professionally Jobless

"I'm in the office right now. Talk to you later."

A 19-year old shouldn't have to say those terrible words. And yet I already have, over a dozen times, these last 3 days. It's a tough life. I sent someone that message just now, and that drove me to vent my vexation into this blog post. Let me tell you why.

It's Day 3 of my co-op, and I'm already counting the days to when I'll go back to college (a mere 346 days, if you were wondering.) Don't get me wrong: this is a dream life by many standards. No homework, complete freedom, a car, and a good apartment. I shouldn't complain, you're right. But, at least right now, the job is so boring!

I wake up every morning at 6 am. You'd think after having done that in school for 14 years straight, it might be a simple matter. Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope. I learnt how to use toilet paper in a week (that was a bad week), but waking up early? Still as hard as it was 16 years ago.

After accomplishing the Herculean task of getting out of bed, I rewarded myself with a hot shower (going to value those more as it gets colder), and get dressed.

Dress code for the office is "casual business-casual" which means I have to wear closed-toed shoes, but they needn't be Oxfords. I should wear khakis, but they needn't actually be a khaki colour. My shirt must have a collar, but not necessarily a pocket or a full-length button placket. Basically, my clothes say, "What's up?" (articulated with a smile), but not, "A very good morning to you, sir." 

Incidentally, the former was what I used to greet my boss with on Day 1, before I realized that I was being an ass, and quickly amended it to, "Nice to meet you!"

After a breakfast of some disgusting Apple-cinnamon oats, of which I had bought a jumbo pack of 20 in my credulity to their advertising, I left my apartment. I jumped into my car, and drove off. I'll do a separate post on "Driving in the States", but let's just say that traffic moved like clockwork, and it was a placid me that got out at the office. 

I used this neat magnetic fob that I was given on my first day, to get into my floor, and then to my desk.

My desk. So many shelves and cupboards, and a large counter-top. It's kinda like a kitchen. 

Security at the office is nuts. We have this little device that randomly generates a new code every 30 seconds, which is used to log in to our online system. I mean, it makes sense; lots of cutting edge R&D happening here. What doesn't make sense is giving ME access to the building. Look at me, three days in and I'm already blogging about the place for the world to see.

Don't worry, I won't reveal anything even remotely confidential. I'd probably get it all wrong anyway. 

So, I reached my desk, booted up my PC and started reading up on some training materials. Safety procedures, and some Quality Maintenance policies. The first PDF on Day 1 was cool to read because it was my first task at the job. Today I read my 56th PDF. The thrill of that exciting file-type had fizzled out by then. That's literally all I've been doing so far. 

By 10:00 am today, I was done with all the training PDFs they had, as well as all the project-specific technical videos, PowerPoints, and PDFs (my fave!) that they had given me. I spent the rest of the day beating my own high score in some phone games, learning some words for GRE, and sleeping facing the computer, so that people would think that I'm working. (A little inspection would have given me away, though, since the task that I was "working" so hard on, comprised purely of that weird multicolored ball gyrating on my screensaver.)

There was an exciting part of the day where someone actually spoke to me! I know, right? A nice Korean guy on my team spoke to me about potential plans and projects that I could contribute to. He told me to sit tight while he figured some things out, after which I could join him. My boss also showed up and gave me some background on the project, and calmly answered some pretty intelligent questions that I had lined up to impress him. Don't think it worked. After a quick chat about some potential tasks for me, these rare, almost fictional creatures flew away again, not to be seen for the rest of the day. They still haven't got back to me, so I expect that that will only happen tomorrow.

After a decent lunch (more about the cafeteria and lunches in another post), I had a similar agenda. I'm literally being paid to do nothing, at least for this week. At around 2 pm, I took another clandestine nap. And it was in the middle of that fabulous nap that I got a call I was forced to cut, because 'no phone calls' is a tacit rule.

The thought that I was sitting here doing nothing, when I could be at home, doing nothing in comfort, or taking phone calls whenever I wanted to, really pissed me off. It really is annoying, giving up a year of your life to work at a company, and far worse, waking up everyday at 6 am, with them practically ignoring you. I was gradually being inundated by boredom, so I had to take action. I decided to blog about it.

So that's the story of why I'm sitting jobless (ironically) in the office right now, using Blogger. It's 3:30 pm now, and not a single person has even raised an eyebrow at the website that's been on my screen for over an hour. Oh, well. The perks and drawbacks of being a co-op. I'll tell you more about it soon.