Twenty five years ago I was working in the ADR Research Department of John Hancock Insurance. They needed people to delve into years and years of records to address a class action lawsuit, and that’s about all I was told. It involved scanning microfiche and writing down duplicate numbers and reporting our findings to people at the next level. To this day, I’m not sure what we were looking for or if any of our numbers made any difference, good or bad. All I cared about was that I was getting paid, and had some money to go out and party like I was twenty-three. (A twenty-three-year-old like myself was too busy discovering the city of Boston, seeking out love, and hoping to get past all the shitty things that could and did happen to a young gay man in the 90’s. Simple survival was a feat in an of itself.)
It was my first office job, and after working in an orchid greenhouse, a hospital cafeteria, and a store named Structure, I embraced its regular hours and laid-back requirements. Showing up on time and simply doing what you were told to do puts you ahead of the majority of people in my experience. Not being a complete dick helps too, as does some wit and style. All in all, I learned what an office was like, and it quickly became clear that it wasn’t so much the work that mattered as it was the group of people with whom you did it. Being a nameless cog among many nameless cogs was a strange and surprising comfort to me; standing out takes a greater toll than anyone who doesn’t often stand out could ever understand.
Our office was not in what used to be known by all as the John Hancock Tower, but right across the street in a much smaller and nondescript building. While our work was done there, our lunches were mostly taken in the expansive cafeteria in the basement of the main tower, and we also had access to the observatory if we wanted to show the city off to any visiting friends or relatives. Working for a company so emblematic of Boston didn’t thrill me anymore than working for a retail store did, but it did make me feel like I was genuinely part of the city at last. And slowly, I made a few friends, and impacted the dull office that had never seen the likes of someone like me…
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