“I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work: the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.” – Joseph Conrad
It was at another party – a clear indication of the value of social networking – where I spoke with our friend Paul about getting out of the Department of State into any other agency, and he said his friend at the Thruway Authority was looking for a Keyboard Specialist. I had an interview in a few weeks, and since my score was immediately reachable I was able to transfer before my first year at the Department of State was up.
It was April 2002 and the spring seemed a fitting time to begin another new position. I went from an office filled almost entirely with women to an office filled almost entirely with men. I was told that the differences between working with women versus men were severe, but I scoffed at such a notion, dismissing it as a piece of antiquated artificial social construction that at best was ignorant and, at worst, blatantly sexist. Here, the guys had their disagreements, but they had them out before quickly, and genuinely, moving on. There wasn’t a secret passive-aggressive agenda lurking beneath their every interaction, and when there was disagreement or drama it was dealt with head-on and finished. I fought against these stereotypical notions, as they mostly came from other people, but I did notice discernible differences, and not only because of gender.
This office was much more quiet. Eerily quiet, which for me was a beautiful thing. Ensconced across the street from the main Thruway Authority building, our little Office of Construction and Contracts was in a satellite station that had its own parking within thirty feet of the door.
That meant I could drive myself to work.
There was a new independence in that. I look back and think how young I was then – even if I already felt old – only twenty-six and on my second state job. Was that good or bad? Oprah once said when she started out that if she was making her age (in thousands of dollars) she felt she was doing ok. I was just about there, but I was still scared.
The same fear and trepidation and social anxiety that marked the first days at every job I’d held accompanied me here. I’d just made a few friends at the Department of State, just started to feel comfortable in my surroundings, and now I had to start all over again. I played the time calculation game I usually played, trying to figure out how many days and weeks it would take to feel comfortable again, how long it took the last time, and what the estimated time of ease in this job would arrive.
Luckily, I adored my new supervisor Clarice from our first moments working together. She was all business up front, but I learned if I could break through and make her laugh, she opened up into a warm and hilarious woman. We made a good team, keeping things organized and running smoothly, and it was a lesson in how the clerical support team really ran the basic functions of an office.
A few bad state workers have given the whole lot of us a bad name over the years, but in my growing experience with the state I was finding out that most of the people wanted to do good work, and make a difference in whatever office they were in. They took pride in their work and wanted to contribute. For someone that considered office work solely as a means to pay our mortgage, this was a revelation, and I began to develop a profound respect for all kinds of state work. When an opening for a support person opened up in the office next door in my same title, Clarice pushed me to make it my own. About a year had passed since I first took the job at the Thruway Authority. Another spring was at hand, and outside the land was shaking free of winter. It was planting season, and at our new house I sprinkled a handful of morning glory seeds into the ground. This was a serene and calm point in our lives, even with new work moves afoot. The morning glories would sprout and wind their way up and along a new wooden fence that lined the pool. Spring slipped into summer garb, and seasons passed.
There was a little wooded area near our office building, and at lunch I would walk and examine the plants that were once again coming to life. Summer bloomed into fall, and as the morning glories went to seed, the sky deepened and the goldenrod began its bloom. It was emblematic of the peaceful time I was enjoying at the job, made more-so by a move to a new desk and new director, Pete.
Pete was one of the best people I have ever worked for, and not only because he taught me how to properly decorate a Christmas tree with lights (from the trunk outward). His daughter Kristi worked for the Times Union and would often call, which is how I got to meet her. She and her Mom also attended the holiday lunch that Pete put on every year, carrying in crock pots and hot plates and all sorts of good stuff. Despite being different in many areas (he towered at least two feet above me and loved golf) Pete shared my life-view on a number of unlikely things. (We both preferred drumsticks to wings when it came to Buffalo chicken, for example.) He supervised with a light touch, and things in his office worked out with relative ease. Affable yet effective, he ran an office that respected him, and I learned that being genial could be as powerful as being stern when it came to supervising people.
As much as I loved it there, I was already on the eligible list for a promotion, and I had managed to squeak out another reachable score for the Keyboard Specialist 2 exam. Another spring arrived – the spring of 2004 – and my state career was about to land me right in the Capital District Psychiatric Center, but not as a patient as Andy always feared (hoped?)…
{See Part One.}
