“Each man had only one genuine vocation – to find the way to himself… His task was to discover his own destiny – not an arbitrary one – and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.” – Herman Hesse
The year was 2001.
The season was summer – late summer.
The world as we once knew it was about to change forever.
The morning of August 30 dawned in slightly foggy form. The morning glories I had trained onto Andy’s house didn’t know whether to open or close, confused as to whether the day was ending or beginning. These morning glories would greet me faithfully for those first few weeks of work. They would also follow us – or rather we would bring them along – when we moved to our first home together. I loved their resilience, the way they bloomed even more the worse you treated them, the less you pampered them.
Andy pulled the car out and I paused in the driveway, taking a deep breath before my first day at a new job. In one hand I held a folder of various documents and a pen, in my other was a lunch that Andy had made. I didn’t even have a work bag then. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The start of a new job doesn’t usually happen on the first day at work. It begins weeks and months before that…
It actually started, as so many fortuitous things did in those days, at a party at Rob’s. New to Andy, new to Albany, and relatively new to the shark-accented social circles that the gay world at the turn of the millennium provided, I was a novice to most everything. Back then I thought all the gay couples we met would stay together, and I looked up to them as role models. Would Andy and I stay together for a year? Two? Little did I know then that the window I saw before me was a temporary and disappointingly minor slice of our lives. None of those other couples would last, which made me thankful to be in the realm of casual friendship with all involved.
It was New Year’s Eve. The vodka and cranberry was overflowing from my red solo cup, people wore paper hats and glasses shaped like ‘2001’, and the mood was celebratory and cozy near the fire. I was talking with Jim, who was one of the friendliest (and most drama-free) of the new people I met through Andy. Somehow we got to talking about employment and suddenly they were printing out the application for the New York State Civil Service Test for Keyboard Specialist. I filled it out right then and there, and stuffed it in an envelope. The seeds of my state career had been planted, and as we counted down to the exit of another year, 2001 dawned to cheers and kisses and hope on a chilly wind.
The exam was a piece of cake. I took it in Amsterdam since that was still technically my residence in upstate New York. Then there was one last summer of freedom, spent with Andy between Albany and Boston. The gears of the state moved then, as they often do now, at an infuriatingly-glacial-like pace. It would be months before the results were in, but once I received my score of 100, the canvass letters began to pour in. Foolishly, because I didn’t know any better, I took the first one that was offered – a Data Entry Machine Operator, even in the face of others that would have brought me up to a Grade 9 after a year. Such was my early ignorance of the Civil Service system. I took the Grade 5 position and moved forward without question. Those mis-steps and mistakes would ultimately serve me well, as I learned first-hand what it was like to be a state employee, and all the accompanying Civil Service laws that went with it. When I would eventually swerve into the Human Resources lane, I’d have invaluable experience and first-hand knowledge under my belt. I didn’t know that then, so I felt the same frustration and confusion that many people new to state service feel.
The Department of State, then located at the corner of State Street and Broadway in downtown Albany, did something with licenses as far as I could tell. (Hint to other would-be employees: research and look into wherever you may be interviewing – it impresses almost everyone and you end up looking less like an idiot than I did.) Andy thought I would like it downtown, where there were more things to do within walking distance during the day than in the sprawling suburbia of Guilderland. The history and older buildings did appeal to me, hinting at what I loved so much about Boston, albeit on a much smaller and less grand scale. They folded up the sidewalks after 5 PM, but we would be back on the road by that time.
My first supervisor was named Mary Beth. She was a quiet and kind woman, younger than the stereotypical state worker I had in my mind. With hair puffed up in front and feathered on the sides, her head was stuck in the 80’s but she knew her job and work. The woman who headed up our unit – something to do with licensing that I never quite could piece together, even after working there for a few months – was named Joan. She was, to put it politely, awful. These two extremes, Mary Beth and Joan, initiated me into the wildly-vacillating nature of state work.
Joan was wicked in almost every way. She had thick coke-bottle glasses, an equally thick frame, and dry patches on her arms that flaked off when she scratched them, which was often. She had a pillow on her chair, presumably to ease the pain of being such a pain in the ass, and everyone hated her. She was especially cruel to the guy who I sensed was disabled in some way. He was always kind and kept to himself, but she would go after him for the littlest things. He was one of the only other men in the office, which at first I loved, because I always seemed to get on better with women than men, but soon learned to loathe when it became apparent that this was not some dreamy Barbizon scene with people preening like decorative peacocks. Or maybe it was, given the nasty nature I’m told peacocks have.
Whether it was my maleness or naive ignorance that acted as a shield, I managed largely to avoid the drama and in-fighting that soon revealed themselves after a honeymoon of a few hours. Factions took up against factions, and friendliness was less an act of good-nature and more likely a planned alliance for a battle to come. It was stressful, even for someone who mostly steered clear of all the drama, but I befriended a couple of women who allowed me to join them on their smoke breaks (even if I didn’t smoke) – they found my use of big words entertaining, even if they didn’t know what I was saying half the time. They introduced me to more people, and within a couple of months I felt at home. It would be one of my strengths: endearing myself to an office and acting as a social lubricant. People seemed to get a kick out of me, and I proved myself a reliable worker who was on time, dependable, and did as he was told without question or challenge. (And some, I’m sure, found me annoying and obnoxious as hell. It takes all kinds.)
Despite my growing friendships with a few co-workers, there are toxic workplaces that can’t be easily fixed. Thanks to the agitated shadow that Joan threw over the place, and the gossipy groups that were constantly pitting people against each other, as well as a growing understanding of having to look at possible promotional opportunities, I knew it was time to seek out other options. The winding road of my state career was about to take its first major turn…
{To be continued.}
