In Which Miss Jill Is Thankful to Be A Teacher Again

Let’s get this out in the open-it is not my destiny to be a secretary/administrative assistant. Among the many disadvantages are

1. You have to be organized.
2. You have to pretend to care about making copies and stapling in the perfect spot
3. Office humor (i.e., “another day in paradise…”).
4. You have to read passive aggressive signs about stolen food, the filthiness level of the fridge and “when you tinkle, please don’t sprinkle (complete with Clipart).”
5. You get a gift certificate because your co-worker nominates you for “whitest legs in the office.”
6. You get reported to Human Resources for talking too much..

Ok, some of these are case specific, but you get the idea. No offense to any of my beloved readers, but working for attorneys is the worst. Even if they graduated from some no-name state school and can’t tell the difference between its and it’s, some of them have egos that would be more understandable in Bill Gates, Albert Einstein or Nobel laureate President Obama (shout out to Grandpa).

It took me a few weeks of my last job to realize that my boss was not just shy, he actually didn’t see me as a viable human being. You really have to telephone me to come out of my office to pick up a fax that is five feet away from you? You can’t take a twenty second walk to the water cooler? Do you really have to leave files on the floor for me to fetch like a dog, when it would be just as easy to hand them to me? Give me a break. Once he said, “How are you?” and I was so shocked that I almost fainted on the spot.

So one day, he sent me to the bank and as I was walking back, the sky broke into a torrential downpour. I walked for several minutes, until a woman took pity on me and shared her umbrella. I was so wet that I had to go into Borders to put my shoes under the hand dryer. I was wearing a cotton dress and it looked like I had taken a swan dive into a swimming pool. Eye makeup streamed down my cheeks. I cannot overemphasize how wet I was. Bookstore patrons were staring and laughing in my face.

Still dripping, I went back to work and entered my boss’s office to give him the deposit receipt. As I was a non-person, he did not even notice or remark upon the fact that I had inadvertently become a wet t-shirt contestant while doing his bidding.