EPTSo I’m working this database/finance/event planning co-op job matched through the University’s own job hunt system, and the position qualification requirements went something along the lines of: senior (3 or 4th year student) position, mastery/extensive experience of Access and Excel with strong SQL knowledge, solid background in accounting and economic principles, event planning/management skills and experience required, along with the softer stuff i.e., communication/teamwork/etc. skills. Over 200 students applied for the position and 12 went in for the first interview, and then 3 for the second interview, most of them 3rd and 4th year students. The pay is decent for a 2nd year student, at $17.50/hour. Initially I had no hope of getting the position, but as luck would have it, I landed the job. Needless to say, I had high hopes for the position to further my skills/knowledge while getting paid decent money doing it. How very naive had I been?
Now, I’ve been working this shitfucking assrape of a job in this shithole of an office for about a month now (started late August), and I’ve grown to hate my life more than just a little. I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll first say that this job is everything I envisioned it to be, in the complete opposite direction; I could have done this job when I was in grade 8, seriously, no joke/exaggeration here. I received an “Excellent” rating on my previous work term because I work hard, I’m usually fantastic with people and know to do my share of brown nosing. I also accept the fact that all co-op jobs are entry level and suck, therefore involves a certain amount of administrative/labour tasks, so I wouldn’t think I’m a bad employee with completely unrealistic expectations. However, this job... every day by 2pm, my stress ball no longer expands correctly because I squeeze it so much and I just want to smash someone’s face in.
First of all, I work with some of the most unbelievably backward rednecks I’ve ever met; the kind with low education and displays very little respect for their inferiors (boss has a bachelors in Economics from a shitty university; supervisor has some random certificate from a community college). Everyone else in the office is female. Yah, I’m such a pimp. They’re all at least 35+, with the average age at around 45. Not that I’m discriminatory towards older people or a sexist, this fact just compounds my total isolation is all.
First day of work, my boss dumped four 2000+ row excel databases on my supervisor who dumped them onto me. Shit rolls downhill right? I’m the co-op student, so no biggie. Had to go in, delete duplicates, sum some rows, and merge everything together – basic, basic cell manipulation stuff. 8 hours of squinting my already too-small Asian eyes at this tiny screen really makes me go more than a little crazy. I was pretty disappointed there and then, I had expected 1-2 weeks of training as in my previous work term to learn more about SQL/whatever database system they used, and finally started to gain a good idea of what my next 4 months would be like. Nothing changed much the first week, I was just my boss’s excel bitch and I guess although I was disappointed, I still got to brush up on my excel short-cuts and could review database concepts during my down time (which I create for myself... by saving time using macros/shortcuts, because every time I finish and ask for more work I just get hammered by another 2000+ row database).
As times progressed, things took a turn for the worse as well. No need to rant about any more trivial things, so in summary, I acquired some new responsibilities gradually throughout the next few weeks; I became the MS Suite bitch, the coffee bitch, the errands bitch, the mail bitch, the paperwork bitch, the office labour bitch, data input bitch, and finally, everyone just treated me like their bitch. To put it another way, I’m essentially white-collar slave labour; a large portion of the office just dumps whatever boring and meaningless shit they don’t want to do on me. To paint an accurate picture of how truly fucking shitty my situation is consider what I did all day today. There’s this young female secretary from another department down the hall, and her small department shares the kitchenette with us. What did she do to make me think she’s a complete fucking tool? Nothing less than putting her thermos in the microwave of course. I shit you not, I did not make this up, she fucking put her THERMOS in the fucking MICROWAVE. Seriously, you’re 20 something… seriously?!!! Shit went down at the office that day, and guess who had to clean up putrid burning plastic after her? Fuck my life. But wait, there’s more. She had to make 300+ name tags for 4 separate events, and since this has been a slow week in terms of my workload my boss told her that I would be available to help. So she “asked for my help” which directly translates to, “do that gay shit for me”. I slaved 7 hours today cutting/stuffing labels into plastic sleeves and sorting the tags. Oh and this just makes me seriously consider just punching her in the face and quitting - she has ZERO idea of how to use even Word/Excel, and prints the names onto labels from the order of her data input which was not really in any logical order, then without sorting them in excel or letting me know beforehand, printed them and told me to sort them into particular groups in ALPHABETICAL order. What. The. Fuck. Why, the fuck, couldn’t that dumb bitch use the sort function in Excel BEFORE printing is fucking beyond me. What should have been a 1 hour job turned into a 7 hour one with me playing the memory cards game with a billion different name tags in random order. I even offered to re-sort the data and re-print so I could save like 5 hours of time, but she declines, “Nah… just do them this way I don’t want to print again.” I walked by her office twice today on my washroom break and lunch, and she was fucking talking on the phone and painting her nails on the occasions. If only she was blonde, then I don’t know how more stereotypical she could be. Saddest thing is, my supervisor, my boss, my boss’s boss, the big boss on the floor, and everyone else in the office know exactly what goes down but couldn’t give less of a fuck. Yah, just leave all the shitty work to the quiet Asian dude – careful though, he might just stab you in the FACE one day.
So then when she tried to get me to work faster after lunch, “hurry up I need these done before the end of the day”, I just fucking lost it. I told her… nvm. There’s no point lying to myself and the internet. I did nothing. I said nothing back. I took it like a little bitch up my ass and replied, “sure thing” and got the name tags done. But in all honesty, I feared for both mine and her well-being a little amidst of it all, when I made a conscious effort to stop my hand as my fist moved a little aimed at her face.
If this was a real job after graduation I would never take this kind of shit from anyone. I know it’s beneficial to be easy-going, but also firm and strong when someone tries to bully you so they don’t fuck with you again in the future. But this is my co-op job, I’m just a meager student amidst millions of others and I need a good job evaluation at the end, and quitting isn’t an option. These fuckers know that, and they most likely abuse every co-op student this way as they come through. Honestly, alongside the shitty workload, it’d be tons better even if they made any effort to treat the co-op students like human beings on the surface. Basic things like saying please, thank you, and forming demands in the form “could you…” would help the morale by light years, but nooooooooooo, these uncultured rednecks just outright treat the co-op student like their own slaving bitch, all day and every day.
At the end of the day, my only comfort is to think over and over to myself, “If I don’t go through this kind of shit now, I’d probably have to go through it later anyway when I graduate; with experience, I am working towards a better future. The younger I have to deal with shit, the better.”
Sorry for the long rant, I just got home after working overtime (no pay, surprise surprise) doing a 20 page data input – again, someone else’s work so I’m just about ready to strangle something. Fuck my life, I’m going on bnet east to rape some random noobs and bm as hard as I can during/after the game with a few beers, because I can’t even get pot anymore since my both of my dealers got busted/stopped chopping.
Fuck my life. The future better be better than this shit.
