I work for a religious organization, as a bookkeeper. I've spent the majority of my adult life working in the non-profit sector, mostly in the arts and almost always in the business office, doing the finances and bookkeeping along with any and everything else that needs to be done. When I wasn't working in an office, or even in addition to my office work job, I've done a myriad of other things: cheffing, catering, special events; house management, concessions, poster and flyer deliveries. Ticket taker, soda jerk, house cleaner, baby sitter/nanny, pet sitter. I've gone door to door selling candy back in the days when it was relatively safe for a teenage girl to do so. I scooped ice cream, slung burgers and made so many funnel cakes that people would sniff me and say that I smelled like a doughnut.
When I was 8, I washed car windows at a local gas station, to earn a buck or two, so I could buy a pack of Happy Days bubble gum cards. I set up lemonade and iced tea stands. I styled myself the local girl-detective, in the mode of Encyclopedia Brown. For that "gig", I hand printed business cards that were the a riff on my fiction hero sneaker clad gumshoe's calling card:
"Gorniak Detective Agency. 31 B Jefferey Road. No case too big or too small. 25 cents."
I put these in all the mail boxes of the apartment buildings in my neighborhood. I got one "case"; I was hired to find a missing basketball. It was never recovered and I moved onto other engagements. Magic shows, fort building, Halloween Parties, solving the case of the mysterious neighbor who were convinces was up to no good.
The kind of jobs I've had in my lifetime have been interesting and mostly entertaining, with a few stressful and short-lived diversions for organizations that I quickly left. The three shortest jobs of my life time were - 1) As a bar back/runner for a long gone restaurant on South Street called Mont Serrat. I thought I was being hired to be a waitress. I left after one hour.
2) I worked for less than 2 months at a major corporate accounting firm in Center City. On my first day there, almost every woman remarked to me that my short hair was interesting and that their husband or boyfriends would never let them wear their hair so short. It was back in the mid-90's when the Caesar/Pixie haircut was all the rage in the gay community. I heard so many lunch-time stories about diets, dinner with Rice-A-Roni recipes as well as what the men in their lives wanted. I swear I had stepped into a time capsule from another generation. The job was soulless and the working conditions were uncomfortable. I had to work a 9 hour day and was lucky to have a moment for a coffee break. There was rampant racism, classicism and the boss was a tyrant who made everyone afraid of her. One day I came in at about 9:05 am. She was sitting ON my desk. I causally and with a chipper demeanor asked what was going on. She tersely remarked to me that what was going on was work, for which I was late. This wasn't how she was running her office and I'd either have to shape up and get there earlier or face the consequences. I resigned within a week. A few months later a lawyer contacted me on behalf of two other employees that were suing her and the company for discrimination. As I didn't have any obvious discrimination lobbied toward me, I declined to comment. Fortunately for me, a better job found me just as I was fearing I'd be unemployed. I left the accounting firm on Friday and started at my new job, for a theater company, on Monday. My guardian angel was intervening on my behalf.
3) The other short lived job was for a non-profit Aids organization that was so chaotically run that all good and meaningful medical work they organization did was undermined by a vituperative executive director and an utterly insane managing director. My job was to go through the medical files and code the clients information into a City run data base to track the progress of the patients' health. I was stuck in a corner of the office, in a dark area and had to beg to be given a lamp so I could see better. I felt as though I were Harry Potter, living in the cupboard under the stairs. The two bosses didn't like me and there was some political unrest within the organization regarding my position and to whom I answered. Eventually I was moved to a sunnier office with other people but this was short-lived. It may have been brighter in the office but the woman who worked next to me was a dour back-stabber. She was in tight with the boss who had it in for me. One day the entire staff went to lunch for a farewell party for a colleague who was leaving. The girl was a well-liked and pretty with a sunny disposition. I was the troll left behind in the office, not invited to the luncheon. After that slight and several other incidents where I was clearly left out and ignored or worse still, not allowed to participate, I quit. I was the wrong person in the wrong job and it was never going to get better.
In all my jobs, I've often been in the position of knowing stuff about people's personal lives - financial and situational. It's that childhood detective in me to find out stuff, investigate or just discover things. Because I'm someone who is self aware and sensitive, I can figure things out pretty easily about people. I read body language, I hear things, I can sense stuff. I'm often the person who finds out who's gay, who's had a troubled past, who has had a rough time of it in their childhoods. It's private intimate stuff and I'm not about to spill the beans on anyone. Sometimes, though, I find that people will tell me things without regard to who I am, who they are and what our relationship is. I'm easy to talk to and I enjoy talking, making it a natural combination of having personal conversations turn to the private and confessional. Mostly, I enjoy this aspect of my life, being able to share our personal stories. The catharsis can be healthy and occasionally, depending on the person, it's a bonding experience. Unless it's a total stranger who has wandered into my world, virtual or in real life, face to face.
You could populate a Tim Burton Film with colourful characters I've met over the years in my jobs, on trains, on buses and trains. I've even "met" on-line strangers who wanted to unburden themselves and tell or write to me intimate details of their loneliness, grief, anger, frustration. When this happens with someone I like or when we are building a friendship, it's all a part of the relationship building process. I'm not so sure what it is when a stranger comes into your workplace and tells you their whole life story, warts, bankruptcy and all within the first half-hour of meeting. Nothing like meeting someone who came in to volunteer in the office only to have her volunteer her grief and frustration and then ask for advice on what to do about selling her business and starting one's life anew at the age when most people are thinking about retiring. I could be flattered that people feel so comfortable with me that they feel they can tell me intimate things about themselves so quickly. There are times that the information I know is too powerful. Knowledge is power and every once in a while when that other person realizes you know something private about them, it can have negative consequences. A person can turn on you. It's moments like that when I sense that you never know when your number's going to be up, but sooner or later, it will. Judgement day isn't too far behind you.
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