Reflections on My Prior Employment

Or, The Journey to Getting Hired On as a Parent

originally published February 14, 2007

Back in the fall, I decided that I should consider re-entering the workforce. Our two children are now in school every day, and although I am a huge fan of - and expert at - doing nothing, it seemed a bit selfish not to pursue gainful employment. On the Internet, I found what would be my dream job; writing back-cover copy for romance novels, part-time and online. Lovely. To get paid for reading and summarizing mindless, bodice-ripping books while working from home! How perfect. My qualifications were slim, although my pre-motherhood big-girl career did comprise writing, often in a telecommuting situation, and I do enjoy the occasional romance novel. Furthermore, I have done my share of summarizing their wispy plots for my sister Paige, although to be honest this was only done so we could decide if the novel warranted shipping up to her house.

Undaunted, I applied. Of course I did not get the job; I don’t think I even got a rejection letter. No surprise there, but it does pain me to think that somewhere in North America there is some lucky cow doing what should have been my job, getting paid for tearing through such trashy treats as How to Marry a Marquis and Buccaneer Bridegroom. I will console myself with the comforting thought that she probably wears mom jeans and themed holiday sweaters and hopefully has carpal tunnel from sending in her romance novel summaries to her editor. It’s fine, really.

Despite the absence of my dream back-cover-copywriting job, I still do consider that I am working. Any stay-at-home parent knows that days at home are not days at rest, and also that since there is no time-clock to punch, one is never actually off duty. If someone or something is sick or sad at 3 a.m., or if there is a particularly foul mess to clean, or if there is a box of crayons melted inside the dryer, the onus usually falls on the stay-at-home parent. That’s fine, too. I think that, compared to some of my more heinous paying jobs, rearing boys and caring for pets comes out the clear winner. I also sometimes think that I’m actually doing a good job. On some days, however, I would give my left foot to be able to re-enter the professional world, where there is some guarantee that I won’t have to wipe someone’s nose… or worse.

Cubby Hell

Here are some bad jobs I have had the misfortune to hold: selling coupon books over the telephone (one week in 1986); selling popcorn at a movie theater (several months in 1986); working at the cosmetics counter in a large chain drugstore, where the manager warned me of my fellow employees’ jealousy of the glamour of my position (one horrifying day in 1989); and, for far too long sometime in the early 1990s, commercial real estate assistant, a position so unnecessary that to fill my time I was reduced to photocopying magazines so they would look more businesslike, and then glaringly perusing them as a ruse to trick my hapless and also under-employed boss into believing I was doing very important commercial real estate research. Fortunately, this was in the heyday of the Carolyn Bessette/ John F. Kennedy, Jr., romance, so I had many magazines to choose from. I would nick them from the lobby, copy them, and contrive to cleverly cover Bessette and Kennedy’s handsome, Xeroxed faces with very business-like Post-it notes, so as not to alert my poor boss to the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do. Happily for us both, he also had nothing to do, so by tacit agreement we ignored the fact that neither of us was serving any purpose at all.

After freeing myself from that particular niche in the ranks of the employed, I happened upon another job. The job itself, writing for and editing two magazines, was actually moderately enjoyable. The company, however, defined Cubicle (or Cubby) Hell. Budget was always at a crisis point, so acquiring even the most rudimentary of office supplies required several forms, signed by several senior editors. Well-stocked cubbies were frequent victims of office-supply wilding, which could extend even to the theft of desk chairs. I worked within a warren of cubicles, surrounded by the rank and file, who fell into two categories: the Pale and Wormy, whose ambitions and hopes had been dashed by their tenure in Cubby Hell, and the Young and Perky, whose ambitions and hopes had not yet been dashed by their tenure in Cubby Hell, mostly because their ambitions had nothing to do with employment and everything to do with marriage. The Pale and Wormy were sad and mercifully silent, shuffling beigely through their days, penning features for magazines like Crop Dusters Monthly or Inside Your Air Ducts, although I do suspect the P&W crowd of most of the office supply snatching. Who can blame them, really? Cubby Hell had stolen their souls. What are a few boxes of paper clips in return?

The Young and Perky, however, still simmered with life, and the female Y&P's would cluster together at a cubicle adjacent to mine. There, they would compare their plans to ensnare their beaux in matrimony. Cubby Bimbo, as I dubbed their leader, ruled the roost. Usually clad in flippy skirts with stockings and sandals (!), Cubby Bimbo starred (with her boyfriend Chuck) in the ongoing Cubby Hell drama “Marry Me, Chuck.” Cubby Bimbo even had a Marry Me Dress, which she deployed with toxic and highly vocal frequency. The Y&P collected pictures of and created their own designs for engagement rings. Sadly, at least for my information-gathering purposes, I was already married and was slightly too aged to join the Young and Perky, so I obtained all my information via shameless eavesdropping (a most underrated skill, one which I shall put on my updated resumé). I did make one friend, with whom I shared a disdainful fascination - or a fascinated disdain - with Cubby Bimbo, and a love of good sandwiches.

Two Good Jobs

I departed Cubby Hell for a truly lovely job, one where I was surrounded by smart and hard-working and sane people. With the notable exception of one woman who shared stories of the parking-lot, girl-on-girl rumbles in which she’d participated in her ill-spent, Midwestern young adulthood, my coworkers were wonderful. And although none of them could hold a candle to Cubby Bimbo, the work was interesting and challenging, and I was no longer in danger of arriving at work to find my desk chair replaced with one of those rolling footstools usually seen in elementary school libraries. As I was so pleased with myself for finding such a nice place to work, I went and got pregnant and began the slow spiral towards what I now do.

For me, working and being pregnant is akin to riding a bicycle in a bathing suit: it’s distracting and uncomfortable and you feel like an idiot, but it can be done. My coworkers in this new endeavor were the Pregnancy Dwarves: Queasy, Puffy, Moody, Achy, Weepy, Eaty and Drowsy. Queasy Dwarf left me feeling like I had only the slightest of hangovers, and Puffy came relatively late and left after only about 12 months. Achy was a minor annoyance, as was Weepy. Weepy was a most unwelcome visitor at work: “What? You need me to r-r-r-revise this… sniffle, sniffle, gasp.” (Eaty, Drowsy and Moody, now, they came to play, and came to stay; I’m still waiting for them to leave, and it’s been three years.) Anyway, these tiny, dwarfy inconveniences aside, pregnancy was work of the nicest kind; it allows you free rein at the food trough, requires very little thought, and no one questions your need for breaks or naps. Perhaps my supervisors did wonder about my long lunches (spent napping in my car - underground parking garages are surprisingly soporific), or my mid-afternoon brownie breaks, but they were kind enough not to say anything. I guess they knew I was a lost cause, or maybe they were afraid I’d unleash Weepy Dwarf on them.

And of course all that follows from that - leaving a near-perfect job to rear small children while maintaining a menagerie that Dr. Doolittle would envy - is also lovely, if a bit on the gamey side. My sister also has two sons but no animals, and she lives in a state of disbelieving disgust at what my days entail. I prefer to think of it as learning new skills. True, my childhood vision of my adulthood did not include picking up a front yard’s worth of dog poo using Kroger bags (one as a mitt and one as a receptacle). My vision also did not feature the gag-inducing clean-up required after one of our dogs, The Lovely Maude, goes foraging in the litter box and regurgitates her findings onto the seagrass rug. (My husband Winston calls this unprecedentedly revolting substance vom-ass.) If I were to list my new skills on a resumé, I might include the following: removing cat vomit from new suede driving moccasins; eradicating the stench produced by a box of year-old dead cicadas from a dresser drawer; holding a child’s almost-severed finger in place using only a McDonald’s napkin; and, removing a cat’s anal-gland secretions from human hair. Still, I think this might be my favorite job so far, although it does require more hand-washing than I ever believed possible.

In Closing

I think that a good job is one in which one’s work is valuable and important, in which one is challenged regularly, in which one is appreciated, and in which there is a lasting, positive impact. My current job, Resident Harridan at what I like to call the Dander Palace, fits the bill. I flatter myself by thinking I am rather good at it. Of course, I won’t really know how skilled I am at my current employment for years. There’s no real, quantifiable way to measure parenting success, but I’m awaiting some sort of feedback on the results of my child-rearing skills. This could take decades. What are the metrics of success? College degrees and thriving careers for both of our sons? Nice families? Avoiding jail time? If, as my sister Paige predicts, we are both rubbish at motherhood and wifehood, we will find ourselves as dotty spinster-like creatures living together (having driven off our respective husbands by ceaseless nagging and talking to each other all day and night on the phone) and wearing scuffs and sweatpants in broad daylight, surrounded by a clutter of cats, drinking wine at noon, our sons living in our basement. Let us hope this grim vision never comes to pass, as that would truly constitute a poor performance review.

Elise White