Post Office Update

I feel like I am not getting very much out of my job, but that is not quite true. I will probably leave it off my resume someday, but I think it belongs there right now since in an interview I might be asked where I currently work. So, I was working out how to frame the job, and I can honestly say I am glad I took it.

Since I love the mail and mail is amazing, I am glad that I got to spend two weeks in the Oakland sorting facility, seeing all the machines and the handlers and the tragic art and signs. I got to listen to dozens of hours of non-public speakers assigned to ramble to the new hires- it was a lot of work to glean anything useful or interesting, but glean I did. I've gotten to dust a crystal ball award that someone got for accruing 1,000 hours of unused sick time- 1,000 hours he could have spent nursing a headache or resting on the couch, which he spent at the post office. One time? I picked up the crystal ball to wipe dust off the shelf under it, and the crystal stand turned out to be a separate piece, attached only by a weak vacuum. I almost broke someone's 1,000 hours of unused sick time... now I let it get dusty.

I have never met so many people who consider their job their forever job. I've just begun to see all the ways that affects people's behavior. They're careful, very into following protocols. They can't work too hard, because they have to do it all over tommorow, and 5/7ths of the next ten thousand tommorows. This is very foreign to me. I have had eight jobs in the five years since I started working, and I feel proud of myself for each half day that I don't drive away forever without bothering to resign.

 I've gotten to meet the Hayward postmaster and dust the letter she has from the City of Hayward proclaiming a particular day a city holiday in her honor, and the pin she has thanking her for 40 years of service. I've learned loads about the different unions, especially the one I am eligible to join (I joined but they lost my info and aren't taking my dues out of my paycheck and are hassling my union rep to get me to join).

I am finding it easy to spend my breaks studying Japanese- I can't relax at work since there is no private space, not even any space where it's polite not to talk to each other, like in a library or a grocery store. Between this small discipline and the audiobooks I listen to all day, I am learning kind of a lot besides what the job itself presents. And yet, apparently I secretly possess quite an aptitude for boredom, and just hadn't had the proper environment to nurture it.