How the Hell Did I End Up Here?

"Good morning, you've reached _____________, how can I help you?"

That pretty much sums up my job. Forty hours a week I answer the phone and greet clients. And smile- a lot. I am paid to be cordial and pleasant. Easy enough? Yes. Complicated and problematic? For me, also yes.

I am a queer and feminist-identified woman working in the heart of corporate hell. And I do mean the very heart of it- midtown Manhattan- a neighborhood (if you could call it that) so choked with white guys in power suits it looks like the Republican National Convention is in town- E-V-E-R-Y DAY. And within this male-dominated corporate culture, already providing a glass ceiling plenty thick, I inhabit an especially gender-stereotyped position: the receptionist. Ugh.

And so I ask myself- how the hell did I end up here? This is not what I had in mind when I graduated from college one short year ago- I majored in Women’s Studies for god sakes! Turns out that those ideals are a lot easier to adhere to in the protective womb of a college campus than in the cold harsh real world; and choosing the year of EPIC economic downturn to learn this lesson made it all the more jarring. Which isn't to say I didn't try to find a more useful and suitable profession first. I did, but it, uh, didn't work out. I'll explain that part later, back to my pre-NYC idealist phase...

When I graduated I was ready to run off to New York City- the queer Mecca of the east coast- and spread my wings (or feather boas for us femmes). I was planning to sell my car, bunk up with my partner, and not look back. It was a big gay dream. But that happy bubble started to deflate when my 'rents informed me they were not down with this plan. What?! Ok- so maybe telling them I was queer and moving 1,000 miles away and going to live with my partner they had never met was a lot of information at once. But clearly they didn't understand MY point of view- I had ideals that were just too big for a medium-sized metropolis in the South. And despite our close relationship I was not about to sacrifice all that possibility just for parental approval, even if that approval was supported by way of cash. Look at me, I thought, no one can use money to make ME compromise myself. That right there is what we call foreshadowing.

So I packed up my belongings and headed up Interstate 95, without a financial safety net, save for the money I had made in college (well the money I hadn't spent on beer I mean) plus the cash from selling my '96 Camry. Once arrived and stuff moved in (up four flights of stairs!) I could not believe myself when I scored a job within the first week and an ACTIVIST job at that. Pssshh- who says New York City is hard?! I am makin' it! I was wide-eyed and optimistic- eager to explore, make a niche for myself, and most of all start my first Big Girl job.

The job was to work with student activists on a college campus to implement the organization's campaigns. Sound vague? Well it was. They worked on a little bit of everything- the environment, transportation, consumer advocacy etc. Now how could any organization cultivate a meaningful understanding of and effectively combat so many issues simultaneously? You see where I'm heading here...they can't! This is what I call assembly line activism- the goal being to get as many people as possible to make phone calls or sign petitions on a given campaign without actually engaging with them on issues, much less exploring the underlying inequalities that lead to these issues in the first place. You can forget those women's studies discussions of intersectionality and the matrix of domination. [sigh]

Assembly Line Boss-man: This week we are working on a campaign for the environment.
Me: What aspect the environment?
ALB: Saving it. Duh.
Me: Right. Can we address a specific topic?
ALB: You mean like recycling?
Me: Er, no. How about a round table discussion about environmental racism? Or a panel on how environmental degradation specifically affects women?
ALB: ...[silence]

As one of my former fellow coworkers says, I refused to drink the Kool-Aid. And ALB said it "wasn't working out". So my first foray into uniting my ideals and my work- fail! Maybe I should have been a little more discrete in trying to bring some depth to their superfluous campaigns, but discrete has never really been my style. I'm working on it...

Months of unemployment followed, punctuated by a brief stint in a vegan cafe, but after deciding that 14 hours a week did not constitute a full-time job I was left sucking up for temp agencies which landed me here. Although a paycheck is a paycheck, especially when the '96 Camry money is long gone and I'm running out of options. So here I am, answering phones and smiling and using the leftover brainpower not employed by those hefty tasks to critique and undermine hegemonic corporate culture.

How can I help you?