Today is an anniversary day.
It is exactly twenty years to the day since I left my old job. Well, actually I was TOLD to leave it, but not because of bad performance or other incidents. The engineering consulting company didn't have enough work coming in to keep everyone on the payroll, so that's how it was. It was on a Friday, the third Friday in January. It came with a sense of relief, because somehow I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in that place.
The pay was low and the hours were long. The prevailing attitude at this company was, "While others work to live, we live to work." Now, I respect the heck out of that attitude. There was a certain old-school mentality there; be passionate about your job, value hard work to the fullest, and these are all good things. But what about hobbies? Family? Hiking in the hills? Long bike rides after work? Or weekend getaways into the mountains? Hanging out with your buddies? I guess, ultimately, I realized at one point, (probably after yet another weekend being forced to work in the office to meet an impossible deadline- and after at least five or six consecutive 12-hour days) that I am one of those "Work to live" rather than "Live to work" people. I love my job and I will give it 110 percent while I am there, but ultimately, when it's "quittin' time," all work and no play make Jack* a dull boy. And a lot of the old timers, grizzled old veteran engineers and designers who I worked for, couldn't understand, or even respect that. ("You gen-X slackers with your outside interests and lives outside of work..what a bunch of lazy kids!" they'd say.)
(*my real name isn't Jack, obviously.)
So I got a better job. Better pay (there were some fast-food workers who actually made more than I did at that old job) more reasonable hours and a much better work environment overall. And this job is the one I hope to retire at, God willing, and with any luck.
It all reminded me of this dream I had a few years ago. I was back at my old office, but I was trapped there. The place was an endless shifting maze of rooms and halls, with yellow carpet, ugly yellow wallpaper, and the ever-present hum of buzzing flourescent lights. There were no windows, and seemingly no exits, and there were a few of us trapped there with me. We would just wander endlessly through this empty office space, from room to room, hopelessly trying to find our way out. Finally we figured out that to make the exit appear, we had to just make a loop in the right direction, and hit all six conference rooms, in the right order. And that would trigger an escape hatch.
Then, about a year ago, while going down a Youtube rabbit hole on a typically boring January evening, a video popped up in my Youtube recommendations. It was a short horror film/video about a teenage filmmaker who finds himself trapped in a strange dimension, an endless empty windowless office with yellow wallpaper and carpets, and so much like my nightmare from six years ago that it was downright scary. And the video would have disturbing enough as it was, without recalling my old dream. I won't spoil it, but let's just say that the kid in the video discovers that the thing that is trapped there with him is something inhuman... And the setting of that video looked almost eerily like the old office building I used to work at.
In a way, being trapped in that disturbing dream-like dimension was like being trapped in a dull and dehumanizing job. And endless series of liminal spaces, drab, empty, and seemingly with no escape, but yet with the constant and ominous feeling of background stress that something- whether it's an unexpected summons to Human Resources, or a literal monster, as in the aforementioned horror video- is stalking you.
I am grateful to have the job I have now. Even on bad days, when (for example) a certain designer changes the length of a certain part and I have to re-do my drawings for like the fourth time. I am grateful to even have a job, I guess. And for those still trapped in their own private back rooms, may they one day find the exit.