christina speaks

Live and learn and then get a new job

The past three months, I’ve been working as a temp for a major Pittsburgh company. In a week and a half, I’ll be leaving this gig for a permanent position at a local non-profit. I interned at this organization when I was in college, and it was pretty much the best working experience of my life, so I’m psyched to be headed back there to do a bunch of crazy, awesome things.

I’ve realized that the for-profit world is not for me. I just can’t get excited about selling stuff or contributing in any way to the selling of stuff. I think I’m realizing as I grow up that I really desire a simple life, uncluttered by possessions and distractions. I truly don’t care about getting the latest iPod or a flat-screen TV or 6000 channels. I just want to live my life with my boyfriend, in the simple old house we’ll be moving into in a little less than a month. I want to write books. I want to spend my working hours trying to advance a cause I believe in. Eventually I want to have kids and play with them in the backyard and teach them how to play hopscotch and this weird game about colored eggs I played when I was a kid.

Last week, I read this article in the New York Times about equal parenting. There are a few references in that piece about women choosing lower-paying, more flexible jobs. And I’ve heard it over and over again in the media that women choose to work at non-profits, or in areas like social work where they’re never going to make much money. But why should I kill myself working long hours, destroying any semblance of a personal life or writing ambitions, to make tons of money at a company I don’t care about and which doesn’t care about me? I’ll take the flexibility and work environment of a non-profit any day over that horrendous situation.

I’m not saying that non-profits are the most amazing organizations ever thought up by humankind. There are plenty of problems with them. In DC, I only worked for non-profits (although the last one I worked for was practically corporate) and I definitely got a sense of feeling like nothing was changing, no matter what the organization tried to do. (That non-profit, though, was trying to fight a pretty big battle.) But they definitely offered more of the things that I personally look for in a job than this corporate job I’m working now – friendlier people, flexible schedules, and interesting work.

And, oh, I will not miss being a temp. No more being addressed by my boss as “Hey” because he still doesn’t know my name after three months. No more condescending conversations about whether it’s better to file things alphabetically or chronologically or by subject or a mixture of all three. (They’re magazines, people. Let it go.) No more hushed conversations by the woman in the cube next to mine alluding to the fact that they’re hiring for the position I’m filling right now. No more unpaid holiday time, no more paying for crappy short-term health insurance, no more telling my supervisor I’m heading to the ladies’ room so I don’t get the evil eye when I walk back to my desk after being gone for two minutes. No more teaching my boss, who’s surely making at least four times as much as me, about the very complicated intricacies of a shared drive.

I’ll miss the free lunches. But I’ll be okay leaving everything else behind.