at Spanish translations from time to time.”
I was tempted to tell her I couldn’t read or write well in Spanish but knew the information would lower my value by half. Maybe it wouldn’t come up. If they didn’t have a billion Spanish-speaking translators on their list, they had problems that I couldn’t fix by pretending to proofread an English-to-Spanish public service announcement.
Sandra introduced me to the IT team—composed primarily of guys who seemed more awake and energetic than anyone I’d met so far—and finally led me to the area that would be my new base of operations. To my surprise, it was less of a drag than the rest of the place. It was an open area near the break room and kitchen, but several yards away from the majority of the other staff. Instead of cubicles, there were regular desks facing a window. It afforded a good view of One World Trade Center, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Ground Zero creeped me out, and the new skyscraper looked like a chrome torpedo.
“You’ll be working here with Eugene and Karina. Eugene is out sick, and Karina is messengering something across town for Viktor.”
I looked at the desk that would be mine—metal, dented, but with a dope dual-screen computer. I wondered if it could run Borderlands . “I thought I was supposed to be trained by Eugene today?”
“Karina will start training you as soon as she returns,” Sandra reassured me. “For now, just settle in and get yourself acclimated. Someone from IT will come set up your computer and get you onto the network.”
Getting myself acclimated to an empty desk meant sitting my ass down and powering up the computer. It booted in under a minute, and I started poking around to see what kind of goods they had installed in the bad boy. There was an impressive amount of RAM, but a shitty onboard graphics card. Definitely not gaming material.
When the guy from IT didn’t show his face in the first ten minutes of me dividing time between staring out the window and clicking randomly at the computer, I decided to nose around the hard drive. For whatever reason, they hadn’t wiped the machine or the browser history after what’s-his-face quit or got fired. Going through his e-mails in Outlook wasn’t a big thrill, but I got a clearer idea of what the hell he’d done—ordering and distributing supplies, contacting vendors and maintenance staff, and transcribing documents a few times a week. Nothing too intimidating. Or interesting.
His browser history was more fun. I found the guy’s Facebook and his Twitter, and it didn’t take much backtracking to realize he’d quit within the last month or so.
@philinnyc: so glad to be out of that fucking hell hole
@philinnyc: LLS peeps should know that unless you ride V’s dick, you’re on the shit list and he WILL find a way to ruin you
Looked promising. And sadly that was the most exciting part of my day.
At four o’clock, I vacated the office, forced myself to say good-bye to people I didn’t care about and had nothing in common with, and rode the train to my new apartment with a head full of doubts. Getting a job had been a relief for all of a week, but now it felt like a mistake I couldn’t undo without looking like an asshole. It was drudgery, pure and simple. Maybe being on the docks wasn’t glamorous, but I’d never felt like the odd man out when working on a shipment with a gang of dudes a lot like me. To the point, gruff, blue-collar, and none of the fake office personas that I’d already sniffed out after a single day.
On the docks, I hadn’t felt weird for sounding a little hood. I hadn’t stumbled over attempts to code-switch from my typical way of speaking so I could sound proper to the folks in Manhattan. It was a skill Michael and Nunzio had mastered by the time they were out of high school and entering college. But I’d never even considered there would come a day when I’d have to pretend I was anyone other
I was tempted to tell her I couldn’t read or write well in Spanish but knew the information would lower my value by half. Maybe it wouldn’t come up. If they didn’t have a billion Spanish-speaking translators on their list, they had problems that I couldn’t fix by pretending to proofread an English-to-Spanish public service announcement.
Sandra introduced me to the IT team—composed primarily of guys who seemed more awake and energetic than anyone I’d met so far—and finally led me to the area that would be my new base of operations. To my surprise, it was less of a drag than the rest of the place. It was an open area near the break room and kitchen, but several yards away from the majority of the other staff. Instead of cubicles, there were regular desks facing a window. It afforded a good view of One World Trade Center, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Ground Zero creeped me out, and the new skyscraper looked like a chrome torpedo.
“You’ll be working here with Eugene and Karina. Eugene is out sick, and Karina is messengering something across town for Viktor.”
I looked at the desk that would be mine—metal, dented, but with a dope dual-screen computer. I wondered if it could run Borderlands . “I thought I was supposed to be trained by Eugene today?”
“Karina will start training you as soon as she returns,” Sandra reassured me. “For now, just settle in and get yourself acclimated. Someone from IT will come set up your computer and get you onto the network.”
Getting myself acclimated to an empty desk meant sitting my ass down and powering up the computer. It booted in under a minute, and I started poking around to see what kind of goods they had installed in the bad boy. There was an impressive amount of RAM, but a shitty onboard graphics card. Definitely not gaming material.
When the guy from IT didn’t show his face in the first ten minutes of me dividing time between staring out the window and clicking randomly at the computer, I decided to nose around the hard drive. For whatever reason, they hadn’t wiped the machine or the browser history after what’s-his-face quit or got fired. Going through his e-mails in Outlook wasn’t a big thrill, but I got a clearer idea of what the hell he’d done—ordering and distributing supplies, contacting vendors and maintenance staff, and transcribing documents a few times a week. Nothing too intimidating. Or interesting.
His browser history was more fun. I found the guy’s Facebook and his Twitter, and it didn’t take much backtracking to realize he’d quit within the last month or so.
@philinnyc: so glad to be out of that fucking hell hole
@philinnyc: LLS peeps should know that unless you ride V’s dick, you’re on the shit list and he WILL find a way to ruin you
Looked promising. And sadly that was the most exciting part of my day.
At four o’clock, I vacated the office, forced myself to say good-bye to people I didn’t care about and had nothing in common with, and rode the train to my new apartment with a head full of doubts. Getting a job had been a relief for all of a week, but now it felt like a mistake I couldn’t undo without looking like an asshole. It was drudgery, pure and simple. Maybe being on the docks wasn’t glamorous, but I’d never felt like the odd man out when working on a shipment with a gang of dudes a lot like me. To the point, gruff, blue-collar, and none of the fake office personas that I’d already sniffed out after a single day.
On the docks, I hadn’t felt weird for sounding a little hood. I hadn’t stumbled over attempts to code-switch from my typical way of speaking so I could sound proper to the folks in Manhattan. It was a skill Michael and Nunzio had mastered by the time they were out of high school and entering college. But I’d never even considered there would come a day when I’d have to pretend I was anyone other
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