Tales From The Inside

Chapter Twelve: Welcome To The World of Business Casual

The whole move is a blur now. We had signed a lease when we had come to NY earlier in the month.

On that trip we had stayed in what can only be described as the most glorified dorm room ever. I'll explain. Three guys that we had gone to school with had found a humble abode in Brooklyn. Their apartment was originally a gigantic, concrete room. LIke an oversized garage. No kitchen. No bathroom. No rooms. They had taken some sort of wood and built dividers for rooms, even giving the space a second story. The walls were filled, but not cluttered, with books, records, and humorous posters. Their living area consisted of about 7 chairs with ashtrays built in the arms, an entertainment center, and a blow-up doll, (if I'm not mistaken.) The room that they used as a kitchen, (although they had no running water to the apartment, or as much as a stove), had a giant pipe running through it, large enough that a person could not wrap their arms around it completely. This ran from one wall to the other about chest high. The bathroom/kicthen area, (notice the slash here), was down the hall for the entire hall the share. The kitchen was in the bathroom. The bathroom was in the kitchen. The shower was in the kitchen. The kitchen sink was were you would brush your teeth. And the whole thing was just gross and a bit unsettling. I had stayed worse places in the city, (a night spent on the floor of a studio apartment, huddled next to a radiator for heat, trying not to notice the roaches, and using the contents of our suitcases for warmth, comes to mind), but this experience sticks out for me, because it was here, walking down the dirty hallways, taking showers in flip-flops, and hearing stories about the neighbor who got held up by an eight-year-old, that it sunk in. I was moving to New York. I was going to be living this life that had been written about in thousands of books. Thousands of movies made about this place. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. This time we weren't here dreaming about the one day we'll live here. No. We were going to sign a lease. We were going to promise ourselves, and the better part of our income, to this city for at least the next year.

It was official. We were moving. Like I said, it was all a blur and happened entirely too fast. One day I was watching my uncle drive my car away, tears dripping down my face, the next, I was emptying out all of my possesions into boxes and trash bags, and sweeping things that were once swept under the couch into a gigantic pile. Our house was pretty messy, to say the least. I won't go into details here but wow, I'm sure our landlord was glad to see us go.

We were driving up, three girls, two dogs, a mother, sister, uncle, and Uhaul. All of our worldly possessions, three best friends, and 400 miles. There, we would start new lives. Start looking for jobs, good restaurants, hip bars.

Our apartment was biggest than the average NY apartment. We were in Williamsburg, Brooklyn beside a huge park, (perfect for the doggies). We painted the walls, organized all of our stuff, started to call it home.

A lot of the summer we all sat around in denial. We were on summer break right? School would be starting back up in the Fall. This was just a vacation. Less job searching went on that should have.

It happened one day, inevitably, money ran low and our parents started to get pissed. We needed jobs.

Craigslist, Mandy.com, Time Warner Careers, Monster. I was looking for a job in tv. I was looking for a job in news. My first interview was at Fox News. That first call for an interview is one of the most exciting things in the world. Finding a job is hard. Finding a job in NYC is damn near impossible. We were all looking and slowly, we all became pretty discouraged. When I got the call, there was something that reignited my confidence. I wasn't totally worthless and maybe someone would want to hire me! Woo!

My shoes were uncomfortable and it was raining. I wore flip flops and then outside of the office, changed into more suitable shoes. There was no covered area to change my shoes so I stood balanced on one foot, holding my umbrella under my chin, trying to change my shoes. It was pitiful. People were walking by, in their perfect suits, with their perfect umbrella that didn't turn inside-out at every chance, with their high-paying jobs, balancing fine in their heels like Carrie Bradshaw. I was a mess. I was so nervous when I went in, I blew it. I stumbled over words and was so intimidated I couldn't stop shaking. I buried my personality under a shameful pile of nerves. I didn't exactly know the names of any positions and winced as they told me it was "chy-ron" not "cry-on". In my head, I just had to get on the inside somehow. Then I would know the terms. There's a union for chyron operators? Really? This was turning into a mess. It was clear I didn't know much, but I tried to play it off. Unsuccessfully. I was trying to explain why I would be perfect for the job even though I wasn't a journalism major. I had the drive to succeed. That was better than any degree. Right?

I wouldn't have hired myself.

More interviews, more rejection. I kept losing jobs to people who actually went to school for news or journalism. I was discouraged and started expanding my searches to anything in television. I found an ad for a job at a national television station. I got the interview.

What was the traffic department anyway? I didn't care. All I knew was that this was a station that was on televison, had little news segments, and hell, wasn't anything to do with movies or editing. It was exactly what I was looking for. I got a new outfit, business casual attire, new shoes, and went in with confidence. At this point I had nothing to lose. For all I knew, I would be wearing an orange vest directing traffic affliated with this station. (Thinking that surely most of this traffic would be somehow involved in the news-getting-processes. Damn. I really needed to learn the terms.)

I walk in, and am amazed at just how many times this station's name appeared throughout the building. Walls, doors, television screens, tee shirts, pens. It was everywhere. The second thing the woman who was interviewing me said was, "I like your shoes." After an appropriate silence and period in which I internally congratulated myself, she added. "My mom has those same ones." Oh I recongnize snark when I see it. I smiled and forced a laugh. Somehow, someway, I got the job. Even after admitting I had no idea what a traffic department did. Only later did the reason I got hired become clear. I had a pulse. This is not a job people seek.

Let me explain what a traffic department does.

This job is a monotonous one. You sit in your business casual attire in a cubicle, next to a water cooler, staring at a computer screen all day. The traffic department is in charge of making sure the highest costing commercial spots go to air. For a two-minute break, there are usually roughly 100 spots that can go in. All ranging from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. It's like a puzzle, doing the math figuring out which spots will bring this company the most money. Eight :15 spots at $2000 dollars a piece, or two :15 second spots at $2000, one :30 spot at $5000, and one 1:00 spot for $8000. Or the 2:00 spot for $10,000. It all gets very complicated and putting the wrong spots in can cost the company thousands. It seems easy enough, but there are spots that have to air, and then there is also a rule about which spots go next to each other. A diaper commercial must air thirty minutes away from a competing diaper commercial. Are you asleep yet?

There was a joke that I had heard on multiple occasions about the lack of sanity in the traffic department. People that did this long enough were depressed, bitter, and often hated their lives. There's not really a punchline. I did this for three months. I walked the line of casual and business casual a little too closely. I nearly costed the company lots of money on multiple occasions and only once got to even walk onto the floor in which they did the news.

Discouraged and slightly bruised I went to my boss. She was eating a lean cusine with her perfectly manicured nails and playing on her Blackberry. She looked up as I nervously tapped on her door. Shakey, I walked into her office as she nodded her head. After having what I can only describe as a panic attack, I told her I was quitting. I tried to explain that this job, environment, life, just wasn't for me. I told her, in what I assumed was a lie, that I was going to go back to editing. (I was nervous about telling her my plans to go into news, knowing her ability to crush ones dreams in the drop of a hat. "Did you go to school for that?") I also told her I had a project lined up. Also a lie. I couldn't bear to tell her that I was quitting with nothing lined up, just because I hated the job so much. That it had drained me so much. I was so creatively stunted. When I would get off work, I'd want to paint or write or do something that was creative. I was going crazy in those four fabric walls listening to Oprah everyday at four o'clock from about fifty different television screens, resounding and echoing throughout the office. I was depressed and drained.

After my two weeks, I cleaned out my desk, and left. (Taking as many pens and pads and whatever other office supplies I could get my hands on, with me. I heard that's common.)

The funny thing about all this is that it was in October. I had told my parents about wanting to quit and they had expressively told me I'd be an idiot to quit without something lined up and strictly forbade it. So I didn't tell them. I only slipped up a couple of times, Once my dad called me in the middle of the work day asking what I was doing and I told him I was at the dog park with Hopper. He asked why I wasn't at work and I froze. I told him that we had a half of day today for a conference. Good one. I lied to them. Everyday when my mom would ask me how my day at work was I'd tell her great and try to quickly change the subject so I wouldn't have to lie further. I was still looking for a job, and got a couple of calls, but nothing that paid money that I so desperately needed. I obviously couldn't ask my parents for money, so I pulled out my credit card to get by and kept searching.

Labels: business casual, interview, job search, NY, parents, quitting a job

posted by ms bct @ 5:54 PM