The trials of an office worker

Switching jobs is one of the more stressful things in life. Especially when you've made the change from a small company that has less the 30 employees to work for a company that has somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000. Working for large company might be the worst decision I have ever made. The red tape, the massive amounts of people(most of which cannot speak a understandable sentence of English) and the horrible location of the actual building are just a few of the things that make this place unbearable.

I have been at my current job for almost a year now and it gets a little more painful each day. I arrive at my desk anytime between 8:20 to 9:15. Upon arrival I do what is usually the only socializing of my 8 hour day. My team mate who I have nicknamed Mountain Dew(for his collection of Mountain cans arranged on the edge of his desk) greets me with a "Good morning Jessica" and i reply with a cheerful "Hello".

I then open up my work email and then my personal gmail account, go grab a cup of tea, and begin putting off the checking of the Help Desk voice mail. Then I do all of the other Help Desk jobs that I acquired when "Hurley" the 500 pound Help Desk employee decided to make antisemitic remarks to a room full of coworkers. After I do an hour of work, that is well beneath me, I finally pick up the phone and listen to approx. 5 messages from pissed off docs and office workers.

After a few "I'm sorry but I cannot reset the password of someone elses account for you" and "Ok your password is now reset to your ID number" its time to either do some real work or enhance my knowledge of odd medical conditions on Wikipedia.

Around this time if my boss is in he will stop by and either asks me a question he's already asked on 20 previous occasions, or tell me about some great new idea he has had and makes me research if it can be done. So I send an email off to Shoba, my contact at the company who wrote our medical software, and go back to reading Wikipedia while waiting for her response.

Lunch time is the highlight of my day. At noon I go to refrigerator and grab my lunch, 2 paper towels and any utensils that are needed. Then I go back to my desk and eat alone while reading medical blogs.

The rest of the day drags by but if I'm lucky I need to get a refill of hot water at the same time as one of my more social coworkers and 5 minutes is killed with meaningless conversation.

Then I go home and drink myself to sleep, hoping that the next day never comes. Unless it's a Friday.

Dreaming big

Today started out simple enough. Typical Wednesday: no class, so I sleep in a bit and then head over to the grocery store to prepare dinner for a friend and myself. We are college students who actually cook. (In case you were wondering, we had couscous, spicy peanut chicken and green beans with a strawberry tart for dessert.) Anyway, we take the usual number 24 Strassenbahn, or street car, to the grocery store. Most of the time I do not pay much attention to the driver because here, in Heidelberg, public transportation runs on an honor system. I doubt my driver cares whether or not I have a ticket. Today, was a special day, however. As the street car screeched to a stop for us to get on, Brittny exclaimed, "ooooh, our driver ist eine Frau!" And if for those of us not familiar with simple German- we had a woman driver.

I have no real plans for what I want to be when I grow up, which doesn't cause me much stress at all, to tell you the truth. Sure, I finish my undergraduate degree next spring, in a somewhat useless field, but don't have a job in mind... Or do I?

Somewhere along the line, one of my peers asked me where I saw myself down the line as we waited for our street car. Without skipping a beat, I responded that I would like to become a street car driver, right here in Heidelberg. Why else would I be learning German if I didn't plan to come back? Seems like the perfect job, I don't even have to steer! I also added that I wanted to excel in a field that is traditionally considered a "man's job". By becoming a great street car driver, I would open doors for other women to follow in my footsteps. In the process, I could inspire all the little German girls to dream big. It doesn't stop at the street car, my friends. Just think: women bus drivers, women taxi drivers! I believe women have a place in public transportation!

Stepping off my soap box, I also added that I would be heavily tattooed. I will have a Strassenbahn tattoo on my upper arm: number 666 to Hell! By that time I'd be a smoker as well, and I'd talk to my passengers with the cigarette hanging out of my mouth. (Don't worry, I wont inhale!) I'll ring my bell at pesky kids standing on my tracks. I'm gonna be one bad ass street car driver. Plus, I'll be completely fluent in German!

So there we have it! If you ever want to know why I chose such a random language to learn (from the perspective of an American), this is why. I just want to drive those glorious street cars. I only hope that they do not also make me drive the buses. I want to be on the tracks, baby.

My experience with a German emergency room

I do not consider myself accident prone by any means, but I do have my moments. My tumble down the stairs last semester comes to mind... I was in such a rush to join my friends at our favorite Mexican restaurant that I tripped and took a nasty fall, spraining my ankle. Of course I would never let a silly thing like that spoil a meal, and I decided to simply crawl to the car and kill the pain with a margarita pitcher.

But I digress. An old high school friend of mine just finished up her year in Paris, and she had some time to visit me before returning to the States. Just before lunch, I wash putting away a few dishes in the common kitchen of my dorm. Now, let me take a moment to explain a very prominent difference I have noticed between my home country of the United States and Germany: the doors. Here, more often than not, they open the opposite way they would at home. For example, to get into my building, I push the door open. Doesn't really sound that strange, I know, but for some reason I find it more logical for the doors to open the other way. If they would open outward they would be much easier to escape from quickly as in the event of a fire. Who knows, I could be pulling this all out of my ass. Anyway, the kitchen opening is set up pretty awkward, with the sink next to the door which also opens inward.

It all started with my friend opening the door a bit too quickly. The result was like a twisted Rube Goldberg device: My friends force of the door smacked the open cabinet door which I was standing in front of, smacking me in the forehead and cutting it open. After a bit of freaking out, we ate lunch quickly and went on over to the emergency room which involved taking a street car to the main train station and then a bus to the clinic, taking about a half-hour. The bleeding had stopped even before I got on the street car, so I just kind of hung out with a cut on my forehead.

I had some difficulties with language upon entering the hospital, but after some spastic gesticulations and broken German, I was able to find exactly where I needed to go. With the help of a friend from my building, I was able to figure out what was going on with the paperwork, and I got in without a problem. The doctor in the waiting room was what I would have expected. He talked to me quickly and was annoyed by my failure to understand. But after a while, I was called into an actual hospital type room where a nice younger doctor took care of me. I suspected I'd need a few stitches, but I got a piece of tape on my head instead. I would say that was much better. He spoke a little English and was able to piece together my fragmented sentences. He surprised me by asking where I was from, as if my accent wasn't obvious enough.

I consider my adventure to the hospital a complete success! Learning a new language is difficult enough for everyday, but random situations are insane. I didn't know any kind of medical vocabulary, so I guess it was a learning experience in that aspect too.

I have had only one other experience with a German doctor here, and I did not enjoy it at all. I was diagnosed with bipolar last year, and my program director here insisted that I see someone first thing just in case something else came up later. Actually, it isn't a bad idea, but I ended up not needing a psychiatrist while here as I brought a full supply of meds with me and am generally stabilized. It was only my second week here, and I was still getting used to the language. The agency that recommended him for me insisted that he spoke perfect English because he had worked for two years in England. I was relieved to hear this because I wasn't looking forward to discussing my brain chemistry in broken German. The doctor, however, was extremely rude and was pretty pissed when upon him asking "Shall we speak German or English?" I picked the former. What did he want to do? Trigger an episode? I should have gone batshit crazy! That would have been fun for him... hehe. My program director insisted that it was simply a cultural difference, and my doctor wasn't being rude, he was just being German. I'm not so sure. Maybe psychiatrists here like to be mean to their patients so they can just get crazier and come more often. Who knows.

First Post

According to my sources (that being close friends and my mother), I am expected to be home in about 37 days. 37 days until my short summer vacation, and then back to school for my senior year of college. I am enjoying my time here in Germany, so much that I have, in fact, forgotten that I just have one more year left of college.

Oh shit.

I've been having crazy thoughts like "what will I do for the rest of my life?!"

But I'm not really bothered by them enough to have done any research or anything yet. Nope, no plans for me! Perhaps I'll be spontaneous here and see what comes of it. I got the idea to document my grand years of a 20-something on this blog accompanied by some Pod-casts... Who says the 20's are a time to be grown up? NOT ME!