starting work
By me • Nov 16th, 2007 • Category: nablopomo, workI just finished my first week at my new job working as an Aide in the Library Technology Room in a large Detroit suburb.
It was a little unnerving at first, I work with mostly men so I started with two strikes against me because
- I have ovaries (I was going to say boobs, but a couple of the guys are sporting C-cups themselves) and
- I willing own a MacBook.
Therefore the only reason I could have gotten this job was because I batted my eyelashes and showed some cleavage during the interview. I couldn’t possibly have Microsoft Certification (don’t be impressed, it’s only Powerpoint, and it’s only because it’s required to pass a class) or have a basic knowledge of CSS. And there’s no way I could handle something as complex as teaching a Beginning Excel 2007 class (and when I say basic I mean things like “this is a cell”&”this is auto-sum, it adds numbers together for you.”) All of that has to be WAY over my pretty little head.
So I felt the need to be extra helpful to the library patrons and point out some of the great new features in Office 2007, while explaining the difference between APA and MLA formatting. Oh, and then I showed someone how to edit the code of a basic Blogger template (they just weren’t ready for WordPress.) All within earshot of the guys at the desk, just so that they’d know that my balls were as big as theirs. I earned the respect of some of them, but the others still haven’t cracked. It’s just going to take some time.
And there’s definitely some interesting characters. I now work with one of the most impressive mullets I have ever seen. Honestly, it’s something you have to see to believe - it’s not only long, but really tall in the front, and bleached blonde as well. This is not something that just happened, this guy has put some serious maintenance into it.
It was a good week though. Today I help a 62 year old woman log onto Classmates.com for the first time. It took almost forty five minutes, a lot of explaining thing v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, the agonizing process of helping her set up her first email account (you try to explain to an old woman why she can’t have the address cindy@hotmail.com), and she took a page and a half full of notes which we had to go over every time we added a new step to the process. But when she finally got on and found some of her old friends she was so happy she started crying. I think I’m going to like this job.
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Came by from the NaBloPoMo Ravelry group to say hi. I’m a fellow Michigander and graduated from graduate school last December. I still wake up in the middle of the night and think, “Do I have to turn anything in tomorrow???”
I tell you, I am very impressed with the mullet. He sounds like Frank McCourt, so you can’t be too mad.
No, in order to teach Excel classes, you have to own your own “consulting firm” and have worked in the private sector to teach those. I wish my FT job were so stringent. I think the requirements for teaching there were: you didn’t tell the Big Boss to bugger off when she asked if you’d teach classes. Plus, one is a guru if one knows to hold down CTRL when selecting multiple items.
“you try to explain to an old woman why she can’t have the address cindy@hotmail.com” — preachin’ to the choir here! I give a several-minute long spiel in my classes that if you want john@hotmail.com , good luck because a million other people want that name and the original john (hee!) got it at least 10 years ago.
I came by courtesy of the NaBlo home page. It was the guys sporting C-cups that made me laugh out loud, so I came straight over for a look. Mind if I add you?