(no subject)
It was really hard to leave. I was comfortable (but bored), living at home and not paying much in the way of rent. To throw myself into an unfamiliar place, a very expensive unfamiliar place was scary as shit.
I stayed for two weeks on the couch of memphis86, elrina753, and regala_electra, all of whom I still cannot thank enough for their enduring patience and kindness as I got settled (which I am still working on, kinda.) Still, to have no idea of what to do for a job or a place to permanently live was unsettling to say the least. Also NYC is like a totally different world. It's essentially like living in Europe. It was hard to get used to at first. More on that later.
I did end up finding a Starbucks store to transfer to. Finally! I thought. Some kind of common ground I can work with, and something I'm good at.
Yeah. No.
I jumped back and forth between two stores: the first one I worked at was in the Sony tower on 5th Ave, in Midtown, a kiosk. Ugh, where do I even begin. I was barely even acknowledged by the other baristas there, and even after repeatedly asking where things where and how they did their routine, I got vague answers. Everyone had their conversations in Spanish, so I just kind of wandered around, trying to figure things out for myself. On top of that, their standards and drink routines were so non-compliant I thought my head was going to explode. The same was for the second store that I eventually transitioned to, on 6th and 34th, near Rockefeller Plaza. Except somehow worse?? The store was right across from a hotel, so we had tourists all. day. long. The problem with Starbucks in NYC? It's quantity over quality. They want people in the door and out as soon as possible. Which I can understand, dealing with tourists and people who didn't speak a lick of English and NEVER-ENDING LINES. I was also supposed to perform my shift supervisor duties, which, HAHAHA. Impossible. It was either you get all your work done but the quality suffers, or you do all your shift supervisor work properly but there's no way in hell you can get it done before 3483098 people start streaming through the door. On top of that, I felt as if my shift supervisor coworkers were constantly setting me up for failure, like running out of supplies that we needed (like, I don't know, grande cups and vanilla syrup, and IMPORTANT DRINK COMPONENTS) while I constantly busted my ass. So so frustrating.
In the middle of all this, I found an apartment. Which, for being in NYC and finding a pretty great apartment after only two weeks? That's awesome. I'm currently living in a nice little place in Woodside, Queens. It's got wood floors, a balcony with table and chairs, and a decent-sized kitchen. My roommates are wonderfully sane, mostly clean, and quite nice. The only issue I'm having with the place is that there seems to be a roach infestation. We've had an exterminator come in, placed down highly rated bait and poison ourselves, and it seems better, but the problem is that when some other apartment in your building is full of slobs and the roach problem emulates from there... essentially an exterminator should come and do the WHOLE apartment, as that's the only way it's going to take care of the problem, but, oh well; we're getting by for now. Also, I have to laugh whenever people give me the bug-eyed look for living in Queens; apparently most of my sister's friends think I live in some super dangerous area. Honestly? I wouldn't be surprised if the Woodside/Sunnyside area is the next in line to be gentrified. The population around here is such an awesome mix; mostly Mexican, Asian, and Middle Eastern with some Irish thrown in. There's families and kids running around EVERYWHERE; a sure sign of a safe(r) area to live. So yeah. It's good.
Getting used to the NYC way of life? It's still a work-in-progess, but I think I'm doing pretty well. Getting furniture for my room was the absolute fucking worst. Stuff that doesn't seem so hard suddenly becomes tantamount to dragging a boulder uphill. First you have to sign up for a company to rent a car. Then you have to rent a car. Then you have to drive said car through New York traffic to Ikea. Good luck getting those heavy boxes in your car by yourself! Once you're back at your place, have even BETTER luck getting those heavy boxes out of your car, up the stairs, and into your room. Then hope to God you still have time to drop the car off before getting a late fee. Take the subway back. Begin to assemble.
Also, I didn't have air conditioning until mid-June and oh my goddddd it was the worst. THE W O R S T. The adventure of installing that was much like the description of the previous paragraph, except the box was 88 pounds and I enlisted elrina753's help and omg thank goodness for her because I would not have been able to install it by myself.
Other than that, I quickly learned the do-not-buy-more-groceries-than-you-can-carry rule, that you should always leave 15 minutes early when it's raining or on the weekends because the subways WILL be borked, and how to successfully use my shoulders and elbows when walking through crowded sidewalks.
So. I sent out resumes like crazy all through May because of my all-consuming hate for Starbucks up here, and suddenly I had TWO interviews. The first interview I had was for Kaplan, creating academic content for ESL students. Which, awesome. The interview and the job itself was also in the Empire State building. EVEN MORE AWESOME. The only problem? It was part time and temporary. In hindsight I so so wish I still would have taken this job, but... more on that later too. So I went for the Kaplan interview, hoping the second interview for the full time position would be successful too. I ended up working one day at Kaplan before I got a call back about the full time position at a publishing company in SoHo, which I instead accepted in early June.
I was ecstatic. The office was beautiful, SoHo is awesome, everyone seemed nice. About three weeks into the this new job, I remembered: oh. This is why I quit my office job at the law office.
I hate admin work. I hate being in an office. My depression spikes. I hate sitting down for 8+ hours, I hate staring at excel spreadsheets for hours at a time, and I hate the monotony of detailed repetition. Not only that, but the office was silent, and my desk was far away from everyone else. Most coworkers stopped by to sign in and sign out for the day, hardly glancing at me in the process. But, I'm working at a publishing company, right? And I'm doing accounts payable and collecting mailing lists for the marketing department. Just reading that sentence makes me want fling myself off a bridge. But I tried to stuff that down, because this is why I moved to New York. Publishing!! A chance to get my foot in the door and move up with this company.
I was making a few errors, but improving, or so my 30 day review said. And I did make errors, I will admit that, because: monotony of detailed repetition. Not that that's any excuse, but, I dunno. I guess that's just how my brain works. But my 60 day review that I had last week? Wow. I don't even know. It was pretty much all negative. A few days beforehand, my office manager came to me with a stack of accounts payable paperwork and told me a step in the process that he said he'd told me before multiple times but I don't remember him saying it ever. On top of that, I looked at the instruction sheet and that step? It actually says the opposite of what he told me, aka, what I had been doing all along. So. What the fuck. I worked on my next stack of accounts payable paperwork, and I intended on showing him the instructions (which I had circled and put a question mark next to) as soon as he gave me back the stack to file away. With that stack of paperwork I did my 110% best to make it mistake-free; unfortunately, I knew, KNEW there were a few items in there that would be wrong because even though my office manager told me explicitly to do things a certain way, my brain logic said that on one or two pieces of paperwork that that would be wrong and I COULD fix it with my magical brain logic, but, WHATEVER, I did it the way he asked.
ALSO on my review was that the marketing department said I had been making a lot of mistakes. And I was like, "...?!?!" I told my office manager that I had not had a SINGLE word of feedback from the marketing department, and this was the first I had heard about any mistakes. I asked for an example, and the one he gave me was the very first mailing list I had put together for them, so, uhhh, sorry that I'm not the embodiment of perfection and can't do it 100% right on my first go-around? Jesus Christ.
Anyway. Today. I come back from lunch, and my office manager pulls me aside. And. I was let go. Which. Feels weird. I mean, it's within the 90 ~trial period, so as he said, it's not like this has to go on my resume, so there's that. I'm incredibly relieved but also pretty embarrassed and am honestly more concerned with my former coworkers thinking I'm a fucking moron, but I'll get over that eventually. I realize now why I never got that last stack of paperwork back from him: because I am SURE the "mistakes" I thought I could fix was the problem. Also, I think the marketing assistant ratted me out because we had a series of miscommunicated emails the day before (half her fault, half mine), so I'm sure that was just another, "Well, LOOK WHAT SARAH DID WRONG THIS TIME" issue.
I don't know. I feel like half the time I was working there, I was just trying to get straight answers from people on instructions. Like, I guess I wasn't as intuitive as they wanted me to be. Also, three people, THREE PEOPLE left the company during my two month stint, so there was a lot of department switching and not knowing who to report to and... yeah. I still feel like completely at fault for screwing everything up, but the more I thought about it today, the more frustrated I got at the aforementioned issues. I could have pursued the issues, yes, but, as I told my office manager, I was planning on putting my two weeks in anyway.
BECAUSE. I had a wonderful idea, only just yesterday. See, I still work part time as a proofreader for fiction novels, so I thought, duh, why not just take that full time? And then find a part time job to break up the monotony and add a few extra bucks? So I emailed the lady who sends me the manuscripts yesterday, and she gave me an enthusiastic yes. Also I'm... putting in my application for a part time position at Apple. Customer service is not exactly what I wanted to be doing again, but it's a) better than Starbucks b) has health insurance for part timers and c) will allow me to actually have conversations with coworkers my age or thereabouts omg what a novel idea. So. That's my plan. I will try not to feel like a miserable life failure but lol too late.
Other than that, I love being here. NYC is amazing and I demand that you all visit me. I can DO ALL THE THINGS because I'm working freelance now. I MAKE MY OWN SCHEDULE. MY BEDTIME IS NEVER. YEAAAHHH.
Briefly, other than that, another epic life change currently happening is that my parents sold my childhood house. I will delve more into my feelings on this at a later time (because it will deserve a post all its own), but suffice to say, I'm both elated that my parents are finally getting out of Florida, and devastated that I have to permanently say goodbye to my childhood home. I'm flying home for the last time on the 30th, so that will be hard. But I am sooo looking forward to being there and seeing my friends again, even though it will be brief. Haaa, though, since I no longer have a job I HAVE to be back at, I'm going to extend vacation and help my parents make the drive up to north Georgia, where they will be moving. 17 more daaaays and then I'll be home!
If you made it through all that, good lord. Congrats. I promise not to go so long without updating again. I've been busy doing all kinds of fun things, but this is definitely cathartic and what I needed. And now I turn off my alarm and sleep until I decide to get up.