Two Worlds of Hustle & Bustle
The idea for this blog post came to me about a week ago, on a Friday morning when I had to skip out on work because I was too ill to make it out of my bed. Snowballs of tissues were arranged sporadically on my bed, and my vocal chords were shredded to the point where I could hardly utter vowels. Coming Monday, I arrived at work suddenly mortified that I had now been “the sick girl” who missed her first Friday. To respond I muttered, still without a clear and comprehensible tongue, “Everyone at school is sick. There was no way I could’ve missed this one.”
And that’s when it hit me: they’ve been through college, however it had been some time. They had understood the culture of it, and the unfortunate results of being apart of such a (bacteria-carrying) group, yet it was difficult for them to even think back to the balance of school, work, extracurriculars, and ensuring that your human physical container of a body was well! Now, don’t get me wrong, being an adult and “adultling” is difficult in itself and comes with its own challenges, especially with the more people and responsibilities you involve. However, as I think about “the hustle and bustle” of LA, I am inclined to split the culture into two subgroups:
- The office hustle and bustle.
- The help-I-am-manifested-in-student-loans-and-Cup-of-Noodles hustle and bustle.
The office hustle and bustle culture has an assortment of stationary on their desk, which rises either up or down so that one can either stand or sit. They come in with their Starbucks Cold Brew and a freshly packed lunch, inspired off of the Tasty Buzz Feed videos. Once they clock in and open their emails, they are interrupted with voicemails, paperwork, and weekend stories of how another old friend just got married. They sip their cup of Joe and stuff their earbuds in the snails of their ears, tuning out the piercing alarm sound of the microwave, which never seems to be unoccupied. After eight hours of swimming into archives of Excel, they sign out of their PCs and retreat to their briefcase, ready to come home — not before they are stopped at the elevator by a coworker who needs one more agreement to be scanned. Their commute back home is a luxury — a cache of silence and quiet, so quiet that their running thoughts are even sitting on the bleachers. Ready for Tuesday.
The working-college hustle and bustle culture combines the mundanity of the office hustle and bustle culture, but with a twist. Stationary consists of the back of a math notebook, and the collegiate wrestles with the rising button of the chair to sit. There’s no way that we want to stand at our desk?! We come in with a Cup of Noodles and take advantage of the free instant coffee in the office kitchen, sipping as we go as we multitask filing contracts and writing Coach’s blog posts, due in six hours. We don’t mind the microwave tone, as it reminds and motivates us that there will be a time where we meet face to face with food. After six hours of playing around with the new update of Google Outlook, we sign out of our PCs and retreat to our backpack we have had since freshman year . . . of high school. Their commute back home is bittersweet, because as difficult as it is integrating both work and college, the path to the real office hustle and bustle is exciting. Ready for the years ahead.
