A Man Does Little Work for Little Pay

When I walked out of my secretary job, I knew that I had something else potentially lined up. I had two potential jobs. One job was with a man who worked at the law firm, who wanted me to work as a real estate legal documents processor. I didn’t take that one. He was looking for commitment, and even after going in and hearing about the position, meeting someone else who had the position, I ran away.

Instead, I took another job. A friend of my mom’s was married to a woman who had started a small company and needed some help.

It turned out, that the job I took with a small company that was trying to break into the meeting note taking business, was the same as my previous job — dull and without any use. I don’t know what I did at this position. I honestly don’t.

I worked about twenty hours a week for about four months before I couldn’t take the boredom.

I’d been brought on under the auspices of helping manage a client. That turned out not to be true. When I contacted the client to introduce myself, I was reprimanded by my boss and never had contact with the client again.

A company that takes notes for a living for other organizations is a company that’s not doing much. In theory, specialization means deep knowledge. But when you just take notes for a living, there’s no deep knowledge to have.

I remember my boss being very angry, or rather, not having any idea of what I should be doing. So, for most of my time, I just sat. Sometimes I went to meetings, other times I sat in the office. I remember I had to take notes at an internal meeting once, which was rather humorous.

No, it wasn’t humorous. It was just sad. It was a total waste of my time. My boss was looking for an assistant, and I’m not an assistant. Never was. So, lying to me about the job wasn’t a great idea on her part. And eventually, it just seemed time for me to move on. I don’t think either one of us cared.

I believe the company limped along for quite a while. I was impressed with its limping ability, because certainly no one in their right mind would outsource their note taking, especially for specialized areas. But PT Barnum and all that.

I felt ready for more. And that’s what I got.