My Last Day Job Was the Strangest
Maybe it was the chemicals
I’ve been working freelance, at home, for coming up on ten years now. Sometimes I forget how strange it was, to get up every weekday morning and go to a place — at the same time every day — and work for a set number of hours, and then go home — again at the same time. As if the work fit neatly into that little box of time.
(I know it didn’t. My boss, the poor lady, stayed late every night and often went in on the weekends. But they didn’t pay me nearly enough to be willing to do that.)
It was a peculiar job, but it was half-time, which was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to commit more fully to my writing, and my husband made enough money that I didn’t need to work full-time.
The job was in the office part of a molecular biology lab, in an academic department, in a hospital, that was part of a university medical school. I’m not a molecular biologist, or any kind of a scientist; I ordered the lab’s supplies and kept track of the budgets. I also assisted the department’s chairman (not the boss-lady above; she worked under him). He wrote a lot of scientific papers and grants and patents, which I had to format and submit, and he traveled, so there was a secretarial element to my work, which was my least favorite part.
