My Company Sold Windows!
I got a job as an administrative assistant in the front office for a window-selling company.
It had never occurred to me that anyone sold windows. I believed windows just came with the house or building to which they were attached. It had never crossed my mind that buildings were … well, built. And it certainly never occurred to me that after a building was built, someone might someday want to replace the windows.
So I found the concept to be fascinating: my company sold windows! To people!
This all happened in an enormous warehouse where little trucks hoisted giant pallets of windows from one place to another. There were hundreds of framed windows all over the warehouse, stacked like cards in piles and against walls, and they weren’t attached to any buildings at all. They came in different shapes and sizes, although most of them were simple rectangles. I liked watching little trucks drive around, and I especially liked that the trucks drove around indoors, where there was air conditioning.
But that’s where the fascination ended. The enormous warehouse was tons of fun to watch, but I wasn’t supposed to go into the part of the warehouse where there were trucks. After a five-minute tour of the facility, I was taken to the “front” office, which sat at the side of the warehouse. The office was big enough to hold a desk – where I was expected to sit – and the desk was big enough to hold a typewriter and a telephone, which I was expected to use.
Ironically the office had no windows at all, so it was dark as night in there. In fact, the warehouse was windowless, too.
My job required me to sit at that desk from morning till night, completely alone, where my fast, accurate typing skills were never used at all. My job was to answer the phone, which rarely rang, and write down a message on a little pink piece of paper. Sometimes a guy would come in for two seconds and pick up the messages, but I was not allowed to deliver them.
On a big day, a caller might ask me to find someone in the warehouse, which meant I could wander around with a sense of urgency until someone told me it was “too dangerous for you to be in here!” Then I would go back to my desk and tell the caller that I couldn’t find the person they needed, and write down a message on a little pink piece of paper instead.
I did not have a computer, or the internet, or a cell phone; none of those things existed. I occasionally wrote poetry in my spare time, and sang songs in my head and typed out the lyrics on my office typewriter, so I could hang them on the refrigerator at Larry’s house. Doing nothing for eight hours a day was very, very, very dull.
One day, I remembered that my mother had a toll-free number at her work, so I called her. We chatted, and it was nice. The next day, I called her again. I told her all about my new job, and she listened, and I never once asked about her or my dad.
I called her every day, because I had nothing else to do and no one else to talk to, and my life was miserable and I just wanted a friend.
And my mom, who probably should have hung up on me, just listened. I could feel her nodding and smiling. Every day. Whether I deserved her love and attention or not.