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Dramatic Drama – Part 2 of 7: Lucky Break

shuo c Avatarshuo c
February 27, 2006


As I said yesterday, when I started working with mail delivery I was gung ho for the work and money. I had set my goals high. I wanted to go to graduate school for film, and with an uncertain but slight lean toward video editing. I wanted to go to a big name school in LA or NY. I mean if you are gonna dream, you might as well dream big, right?
The mail delivery business I was in had a strict hierarchy favoring people that had served the country, soldiers and veterans, and they also hired civilians. The structure was setup to reward those who had worked hard for the government for many years. It also was a stable, steady income trading an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. At least that’s what it’s supposed to do in theory. Of course hierarchies systems always have some problems if people decide to discriminate based on hierarchy or flaunt their status. For example, the main classifications involved a full-time employee, part-time and temporary seasonal positions. It was also the first time I dealt with blue collar work and unions. But gist is that a temporary seasonal position could work insanely harder than a full-time on the same task, but get paid much less without benefits. I never had noticed or cared until I noticed a lot of complaining from my temp seasonal coworkers. And personally my stance was that it was unreasonable for me to expect equal pay scales when just starting out. Being raised as a son of an airman, I had a work-through-pain-and-inequity-soldier-and-you-will-be-rewarded feeling. Many of my peers didn’t feel the same way. So there was a lot of caustic daily complaining and ill feeling between full time and temps when we had transferred to a new mail unit after all the large holiday packages were exhausted. I stayed neutral, but I could feel a of war politics going on.
There was also a new shipment time pressure element, with lack of sufficient workers, and endless repetition of mail daily duties. I thought I was a great worker and fast, but I learned in the new unit that we were disposable. The work could be hazardous, back breaking, and even fatal if you worked too fast or were careless. But of course, don’t think I have a silver spoon in my mouth. It was easy and you could get in a routine and have breaks and lot of chill out and think time. But, like a full-time employee told me who oddly echoed the sentiments of my car sales job… “You’re wasting your time the longer you stay here, you have a college degree.”
Now, I don’t give up from a fight easily, and I also heard some people don’t like you and just want you to quit (more office politics) but I stayed on until we got terminated in the summer due to the end of our holiday contract. I looked all summer for a job, but couldn’t find anything except some web positions, that didn’t reply back to me. I drew my first unemployment checks, which I recommend to do online to get faster checks.
They brought us back about two months later to start again with a new contract.
Meanwhile, I had stayed on my college newsgroup for theater and they were looking for extras for a big name college music & video television channel. My very, very first break! I was sent this opportunity a few days after I had agreed to the contract. After working back at the mail delivery plant, I got the courage to ask my boss if I could get a few days off in a row. Since they knew my previous good performance and it was still the beginning of our contract I luckily was able to go! More on this and jobs tomorrow.

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