Receptionism

From the cataclysmic doldrums of complete unemployment, through the dark and choppy seas of one-day temp assignments, I have finally sailed into the calmer currents and partly-cloudy skies of a 6 week temporary assignment.

The gig entails manning the front/reception desk 25 hours a week for the World Resources Institute, a major international research/policy advocacy organization focused on issues like Global Warming, Energy policy, transportation infrastructure, and forestry preservation. Al Gore is on the board of directors. The offices, spanning two floors of an 8-story eco-friendly tower built immediately next to DC's Union Station, is dynamic. The staff includes a good combination of slick young professionals and relaxed confident veterans. The resulting office environment is friendly, intelligent, and generally high-brow. In my limited capacities I've already spoken to members of the British and Australian embassy, and directed calls from NPR, the Guardian, and other media organizations.

It's a long way from what I want to be doing - in all of WRI, they have only one project that even vaguely hits upon Central Asia, a study on government policies involving electricity governance in Kyrgyzstan, which was rather well-timed as it was written just months before rising energy costs and government corruption in the electricity sector sparked the major public protests that culminated in the ouster of President Bakiev in April 2010. It makes for an interesting read - if, and only if, you're obsessed with Central Asian techno-politics.

However, it is a job, and as far as temp jobs go, it's second best only to my ideal post at DAI, NDI, or one of my other potential International Development target firms. I go in every day at noon - leaving plenty of time for errands, interviews, and job applications in the morning - and then am tasked with 5 hours of sitting at a desk in the lobby. When the phone rings, I am expected to answer it and transfer to the appropriate party. When guests walk in, I have them sign the guest book, then call their appointment to notify of the guest's arrival. Every day UPS and FedEx bring in packages, which then necessitates notifying the receiving parties via e-mail. On a rare occasion, I have to help with a fax. Once I was asked - with trepidation - if I would be willing to do the menial task of labeling pages on a stack of petty cash receipt books.

With the "remainder" of my time, that is a cumulative 4 hours and 40+ minutes of my day, I am free to surf the web, write e-mails, read the newspaper, etc. So long as it doesn't interfere with my duties, keep me away from my desk, or disrupt the office, it seems to be fine. That means no listening to music - or worse, no listening to radio! - as well as making Hulu & the Daily Show off limits. It's certainly not too great a burden for $12/hour.

The situation is no pastoral idyll, but as I've been remarking recently, "I'm doing the same thing as I did all of August, except I'm no longer doing it in my apartment wearing just my boxers. And I'm getting paid."

In other words, it's a unquestionably step forward. Progress. The Right Direction. And yet day after day, hour after dull hour, it feels less and less like a triumph. More importantly, my productivity with this nice chunk of barely distracted time is seeing a gradual decline. I have job applications I just never get around to submitting. The Daily Sudoku takes precedence over resume revisions. I search endlessly for articles I haven't read on the NY Times, CNN, RFE/RL, Eurasianet, The Guardian, and even the Huffington Post. I actively resist the urge to post links to all the articles I read, as my main motivation is only to justify the time I spent hunting it all down. I write ridiculously long, uninteresting blog posts. ahem.

This has me thinking about the nature of the work in which I am just recently employed, the correlation between duties and abilities, and the primacy of responsibility over ability.

Let me begin(ish) with a glib gchat conversation I had with a friend who knows a good deal more than I do about the rigors of mindless temporary employment:

1:28 PM me: receptionISM - the act or state of being an underutilized mindless automaton.

8 minutes

1:45 PM her: Sorry, working

“receiptionEST” - a colloquialism used to describe one who excels at administrative tasks because they are so far underneath his or her abilities that a state of ennui (characterized by “Existential Sinkhole Thinking”) occurs.

1:50 PM See also, "Ego Shrinkage Trauma"

After some time to reconsider, I think I prefer my term, but her concept. Our combined thesis might look something like this:

Receptionism (n.) - the act or state of excelling at administrative tasks in spite, rather than because, of one's highly-developed technical, managerial, or analytical abilities; becoming so bored with one's assigned tasks that job efficiency actually increases as a result of decreased personal dynamism.

There seems to be a humorous parallel to the post-modern Zombie movies in which the world finds ways to profitably employ the undead in the wake of the would-be apocalypse. They make good Network TV review panelists. Ideal Japanese obstacle course contestants. Loyal Republican/Democrats, etc.

First let me clarify that I am adamantly not referring to the career-path professions of receptionists, secretaries, office managers or executive assistants. I understand and greatly respect the talents required to keep large bureaucracies functioning, and to provide organized environments conducive to the more widely-appreciated "real" work. I am specifically considering the type of work in which I am currently involved - a temporary receptionist of whom only the barest minimum of competence is expected, and for whom no professional creativity is allowed.

Of course my friend's various EST abbreviations get to the heart of the accompanying personal phenomenon as well. Put succinctly, the work maybe be easy but the non-work is hell. Issues of self-worth and professional confidence are eroded like the Scottish cliffs by the tidal slosh of dull monotony. While "some achieve greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them," the same may be true for mediocrity, and what I face now is the frightening prospect of this as self-fulfilling prophecy. Namely, that mundanity (so long as we're in the habit of creating words) breeds further mundanity.

A quick excerpt from my a hypothetical Friday afternoon at the office:

A 29 year old with an Ivy-league M.A. and several years experience running a non-profit organization sits quietly behind a desk and listens to a cluster of 23-year old policy analysts talk about how their current project may some day turn into an M.A. thesis. They discuss what happened on last night's episode of The Event, and how it's really not as good as Lost. The elder of the group, who is just celebrating his 25th birthday, bemoans old age and his lack of further professional success by this point in his career. Not a single one is married, nor seems to be in any rush to be. For most this is their first job aside from a college internship.

In fairness, the individuals in questions are all very, very smart, speak at least 2 languages, and had the good sense to come out of undergrad with a degree focused in environmental studies, public policy, or media relations. Further, young or not, they were hired by one of the premier environmental research/advocacy organizations in the world, so it would be foolish to let their youthful indiscretions blur the fact that they are among the elite of their age within their chosen field. And finally, if the 29 year old with an M.A. delivering their mail happens to have spent his undergraduate working on degrees in Classics, History and Drama, then perhaps this outcome is not entirely unpredictable.

But this is not a sob story. The choices I have made - personally, professionally, pyrotechnically - are not ones I regret in the slightest. The life path that has brought me where I am today, and with the perspective through which I view it, is not one I would trade for all the environmental studies degrees or career-track positions from now until Revelation.

What interests me is the phenomenon of decreasing returns. How hard-working, enthusiastic, creative talent can slowly seeps away into wastage when it is not required in active use. As if all the energy of Hydrogen Fusion in the sun were to stop cold at dusk. Of course, that's not what happens. As San Francisco goes to sleep and the great Helios dips into the Pacific, it's Sunrise in Mogandishu, and Sol Invictus climbs out of the turbulent waters of the Indian Ocean to once more bake the arid Sahara.

So it is a matter of perception, the acquiescence into "receptionism" as here defined is categorically optional, and this post is clearly a maneuver more in self-motivation than mass communication.

And while the phone may interrupt me on occasion with inquiries about Climate Analysis Indicator Tools and Biodiversity Studies, I have work to do beyond the horizon of this small, environmentally sustainable lobby.

Work to do, and no more time to waste.

Weber

::(lame)Texpatriot