For the last few weeks, I've been struggling with my job. For reasons beyond my control, I am in the position of working as a temporary employee for the time being. It's been fairly educational to me in a lot of ways, not in the least is in how I deal with my work environment.
I have worked in a myriad of positions in my lifetime. In fact, it's somewhat frightening to think about all of the different types of work that I've done since I started working at the age of 14. Now, at 42, I count among my "careers" stints as a clown, phone operator, waitress, ambulance dispatcher, toffee maker, fast food server, receptionist, and many, many other fun and exciting jobs. Is it any wonder that I'm still in the "barely above minimum wage" range? I change career paths more often than my teenagers do their sheets.
Oh, back to my point. For the last eight months I have been working for an insurance company in a temporary capacity. I was offered full-time employment but was unable to take it due to family considerations. (We may be moving out of the area soon, and I felt it was bad form to take the job and then run six months later.) I love the company, and in general feel as though the management is very good at what they do. Were we to stay, I would definitely consider staying with this company. So why have I been struggling lately?
The truth is, I haven't felt necessary. The jobs that I've been doing have been benign and mostly meaningless. I've sorted, stuffed, and sent out mail. I've logged returned mail into a spread sheet. The majority of my time was spent in doing all of the things that need to be done... at some point. It was demoralizing. At no time did I feel as though my being at the office really mattered to anyone. Should I take an hour, a day, or a week off, I doubted that anyone would notice. In fact, I often wondered why my boss continued to carry my temp contract since most of what I did mattered so little.
Then, this week my boss began to train me to help some of her more over-burdened employees. The job I was tasked with was actually very important, not only to my over-worked counter-parts, but to the members who hired us to insure them as well. If the work didn't get done in a timely fashion, the members would find themselves uninsured for an ungodly amount of time, especially for these particular members: those who were uninsurable. Because of the current health care act, these members could now buy insurance despite their pre-existing conditions, and at a very reasonable premium. Their medications would be covered, medical supplies, and any necessary tests, some for the first time in years. So it was essential that the paperwork be done as quickly as possible. Suddenly, it mattered again if I were actually at my desk on any given day. And the moment that I realized this, I realized just how important that is to me.
At one point in my previous position, I bought a lottery ticket with the potential to win $155m. Like everyone else, I thought about what I would do if I won even a portion of that amount, and I decided that even if I won, I wouldn't be able to quit my job immediately. Not only did I enjoy the work that I did, but I felt like I couldn't just walk out and leave everyone holding the bag. I couldn't walk out and leave my co-workers and bosses struggling to take up the slack without some warning. Nor could I just walk out and leave potentially thousands of people wondering why their policies weren't effective when they thought they would be. What I did mattered to all of those people, and getting up and walking out without notice wasn't an option for me no matter how much money I may have won.
Bosses wonder what it takes to keep butts in seats (to put it somewhat crudely). How do they maintain their employees, and keep them from abusing time off? The simple answer is to make sure that their employees feel like a necessary part of what makes the company run. I'm not paid much - certainly not enough to run a household of six - and sure, that's a factor to me. We all need to eat. That being said, what matters more to me is to knowing that what I do matters to someone somewhere. If I'm gone, someone would notice.
Would the company fold without me? No, and that's not what I mean. What I mean is that at the end of the day, I can feel as though I've accomplished something, I've done some good. It may not be saving a life or figuring out the next great software, but someone benefited from what I did, and that feels damn good at the end of the day.
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