Truck Stop Secretary
Another dear friend, who is now a Woman of the Cloth, remembers her salad days as a secretary at a truckstop.
After college and before seminary, I temped for three months as the Executive Secretary to the VP of Operations of a truck stop in Oregon. My predecessor was a meth addict (an early adapter!), so my boss loved me. He took me out to lunch regularly and always brought his wife along. We kept in touch until he gave me a draft of his screenplay about an emotionally closed-off military contractor who finds romance in an unlikely place and he switched companies twice and I graduated from seminary.
My boss didn't belong at the truck stop. He wore starched white dress shirts from Nordstrom with Ferragamo ties and finely-tailored suits. On my first day, he walked into my office and used two fingers to hold up the top sheet of paper in one of the many messy piles in my office. 'I don't like this,' he said.
The meth addict had saved many meaningless things so it wasn't tough to discern what belonged in the files, and what didn't. I soon realized that when you follow a disorganized or disliked person into a new job, you can throw away almost anything you want. If you accidentally recycle something important, just blame your loser predecessor.
Renovations began on the office building, and I was relegated to a dark cubicle in a trailer behind the truck parking area where the lot lizards hung out. There my main distraction was a co-worker who kept a Tickle-Me Elmo on her desk and grabbed it several times throughout the day so it would go off. She said she looked forward to casual Fridays because then she got to wear her 'grubbies.' Her grubbies turned out to be a men's flannel shirt, gray sweatpants and yellowed white sneakers.
On my last day, the owner's son, who was Ivy educated and liked to stare at my breasts, told me that there would always be a position for me at the truck stop, whenever it was time for me to come back.
After college and before seminary, I temped for three months as the Executive Secretary to the VP of Operations of a truck stop in Oregon. My predecessor was a meth addict (an early adapter!), so my boss loved me. He took me out to lunch regularly and always brought his wife along. We kept in touch until he gave me a draft of his screenplay about an emotionally closed-off military contractor who finds romance in an unlikely place and he switched companies twice and I graduated from seminary.
My boss didn't belong at the truck stop. He wore starched white dress shirts from Nordstrom with Ferragamo ties and finely-tailored suits. On my first day, he walked into my office and used two fingers to hold up the top sheet of paper in one of the many messy piles in my office. 'I don't like this,' he said.
The meth addict had saved many meaningless things so it wasn't tough to discern what belonged in the files, and what didn't. I soon realized that when you follow a disorganized or disliked person into a new job, you can throw away almost anything you want. If you accidentally recycle something important, just blame your loser predecessor.
Renovations began on the office building, and I was relegated to a dark cubicle in a trailer behind the truck parking area where the lot lizards hung out. There my main distraction was a co-worker who kept a Tickle-Me Elmo on her desk and grabbed it several times throughout the day so it would go off. She said she looked forward to casual Fridays because then she got to wear her 'grubbies.' Her grubbies turned out to be a men's flannel shirt, gray sweatpants and yellowed white sneakers.
On my last day, the owner's son, who was Ivy educated and liked to stare at my breasts, told me that there would always be a position for me at the truck stop, whenever it was time for me to come back.
posted by thirty-year-old secretary at 11:53 AM
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