27 July 2006

Working in the Coal Mine

And by 'coal' I mean mutual funds, and by 'mine' I mean bland, anonymous, North Toronto suburb. So far, it seems okay, but being there makes me feel like I'm trapped in an episode of the office (only without the funny bits). They seem like nice people –a tad disorganised though as far as my training goes, but a nice group. My first day I arrived and did some human resources paperwork stuff, then the human resources lady took me to the department supervisor who showed me around, introduced me to some people and said "So you'll be doing your training with M, but unfortunately she's in a meeting until 11, sooo... d'you have a book?" –They're encouraging office time-wastage before I've even started –awesome! When I started the training with M, she said "the training will take about two or three weeks..." and I'm thinking 'uh, shouldn't you know how long the training is going to take?' It made me think back to my birth-by-fire Nova training (although at least they had a plan about what was happening on what day). There was a lot of detail and 'well-you-won't-really-come-across-that-very-often' situations before there was any kind of overview of, oh, I dunno, what this company does, or what my job is maybe.

But I digress. A job is a job, and heaven knows I’ve certainly had much worse ones. The people are nice, it doesn’t seem to office-politicky, the work isn’t stressful, so this is certainly fine for now. I think I’m in need of some stability right to help with my readjustment to “The Real World.”

However, speaking of the real world, I’m constantly thinking about what I want to do with my life, and I think I may have actually hit nail on the head and made a decisive realization; I want to work in the travel industry — travel agent, tour guide, tour planning, that kind of thing. If there’s one thing I’m passionate about it’s travel! Defiantely my skills, languages and expatriate experiences are well matched for this kind of job and would be put to good use instead of being amusing stories to tell by the water cooler.

Now I had always been hesitant to consider the travel industry because you don’t make that much money; stuck in the mindset that you need to make lots of money to be able to travel. But being back in the corporate world where people make the cash money, I’m reminded that you also only get two weeks vacation a year! What I really need is a way to turn that equation on its head, and I think having a job where your job is to travel is just the solution I’ve been looking for. I’m actually pretty excited about is because I’ve never really had a strong sense of what kind of direction I wanted to take with my life.

So, now all I need is a job. Any offers?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry sweetie, no job offer, but two words. Flight. Attendant. You are so qualified for it, what with your multiple linguality and debonair style. Plus your devastating good looks. And as evidenced by my last few flights you don't even need to pretend anymore that the passengers are there. And you can pull off haughty better than anyone I know (well you and Chairman Miaow) and let's not even mention the glam stopovers and, of course, foreign boot-ay. Tis your birth right, McK. Cabin crew arm doors and cross-check.

Princess Pessimism said...

Flight attendant. Hands down.

Miss Ash said...

Dan would be the flight attendant telling you to "get your own pillow" with a look of disgust :)

heren chan said...

oooooh but woudnt it be more fun to be the tour guide for exclusive hot male groups
you could take em to tokyo and have every excursion an onsen excursion. There could be so many criteria you have to meet before you can join, like under 40 rich hot etc and if you approve of them you can take lots of their cash and go travelling
it would be cool ne?
dont do the travel agent thing, you have all of the evil stress of flight delays and baggage handlers strikes and you never get to leave the country
boooooooooooooo

Jennifer said...

I'm off to the coal mine tomorrow too, and by coal mine I mean stupid accounts payable type job that it literally as deep in the earth under downtown Toronto as a coal mine would be. Ugh!

jane said...

Ditto on tour guide -- my roommate is Slovakian and worked for a travel group for a while -- she got to travel a lot in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and Venezuela. You'd probably get to see more of the places you visit, as well, than if you're a flight attendant.