Bird

Here's the personal essay I sent to The Sun. As usual, I moved too fast and submitted it before letting it sit for a minute. After I sent it, I realized it's more of a summary or outline than an essay, so I was not surprised when they declined, but I probably won't flesh it out anymore. It captures what I wanted to capture.

BIRD

When Emily Blake interviewed for a receptionist position with the prosecutor’s office, she was surprised by the question, “If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?” Not recognizing it as a standard interview question to assess personality and strengths, she was unprepared to use it to her advantage and defaulted to the unflattering truth.

“I would be a bird,” she said, “Probably a crow.”

“Why?” demanded the prosecutor, as if Emily was on trial.

“Because they can fly.” The elaboration seemed obvious and unnecessary to her. “And they’re pretty. What animal would you be?”

“I’m asking the questions here!” thundered the prosecutor.

And that was the real end of the interview for both sides, beyond the perfunctory protocols.

Later, she interviewed for a 9-1-1 dispatch job, in which she was asked, “Which part of 9-1-1 dispatching do you dislike?”

“I don’t like our warrant system,” she said.

The police lieutenant interviewing her narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean you don’t like our warrant system?”

“You know, it preys on the poor. It’s designed to keep everyone in their places.”

The police lieutenant evidently and unsurprisingly did not share Emily’s social justice orientation, and an interview, once again, turned into more of an interrogation. When she left, Emily felt beat up. This time, however, she’d been prepared, having interviewed for the same position a year prior with a police sergeant who referred to the dispatchers as “whiners” for wanting mandatory overtime policies reformed. After hearing “they’re lucky to have jobs” as justification for inhumane working conditions, she knew she should avoid the agency, but she loved dispatching, and there were only so many opportunities that didn’t require moving.

When she interviewed for the public defender’s office, she recognized she’d been chasing jobs on the wrong side for a long time. All “sides” of the justice system are important and have their purposes, but when she hinted the warrant system had some problems and her interviewers rolled their eyes and responded, “Don’t even get us started,” she knew she’d found her home.

It was a long time coming. Emily had heard it’s hard to find work after you turn fifty, but it wasn’t until she'd applied for dozens of jobs for over a year without success that she started to get really scared. She knew ageism was probably real, but could a person really be unhireable 15-20 years before retirement age?

To be fair, Emily is twitchy, inarticulate, and anxious at a level just below passing out during interviews, and her holey resume, with seasonal park service jobs and recent short stints at local jobs that didn’t give breaks or where co-workers openly and aggressively complained about the incompetence of women in politics and the impropriety and usurpery of women in the military, makes her look - if she was an animal - like she’d be a bird, flighty and fickle.

She understands why employers would be reluctant to hire people her age. As you maneuver the workforce, you become less willing to put up with abuse, you learn not to waste your time trying to “change things from within,” and you develop basic standards for how you expect to be treated, which is a pain in the butt for employers who want to take advantage of you or are otherwise dysfunctional. On the other hand, if you’re lucky, you’ve learned that Tall Poppy Syndrome is not that you’re being picked on because you care more about doing things right than everyone else; it’s that you’re being an asshole. Loss of idealism is a valuable commodity.

Returning to work after a long, luxurious break from waking up to an alarm clock, Emily was afraid she wouldn’t be able to acclimate to a normal work routine again. Like a lot of Americans entertained by a decade of The Walking Dead, she harbored the delusion she would function better in a zombie apocalypse than modern society. Who wouldn’t rather occasionally split the skull of an undead monster than wake up day after day to spend your energy maintaining your part of a complex survival machine and forcing yourself to be nice and get along with other people instead of resolving differences with a baseball bat and surviving by scavenging off deserted homes and businesses?

Her primitive instincts slowly slough off and her civilized, workplace persona returns as she basks in the secure familiarities of working in an office. Every office has the same things, with slight variations.

Emily eases open a kitchen cabinet with gleeful anticipation. What unwanted mugs have been abandoned here? Oh yes, there are the seasonal mugs: Easter rabbits and Christmas trees, the strangely shaped mugs and the ones with random company logos, mugs decorated with fruits, gingham cats, and flowers, boring, plain ones in ugly colors, and the requisite one or two treasure mugs: Mickey Mouse and a hound dog in silhouette.

Emily worked in newspapers for years just after the dot.com crash of the late ‘90s where she witnessed the shrinking of staff, parties, benefits, equipment. Sometime in the mid-to-late aughts, as if to emphasize that the pampered 90s were over, management swept through the building removing all the wall-mounted first aid cabinets and even replacing the “fancy” pens with basic stick pens. Emily always wondered what they did with all the aspirin and band-aids.

But here, at the new job, to her delight, she finds a full-size first aid cabinet, fully stocked with all the first aid necessities - unexpired! - plus extras like foot powder and Pepto-Bismol. 

The supply closet seems extravagant after years of working for a poor branch of the federal government where everything was recycled multiple times. Anything you need is there, new in its package, and if you need something that isn’t there, just ask. Just ask! 

The real excitement comes during orientation, which itself feels like a surprise bonus since it’s been shrunk and even dropped in some workplaces. They mention ergonomics. Emily swears she hasn’t heard that word on the job in 20 years. You get what you get has been the assumed policy everywhere for a long time.

And then they give her Adobe Pro, and she almost cries. She thinks of the frustrating, time-consuming workarounds she’s come up with to accomplish tasks without it, and she knows her new employer has won her loyalty for as long as they want it. 

She murmurs, “Please, God, let this job be ‘the one.’”