Office space

During college, I spent two summers working in demanding, albeit not challenging, desk jobs. Jobs where in-office catastrophes included things like employees taking an 11-minute instead of 10-minute break and paper boxes that were not correctly stacked. Jobs where I had to drink a second cup of coffee in the afternoon in order to fight falling asleep from boredom. I was crabby and tired. I lost my summer and a relationship over them. I did it for two summers and vowed never to allow myself to be that person again. 

I now have the most demanding full-time job that I most likely will ever have. There are many times when I feel like every exchange with a neighbor, Mama selling rice and beans or motorcycle taxi driver is a job performance evaluation. Every conversation in a local language. Every time I run (literally) down the street. The times I rarely don’t feel like this are when I’m alone in my house. (Although then I am concerned my neighbors are counting the amount of time that I am in my house.)

I thought about this yesterday as I walked down the street to visit some of my colleagues. I thought about how it’s hard to think about my colleagues as friends instead of colleagues. Every time I visit with someone at their house (never take the power of dropping by someone else’s house for granted in the Beninese cultural context), it’s hard to not think of it as a work engagement. When I leave it’s hard to think of it as me being able to cross something off my to-do list for that day.

But also, as I walked away from one of my friend’s house yesterday, I thought about how much this job is always what I wanted if stopping and talking to friends is part of my job’s to-do list for the day. I spend my workdays biking and saying Hi to people and making kids laugh and playing soccer with my students. 

My break room is my tailor’s house. My water cooler is the cashew tree in my school’s courtyard. My cubicle is my entire village. I work 24/7, but it beats my days of office politics and presentations on time theft.