The Alpha and his Omega

Finding Balance [Work/Life 2]

It turned out that Eren's position wasn't permanent either. It was a full-time contract based position for a year to replace someone else who had gone into preterm labor and was currently on maternity leave. Depending on his performance, it was possible to renew the contract for another year or to be employed full-time, but the omega wasn't complaining. Although he didn't understand all the legalities in his contract, some of which Levi had explained to him, the position he had with the event planning team came with almost all the benefits, except for unemployment insurance and a few others, that most full-time employees had. The pay wasn't amazing, but for someone who wasn't necessarily the most qualified, this could very well be his ticket into the industry.

He quickly realized that part of the reason they had been in a rush to hire him was because it was the summer and there were a plethora of events happening. From the July 4th celebration and parade to the Jazz Festival to the Multicultural Food Festival, the number of projects the entire division was running were innumerable. He had gone to some of them as a child, and knowing he was going to be working on some really fun projects only heightened his enthusiasm. It was a mere stroke of luck he ended up landing something he was really excited about, and potentially something he could foresee himself doing in the future. Even then, Eren was amazed at how others were able to keep track of everything and all the details. No wonder higher-ups had assistants to help them.

It was already the end of May and only a month before the first of many festivities he would be involved in. There hadn't been much training for Eren since he was hired out of season, but more so because everyone else was running all over the place trying to get the details of their tasks sorted. He was learning on the fly, so to speak, shadowing people and seeing what they were doing. The person who had left was one of the event coordinators, and since he wasn't qualified enough to do it, others had to pick up the slack. Instead, because he wasn't familiar with the ins and outs, he was therefore assigned to help fill in the blanks and assist wherever possible. It wasn't too bad, and being part of it meant he was able to pick up on multiple things going on.

One of the benefits he loved about event planning was visiting all the venues. Between the Food festival and small-time band performances, Eren was able to experience a sample of everything before it even happened. It was surprising how much fine-tuning needed to be done to make sure things went smoothly. He realized that early on as he and some others went to visit all the restaurants and small-time cafés that wanted to have a booth at the Food Festival. Some of the places were an automatic no-go, whereas others were almost too good to be true. Sasha would have envied him, and Eren took the opportunity to text and send photos to his friend whenever. The same happened with the performances. There were definitely some big names, but most of them were local bands, which were surprisingly good.

That said, a good number of days were also pretty drab in comparison. His hours were filled with simply assisting others with menial tasks and the like, but it was the few times in which the event itself actually began to come together that muted any dissatisfaction he might have had. A good number of the roles and jobs were already delegated, but because there were so many moving parts, Eren found himself being involved in a little bit of everything. For the most part, due to the size of the event and because it was the first one in the summer, it was all hands on deck for the July 4th celebration. He still occasionally helped with the other projects, but more and more of his time was getting sucked up by it.

It wasn't going to much different from previous years. They had fireworks planned in the evening, some local bands during the afternoon, a kid's corner, food fair, and other games and activities sprawled throughout the city. It was surprising how much coordination needed to be done, especially since the City already owned the properties, so they didn't need to do things like figuring out prices for renting the venue and such, but there were many logistical issues needed to be figured out.