Happy Path

This is My Stop

I would often board the bus in the morning and think I'll just stay on. I'll stay on when the bus comes to my stop and keep going! And I'll get off when I feel like it and do whatever I want. This thought used to thrill me. It made the sick feeling in my stomach turn into butterflies of possibility. It was still so early in my contract, and I figured I could say it just wasn't a good fit. I had severance money to tide me over for months while I found a job that actually suited me. And yet, I always got off the bus, walked through the doors and sat at my desk another day.

Christmas was only two weeks away, and I told myself I could do anything for two weeks. I'd used this self-convincing logic as a coping mechanism for years. I'd fast-forward in my mind to a time when I'd have my driver's license or that paper was written or my injury was healed. It works if you're only trying to skip ahead a reasonably small amount of time. I wouldn't suggest it for a mortgage or a pregnancy. But for this stretch, it seemed reasonable.

Even though The Bank had offered next to no training in my position, it at least felt like people were willing to show me the ropes. I heard from various other positions that a lack of training was common, so I think it was easy for my colleagues to remember when they were in my shoes and they wanted to make my transition easier. After a meeting one day, a project manager took the time to lay out the structure of The Bank for me.

"Molly," she said, "when I first started at The Bank, nobody detailed the levels of reporting." She dragged an eraser across the white board we'd been using. "Once I knew enough to be useful, I vowed to pass that knowledge along to new hires."

"Honestly, it's really helpful when people take the time to explain the structure of The Bank and the departments," I said with relief. "I'm having a hard time getting a handle on who does what and the make-up of each group."

Silvia began writing on the white board. "The Bank is like a house." She drew the peaked roof. "The foundation is made up of..." I watched her draw and I listened to her explain and I tried to follow along. But sadly, her diagram assumed I had a greater overall knowledge than my short tenure had allowed. I nodded and gleaned what I could, wanting her to understand that I was grateful for the gesture. When she was finished, I looked at the structure and it made little sense.

"Thanks, Silvia." I took a picture of what she had drawn, hoping it would be helpful in the future.

"No problem," she chirped. "I really wish someone would have done that for me when I first started. Instead, I was thrown into a group of 27 women who were all unmarried and went home to their cats." I turned my phone with the screensaver of my cat over on the table and folded my ringless left hand into my lap when she turned around to erase the board. "They just wanted to work all the time. I couldn't relate to them." Funny that her tale of exclusion was excluding me. "I'm happy to help you any time, dear. Just let me know if you ever want to talk things over." She was probably my age, but had the kind of nurturing demeanor that's gained via motherhood.

"Okay, Silvia. Thanks." And I meant it.

Time moves most slowly when you have nothing to keep you occupied. Even though my job was massively frustrating and interminably confusing, at least it kept me busy. In fact, every time I started to get bored, something new would come up.

During the two weeks before Christmas, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix a problem I'd caused through my own ignorance. There was a time-keeping system used by The Bank that I'm certain was developed in parallel with the movie Tron. In fact, Richard told me he'd used the same system in his early days with The Bank, 30 years before! The towering green dot-matrix italic letters on the homepage and the outdated font were a callback to early computer days. The system was unnecessarily complicated and in no way intuitive. It made me want to hurl my laptop across the office on numerous occasions. It was MultiTRAK, and it was a piece of .