Another Job Done
Today marked the end of my ‘summer’ job with POLARIS in Ottawa, and since I’d finished everything I needed to do already, the only thing left for me on my last day at work was to show up for the traditional ‘good-bye lunch’ where the members of the GSC’s Electromagnetic and Seismic Investigation Division (which I had been a part of) go out for lunch whenever someone in the group finishes. That’s right folks, my last day of work consisted of me going out to lunch – gotta love the government jobs.
It was a nice time, sitting out on Mexicali Rosie’s patio on Dow’s Lake on a beautiful afternoon just chillin’, and actually provided a chance for me to meet (on my last day…) some of the other people in the division. These were people who had been working just down the hall from me all summer long, but had never introduced themselves or even said “Hi”, just sat in the offices working away all the time. I realized that by the end of the summer, I had only met about half of the 14 people in my division (hallway), so that tells you something about the social atmosphere at work – so much for it being a perfect job. Given this atmosphere, I’d been a quite surprised to learn that there was this tradition of going out to lunch when people leave – I wouldn’t have thought that such seemingly anti-social people would go out and be social, but I guess miracles can happen. Only half the people made it out to the lunch (the others were too busy or taking time off) and admittedly there was only one person who I hadn’t directly worked with before, but the impression I got was that everyone would have come if they could have.
All in all, it was a nice time, but it was a little awkward since no one really knew much about anyone else outside of work related stuff, and teleseismic analysis is not a subject that you really want to talk about around the lunch table. We got past it though, talking about everything from recent trips we’d done to how Bush was screwing the world. I think by the end of it we were all wishing we had gone out and done this before and the rest of them probably were thinking how nice it owuld be if they could make it a regular event, but something tells me that instead they’ll just slip back into their own little research worlds and eat lunch alone in their offices until someone else leaves, thus prompting someone to make the effort of rounding everyone up for lunch again. They’re wonderful people, just pretty shy and reclusive, and that atomsphere quickly swallows any new employees making it hard to break the trend (I know I felt it).
Overall, it was a good summer for me, but I’m glad to be done and moving on. It was nice to finally go out and do something related to my background so I could see what I’ve gotten myself into with this geophysics degree, and the 5 weeks of fieldwork across the arctic was an absolutely incredible opportunity that I won’t easily find again, but spending the majority of my time in an anti-social office doing mindless repetitive data-processing that didn’t really challenge me or provide me much control over what I was doing wasn’t exactally my cup of tea. I don’t regret taking this position at all though, even the downsides of the job were good learning experiences for me and will hopefully aid me in future job decisions.
Now I’m truely free – no school, no work – and it’s feeling great. Look out world, here I come (literally!)
This is the online home of one Shane Warner, my place to attempt to tell some of my stories, as well as just spout off whatever comes to mind.
