When I moved to Tennessee seven and a half years ago, I opted to change careers and become a travel agent. We spent a chunk of savings to put me through 17 weeks of travel school. Starting over at age 32 is a bit weird, but I was confident; I'd graduated at the top of my class, I had lots of regular employment experience, and people always liked me. Silly me. This was Tennessee, not the west coast. I couldn't get an interview to save my life. No one wanted to hire a new agent with no experience. Worse, they all demanded two years experience. I kept asking how they expected me to get experience if they wouldn't hire me, and everyone said, "CUC is hiring." CUC has the market on new agents. Everyone in Nashville goes to work for them to get their two years. The deal with CUC is they offer their clients a 5% rebate on all travel. The real deal with CUC is they're insane control freaks. I desperately tried to avoid taking a job there. I went four months without a job interview. Finally, I gave up and went to them. I cried my eyes raw the day I accepted a position there.

There couldn't be a job more perfectly designed to drive me mad. Just writing this makes my stomach clench painfully. You punch in and out on a time clock. Okay, that's not so bad. Your calls are monitored at all times. Okay, well, that's occasionally quite helpful. You have two breaks a day of 15 minutes apiece. If you have to use the toilet at any other point, you're timed. 5 minutes and they're knocking on the door. Your day is measured in every possible way: revenue per minute, calls per hour, number of tasks accomplished in predetermined increments. It was literally not humanly possible to check out a document from the holder of Accountable Documents, fill it out partially, call it in to the airlines, finish filling it out, and check it back in within the time alloted. That simply did not matter; they knew it wasn't possible but it had been decided that to make the most money, it had to be done in x amount of time. No amount of complaining, reality checks, or failure to meet the management goals week after week changed their minds. It was a company built on calculations, and people just got in the way. Most of the employees decided to get what they could and get out. No one was good to each other. It was poisonous. It was hellish. It was all wrong.

I'm not conveying the enormous amount of rage, bitterness, hatred, cheating, and lying that went on as a result of this system. I tried so hard to work within the confines of the job. I conformed, and met goals, and suffered. I got bonuses. I changed departments. I talked myself blue in the face to every supervisor and manager I was under, and no one thought I was justified in asking if this system could be changed. My reviews were superficially excellent but I was noted as a troublemaker all the same. The company's mindset methodically pared away at any self-confidence, initiative, imagination, and abilities I had until I cracked. I've never mentioned this in print before, but I did crack under the strain. I didn't develop ulcers, or take up alcoholism, or sleep my way through the management. I developed panic attacks. I had to go into therapy. I had to take an anti-convulsant and a serotonin inhibitor called Paxil for years afterwards. Two years and one week after I started, I quit.

I am so often tempted to call myself lazy, and castigate myself for having no follow-through. That is not true. I can point to my time at CUC. Sure, it cost me my health, my mental stability, and two years of my life, but I did what I did because that's what it took to get my career started in Nashville. You know that I'm now highly employable. I don't intend to ask if it was worth it. I didn't have much choice if I wanted to leave the middle echelons of secretarial work, and I didn't believe I had many options with my secretarial skills and background in music and English literature.

I went to Africa to clear my head. It worked. I fell in love with Kenya, had a genuine moment of epiphany on a street corner in Nairobi, and came home ready to get on with my life. I applied with First Travelcorp, then known as Ambassador, because they were a great company and they were located at the end of my street. I sent flowers to one manager after she turned me down for a position, and got hired in another department. I think the flowers helped.

I stayed there for three and a half years. It wasn't entirely a great experience but this time it was the people, not so much the company. It was, and is, an intensely Southern firm. I'm so utterly wrong for the South that I could only be wronger if I were a native Manhattanite. In review after review I discovered that all the people who were so friendly and nice to me thought I was a bitch. I was told I didn't smile enough. I couldn't believe it! You're too hard on people, they said. Everyone is afraid of you because you say what you think. I was flabbergasted, I really was. Yes, I can be abrupt and impatient. Yes, I expect competence and initiative from others. Yes, I do render an honest opinion when asked, but for pete's sake, I don't say a dress is ugly if it's ugly; I understand the white lie. It was frustrating, but not, and this is the important part, debilitating. The job was interesting and meaningful. No one timed me, though I was still expected to get through a superhuman amount of work in a normal human's 40 hour week. It was almost right.

Now I'm working at a company where people are apparently confident that everyone's doing the best they can. They are utterly relaxed about time, they don't fanatically keep track of one another, they willingly share information, and it's incredibly civilized. I'm dazed by it. I forgot what this is like. I suppose I've never known what this is like, not on a job. I'm not glossing over the potential for things to go awry, but it's been years since no one looked over my shoulder to make sure I was doing the job they hired me to do. I feel like an adult. It's bloody marvelous. This, this is just right.

I hope I get used to this soon.