Novel Job

I had a one-year government subsidized (grant) job working for a charitable organization that was raising money for a shelter. It was three other women and myself and my job was ostensibly PR and Media relations. Those in charge were wealthy women who had never had jobs in their lives and their attitude was that if you were from the same “community” and had to actually work for a living, instead of having a rich husband and living in a mansion, then you were total garbage and deserved to be treated as such. I was 28 years old, had been looking for a job for quite some time and needed the money. The main problem was that no one seemed to have the slightest idea what I was supposed to do, so I had to come up with all the ideas for publicity, but they would then reject all my ideas. I was told that they would have to take it up with “The Organization,” but nothing ever materialized. I was mostly given really idiotic jobs like putting pictures in a scrapbook and going to the shelter to wait for furniture deliveries. They seemed to think that because I had applied for this job, I was such a moron that I probably didn’t even know the alphabet.

After a while, I just gave up and sat in the other office reading novels. It was obvious that the only reason they wanted me there was for the money I brought into their project (if I quit, they lost part of a subsidy). When they did bitch at me I’d say, “Fine, give me something to do.” One woman who worked there in particular (a volunteer bookkeeper) was a mean, miserable gossip who was always telling me how her taxes supported me and that I sat around and did nothing. Everyone apologized for her because she was a “volunteer” who “was valuable to the community.” After six months I was getting very depressed, drinking every night to get to sleep and had to drag myself out of bed every day for another day of novel-reading and abuse. I was looking for another job, but it was a bad recession and jobs were scarce. One day, the Gossipy Bitch saw me reading a novel and started railing at me about how her taxes paid for me, how I was a freeloader and how I was useless. She was going on and on and finally I had enough. I got up and walked into the bathroom to prevent myself from killing her. Then I called my supervisor at home and told her that I was not coming back after that day. A few months later they made the news with a huge embezzlement scandal involving their national director.