It was also infinitely, inexplicably better.
Not only did the paper have the projects he needed me to
work on today, but it contained detailed instructions on
duties I'd been performing without supervision for months.
He'd left out breaks for me to eat and use the bathroom,
but every other minute of the day had been accounted for.
In high school I'd had a teacher who didn't like girls. I
don't mean he was gay, just that for whatever misogynistic
reason, he'd thought females somehow lesser creatures
than males. Considering the boys in my class, I thought the
man was an idiot, but at sixteen there's not much you can
do about it but get through it. This teacher hadn't been
impressed by good grades earned through hard work, and
I'd had to work very hard for al my good grades. I've
already said I wasn't the brain. Even so, I wasn't a bad
student, and so when I got an A on my first test and this
teacher, this man put in charge of young adults to mold
them into something fit for future society, sneered and
suggested I'd cheated off the boy next to me in order to
have earned that grade, I learned a very important lesson.
No matter how hard you worked, there was always going
to be somebody out there who thought you were a fuckup.
to be somebody out there who thought you were a fuckup.
Part of me pictured myself storming into Paul's office,
tossing the list on his desk and quitting in an outrage, but I
knew there was no way I'd ever do it. I needed my job. I
wanted it. I could put up with a lot more than a stupid list
to keep it.
So instead, I did what I'd done in high school with that
dumbass teacher who thought girls couldn't be better than
boys.
I worked my ass off. It was a game, that day, going down
that list and completing each task on it. And as the day
wore on and I finished item after item, my sense of
accomplishment grew. I'd never realized, actualy, how
much work I accomplished in one day.
I'd never thought to write down everything I did. Looking
at it at the end of the day, this job no longer seemed a
mindless drone. I'd done something. A lot of somethings,
as a matter of fact, and when I took that list into Paul's
office with each item boldly checked off and my neat
annotations in the margins, there was no hiding my triumph.
'Finished,' I said and stepped back, waiting to see what
'Finished,' I said and stepped back, waiting to see what
he'd say.
But, unlike my teacher who'd have probably dismissed my
efforts with a snide comment, my boss looked over the list,
ticking off each item with the point of his pen.
He looked up at me. I'd never noticed how blue his eyes
