The Permanent Position
Makin’ it rain like Jimmy and Jackson
Workin’ that hustle put in my whole back, son
Growin’ up fencin’ up that currency
But it don’t even matter, they won’t take my money
-L’il Prosta G, from “They Won’t Take It”, 2038
He set the alarm for 4:30 so she could get up and study for her evening exam before going to work. She had the intensive schedule at the office so she was able to leave after 6 hours as long as she didn’t break to eat, which she did covertly at her desk when the others were at lunch. If anybody came in during that time she’d slide her Tupperware into the drawer without looking at it so they wouldn’t see, and she’d stare fixedly at her screen and hover her hands over the keyboard, apparently lost in business until the visitor cleared their throat for attention.
She’d been doing the same job for 17 years, in the same office, but it was a temporary job, and every 6 months she was sure they were finally going to eliminate her position. She knew she was lucky to have it, she only had been able to get a master’s before going to work full-time, and most of her co-workers had doctorates and professional degrees. She was now studying for her seventh intermediate language proficiency exam. After this she was thinking about night dental school, although honestly, it didn’t appeal. But really, a dental degree would give her an edge, it would be worth 3 points in the job pool score, maybe bump her contract up to a whole year.
Her temporary job was cleaning up data for a big spreadsheet company. She had had initiative and drive in her early years, spending time understanding what the spreadsheets were for, trying to be strategic about how to best analyze the data in them so her calculations would be relevant. At this point she didn’t remember the ones she had been working on two days ago, and that was fine. The idea was to keep going, to get through the day and study for another exam, another degree, to keep stretching out the contract, keep paying the bills.
She had a faint memory, a tiny taste from her youth, of when people trained to specific ends. Maybe sometimes they went “back to school” when they were older to finish a degree they had left earlier or to fulfill a dream about an education they had been lacking, but it was not an end in itself. Now that she was in her late 50s, she hadn’t been free of extra studies for as long as she could remember, but she was still in the game, wasn’t she?
