I don't know about other people's first day of work, but I'm sure other people don't usually wait outside a locked door for forty-five minutes.
The first day of work; I left my aunt's house at 11:30 AM. It takes about an hour and a half to get to work, and I was asked to work from 1 to 6. Hey, it takes ninety minutes just to get there, I was glad at that I don't have to wake up early for that. After a long bus ride and a long subway ride, I finally reached the fourth floor of the office... only to find it locked.
So their lunchtime ends at one, and I came a few minutes early. Okay, I can deal with that. I wait at the fifth floor, eating the lunch that my aunt made for me. It was a crazy hot day out, and the building had no central air conditioning, to my shock and fear. Now, I'm not an advocate of overly cold air conditioning and global warning, but when you don't have a central air conditioner or even a central fan in the building in the middle of Korean summer, that, my friend, is CRIME.
Sweat oozes out endlessly from every part of my body, although I'm sitting as still as can be while eating food. I check the fourth floor again at 1:10, but the staff is still MIA.
"?!?!??!!" I scream in my mind, losing any bit of sanity that I had from the heat. I drag myself to the first floor and ask the people at the main office if they've seen the Post Adoption Center people around here. The security guy tells me they probably hasn't come back from lunch.
"Ohhhh, they shouldn't do that, they told you to come at 1 and they're not here..."
He keeps me company and tries to call them for me, and he's lent me his FAN. I could have weeped. He is an awesome security guard. By then I was already overheated and dehydrated and I SERIOUSLY NEEDED TO COOL DOWN.
Just when I thought they'd find me passed out on the sofa, they came, at 1:30. Since I came fifteen minutes earlier, I've been waiting for a whopping forty-five minutes JUST TO GET IN THE OFFICE. Oh well, since the people seem to be nice and kind of sorry about it, I can let this pass... as long as it doesn't happen again.
So my work there was to translate letters that the biological family wrote to the adoptees. It wasn't too hard, really, and I actually liked the translating, figuring out the right tone and vocabulary to deliver the sentiment of the letters, though I found myself repeatedly translating feelings of gratitude and/or guilt for five hours straight.
"Don't let the feelings get to you, you'll see a lot of guilt in these letters," said Esther, a worker who happened to be an alumnus, and who was EXTREMELY EXCITED about that fact. (If you can imagine a middle-aged woman variation of squeeing, that was what she did) "Some are genuine, some are not." Thanks for the advice. I wasn't too depressed about the letter contents... yet. I just had the obvious feelings of, I'm sure glad I lived a comfortable life and my parents didn't abandon me; I'm sure lots of others would feel that way, too. I finished my given work twenty minutes before leaving, and I spent the remaining time snacking and chatting with Esther.
And then, another hour and a half back to my aunt's. It was hellish on the way back, especially when there were about several hundred people lined up to wait for the bus after work, no exaggeration in any of the sentence at all. Thankfully, the bus I was waiting for was very underpopulated compared to the "concert ticket line", since not too many people commute that far to work.... I guess. I still had to stand for the most of my bus ride, though.
Despite having to wait a lot in the beginning, the first day of work was pretty satsifying, and my old friend FINALLY texted me back, he's only just checked the phone, that sillyhead. Now if he'll just pick up the phone, and I can actually talk to him. Maybe tomorrow, today's a bit late.
This just sounds like a diary entry. I guess trying to be funny on purpose doesn't really work well with me. Tragic.
