After Spending the Last 6 Months in Pajamas...

Some things I thought I'd share now that I've been back at work, commuting to Downtown Chicago every day. Some of this stuff may not be especially shocking to you, but after writing for 6 months in my pajamas with my cat planted firmly on my legs for hours at a time, it's pretty shocking to me.

This company (a high-end hotel chain) owns the entire building, which is a skyscraper. You have to pass through a metal detector, and you have to place your bags on a scanner thing, before being allowed into it. If you beep they politely scan your whole body with an illuminated golfball detector. I tried to walk through once with an empty bag, and even though it didn't set off the metal detector they stopped me anyway and made me go back put it through the scanner. This is, by the way, after you’ve already used your keycard to gain passage through the initial turnstiles. All of this security requires about 5 full-time security guards. It being the tail end of a ridiculously long winter, usually I arrive basically sealed into a suit of armor designed to protect me from the weather, the sun and public annoyances. Peeling all that apart is something of a chore that often results in my belongings dropped and kicked and skating across the floor. 

Once inside, there is another full-time security person whose only job is apparently to make sure nobody steals from or otherwise fucks with this tiny little quickie mart of the sort found in lots of building lobbies. She has to stand behind a wall that separates her from her colleagues screening out bombs etc., and so doesn't get to fraternize as they do, so she's especially bored-looking.

The lobby for this particular branch of the company is on the 12th floor -- the next 4 floors above are designed to provide this lobby with a 4-floor-high ceiling. The floors and furniture, and a little coffee and tv station, are all dark stained wood. The stairs and bannisters are all brushed steel and layers of greenish plate glass. There are bowls of real green apples everywhere that nobody eats. There is a bench to sit on while you wait for whatever. It's a huge tree split down the middle. On my third day I still didn't have a keycard, and they forgot all about me. I waited in this lobby four floors below by destination for 45 minutes until I finally sent an email to the only person for whom I had an email, and she came down just as the secretaries were starting to get suspicious of me.  

Initially I was bringing in my own laptop every day (not totally unusual for contract copywriter work). A few days after I started a cute girl came over and nervously provided me with a power cord for a laptop. I didn't actually get the laptop for another week and a half or so.

In order to get online here, everyone has to sign up for a temporary guest wifi account, providing a phone number to receive a text with a temporary password -- every single day.

If I want both coffee and water, I have to use a thermos with a handle for my water so I can carry both with one hand, because I need to use my other hand to both reach into my pocket to grab my keycard to swipe it at multiple doors, and then to open the doors, whenever I want to go anywhere.

In order to get to the kitchen I must pass through no fewer than four doors (up to 7 doors if I want to go to the bathroom first – the bathrooms have buffer areas (kind of nice)). The bathrooms are the most direct route to the kitchen. Otherwise I have to go wide past the elevators. Either way I have to beep through two separate doors.

The brand manager, one of two people working directly with me, looks so much like my sister that for the first few days I was consistently surprised when my sister's voice didn't come out of her mouth when she spoke to me.

The manager of the creative team speaks but doesn’t write fluent English. Much of my job is figuring out what she actually means.

Both of these people are so busy that I see them on average of once per day for five minutes for a quick update on everything that is happening, and all my email inquiries usually take between about an hour and a half to a full day to be replied to. This goes for feedback on drafts as well -- 80% of my day is waiting for feedback. I am writing this while waiting for feedback.

I was never actually asked to do what turned out to be the very most important thing I was hired to do, I just eventually figured out that it needed to be done. In fact, the information I was given would have led anyone to do something completely different than this. I’m sure (I think) if I hadn’t figured it out they eventually would have asked me to do it, but I know for a fact that one of the other copywriters was screwed over by a similar situation, failing epically, apparently.

On the second floor of the building there exists basically the best food court I've ever seen. I'm currently eating my way through their ridiculously vast, delicious menu. I had forgotten how much I liked taco salads.

I’ve been here for three weeks and I’m still bumping into people I swear I’ve never seen before in my life.