So I guess it's sort of like The Office

My mom thinks if I'm going to be a teacher come September I should probably have a real job first. You know, the traditional, 9-5 desk job where you spend most of your time figuring out how to covertly check Facebook or make paperclip sculptures. Today, however, I tried to mix it up by coloring in an entire Post-It note with purple ink. Yesterday my personal goal was to find a naughty word that the office's computer software recognized. It recognized vag but not ass, so I spent a solid hour reflecting on why that might be so.

And apparently it's crucial that I have this experience before entering into the teaching profession.

So since last Monday I've been working in my own dear mumsy's office. To be honest, it's actually a pretty sweet gig: no matter how badly I fuck up, everyone still has to be nice to me because I'm the boss's daughter. Granted, I'm trying really hard to avoid fucking up horribly, and so far so good, but the sentiment is the same when I do something right. If I successfully complete the phone number look-up mission they sent me on, I am showered with praise that seems to suggest that this was no mere phone number that I found. No, with the scale of my findings I make Indiana Jones look like a complete jackass. Mortals could not accomplish this feat and return to tell the tale.

Then five minutes later I look up a price from a vendor by arduously searching for said vendor through Google and, as I wipe sweat from my brow, clicking on their link that says "PRICES." At this point my worshipers call my mother over and announce that without a doubt she has raised Athena herself. Practically swooning they gush over how lucky my students next year will be to have such a brilliant teacher, since price-checking is a crucial aspect of religious education. They then turn to me directly and start asking questions. "Have you considered MENSA?" asks one. "No no," interrupts another, "have you considered divinity?"

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. But not really by much. My point is that it would be nice to be appreciated on a normal level. I bet that secretly they all hate me. It's a pretty stark contrast from my job in the pizza place in Israel, where the boss told me flat out that I'm fat and that as soon as a prettier girl applies I'm out of a job. Meanwhile my coworkers made a fat-joke pun out of my name and criticized my Hebrew abilities with, "Even retards can speak Hebrew." I mean, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be insulted in the office I practically grew up in, but at least at the pizza place I knew where I stood. I didn't try to tiptoe down the hall as stealthily as possible to avoid an onslaught of unwarranted praise while wondering if, secretly, everyone hated me. I knew everyone hated me. And I knew that no one at the pizza place was secretly shit-talking me behind my back, and even if they were they couldn't possibly have been saying anything worse than what I'd already heard.

Still though, it's not so bad. For a start, I'm beginning to realize that you probably have to be certifiably insane to work in an office. Today for example one of my coworkers, a sort of plump woman with glasses and an Anne Frank hairdo, came sprinting out of the lunchroom. Holding up a loaf of bread with an expression of reverence usually reserved for popes, she started completely freaking the fuck out. "OH MY GOD!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, causing people at the other branch office to turn their heads. "CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT GOOD CROUTONS THIS BREAD WOULD MAKE???"

I could write her off as the lone psycho in the office who practically has an orgasm when she finds crouton-worthy bread. No problem, in the future we could just hide the bread from her, maybe along with other food articles as problems arise. Maybe get her into some kind of a salad accessories rehab. No biggie. But then I heard a thundering of footsteps as a herd of middle-aged women came stampeding across the office to see for themselves if the legend were true. Could this bread really be the crouton-tokos? Then came the shouts, "OH MY GOD, YOU'RE RIGHT!" and "THIS BREAD WOULD MAKE FANTASTIC CROUTONS!!!"

The most terrifying aspect was that, in addition to my main opinion that these women clearly needed to be put in some kind of a home, there was a small part of me that sort of agreed. That bread WOULD make some fucking awesome croutons.