A New Job

This is the first episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

So now I am working mornings as a secretary at a technological institute in our city’s university. It’s one of the better universities in Germany. It has two campuses, one in the center of the city and one on a campus north of the city out in the middle of nowhere in the forest. I also applied for a job at the city campus, but was only offered this one in the forest. It is about a 40-minute drive for me and it has taken a while to get used to the stress of the journey. They have put me in an office in a separate building, not the one in which either my boss or my team are located. I sit completely on my own in this room and apart from saying Hello in the mornings, nobody speaks to me. It’s a bit of a mystery to me why I am in solitary confinement over here when my boss and team are over there. Apart from that, I have almost nothing to do! I’m certainly not being a secretary.

Except that after a couple of weeks, they realized I could write. And so, since then, I occasionally get scientific academic papers to correct in English. Most of the people here are German of course and they are writing their papers in English. I think it’s a pretty well-known fact how academics live to publish their papers in academic journals. That’s their whole raison d’être. So they are really happy to have a native speaker like myself to proofread them. I also get a little translation work to do – German to English – which I enjoy. All of this work might keep me busy for about five hours a week on average, and I have to be here for twenty hours. So for about fifteen hours a week I have to pretend to work. That is a feat and a half, seriously. That’s even more difficult than actually working.

Of course, my pay grade doesn’t match the work I’m doing, when I’m actually working. I found out that I’m getting paid a lot less than the three other secretaries here, who don’t appear to have one academic qualification between them, while I have a university degree. But I don’t care. Sitting around all day doing nothing at all is the worst thing. I spend the morning here, then I go home and research or write articles, or do translation work, which still pays relatively well, in comparison. Usually, I work at the weekends too.

My boss, Kurt, is gay. He made this quite clear on Day One. It makes things easier, I think. Kurt is from Dresden, in the old East Germany, and he was born and grew up there when it still had a wall round it. I can’t figure out to what extent, if at all, this has made an impact on his character. His partner lives in Bern, and Kurt joins him at the weekends, so he has gone from one extreme to the other really. Communism to Swissness. I find him very fair and I feel that he likes me. I have told all my friends, Kurt is the best boss I ever had in my life. Except he has no work for me.

My friends keep asking, why did they hire you when they have no work for you? I say, I think maybe I am just an outlet for some money they need to spend. Just an item in the balance sheet. That’s why they parked me over here in solitary confinement and hoped I would just sit here like a tiny quiet mouse. I guess I look like that kind of a person!

I don’t know what will happen when they find out I’m not.

Next episode: Not Moving Forward