"if you don't like pushing paperwork, what do you like?"

That was the key phrase that stumped me as my supervisor enquired of me why I was quitting after a week on the job.

She got me on that one. There were so many answers I just didn't know where to begin.

Then it struck me. She was coming from an entirely different planet altogether. I was never meant for this job. So I politely came up with some self-depreciating comment about my incompetence with numbers and such (which isn't without basis by the way).

"Then how come you managed to last one month the last time you worked here?"

Well. The truth was it was a different supervisor who didn't just throw tonnes of greek at me and tell me hey - deadline in 2 days.

"Because the work last year was easy. I just keyed in things."

Also probably because last time I didn't get emails between 2am-4am in the morning about things to be done.

"I think I can't fit into the pace of work here, the work culture."

Indeed. I don't. Somehow I pity my friends who have careers or are about to have careers in lawyering, accounting, and all those kinds of specialist paperwork processors, always working around rules, legislations, legal frameworks, audit trails, tax complicance, going around and around in the bureaucracy.

But hey, maybe they find it a great challenge? Fair enough. Or hey - its just work. Yea so is driving the squeaky little van running around making deliveries.

Somehow maybe I'm very low-level material, but to me that's more fulfilling than figuring out how to justify putting 70% of this entity's support time into the German company's expense sheet. Nevermind whether or not 70% of the time was actually spent supporting the German company. Your job is to explain it away.

But of course, money ought to override all the most boring, redundant, ridiculous, unreasonable working conditions and supervisors and also dull away all the possibly unethical implications of your work right?

No wonder they paid me $9 an hour.

Too bad. I quit still. This work is not for me.

More things in life than corporate glamour, big money, expensive cars and suits and big lunches. I'm not going to numb myself half-dead just for all that.

Also, the last 2 full-time people who were here before me didn't last more than 3 months each either. So at least I know its not just me.