Working At Northern Trust

As I mentioned earlier, I got a job working as a consultant for Flair Interactive doing content management for Northern Trust in Chicago. It’s a very different experience working in the financial district in downtown Chicago. I take the El down to the city every morning to work and every evening back to Evanston and it’s interesting to see the city “rush”.
The corporate setting in such a professional environment can be pretty suffocating at times. There’s a key card to every entrance in the building and although you know you’re safe from intruders with such tight security, it sucks that I’m probaly the only one without a key card right now. It’s annoying when I have to wait for someone to pass through and explain my situation each and every time. Hopefully that’ll be worked out soon.

Everything seems so formal. There are meetings to discuss things, set appointment times, and assigned work that needs to be done at a certain time. To be honest, I kind of like the formal bureaucratic environment. It makes things so much more organized and a lot of guesswork is eliminated. Bosses are always right and have most of the authority. Unfortunately, there is always going to be someone higher up than you. And even more unfortunately, I am currently on the bottom of the corporate food chain.

I hate small talk. In corporate settings, it’s almost required that you talk about your kids, your interests, and what you’re going to do over the weekend. Everyone seems to put on a fake smile and act like they’re interested in their coworkers’ lives. But is this really the case? Or are they just being nice to try and be promoted? I also hate it when someone walks over and says, “Hi, how are you?” It almost seems ingenuine because they’re expecting you to say “Good” anyway. But maybe that’s just me.

Hopefully this will be a good experience for me. I’ve already learned a lot in terms of working environments and settings and how to survive in the business world. Whether or not I can actually survive is another story. Work is stressful and tiring to say the least but I’ll pull through.