Shashi Bhat on the worst office job ever

Shashi Bhat is the author of The Family Took Shape, and was a finalist for the 2010 Writers' Trust of Canada's RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Below, she shares the high school job experience that turned her off 9-to-5 jobs forever.

When I was in high school, I interned at my mom's computer leasing company. Basically what I did, every day from 9 to 5, was remove staples. Just hours on end, removing staples. I was removing the staples from documents they wanted to scan, and I kept all the staples I removed, so over the hours and days they started to accumulate on a pile on my desk. It was terrible, but people would walk by and make jokes about how I could melt them down and make them into a car.

From that experience, I acquired a hatred for the 9-to-5 job. I don't think I've worked a 9-to-5 job since then. I really recommend being a university professor to anyone who has trouble with that lifestyle, although I do imagine a lot of 9-to-5 jobs are not as terrible as removing staples.

Shashi Bhat's comments have been edited and condensed.