Moving on.
Yesterday I was blessed with a temp job at a top cable network. Before you get too excited, let me assure you that I wasn't doing anything of significance, and also that I use the word "blessed" purely in a financial sense, as in I'm flat broke and desperately needed a gig.
Now that I've made sure you're on the edge of your seat, I'll break the tension and tell you that I was called in yesterday morning to fill in for an executive assistant who threw out his back. Settle down, folks, I'm not signing autographs...yet.
My favorite part about doing temp work is that it's temporary. Before you can truly, deeply loathe a job, you stop working there and move on to an entirely new peon position. Or that's the way I felt when I first began temping. Now I've found within myself the capability to fully despise a job, any job, about five minutes after I walk in the door.
I partially blame this problem on my age. I'm 31, for Christ's sake. I shouldn't be doing this stupid shit anymore - I'm smart, damn it!!! I should've been a doctor, or a lawyer, or a...manager at a Tastee Freeze, I don't know, but something where I'm not drowning in a sea of eager beavers ten years younger than me who just adore being asked to make photocopies for snide execs who have no idea where the copy room is - hell, they probably don't even know the term 'copy room.' They've never been there.
In these moments, I find myself desperately wishing I hadn't chosen the path of chasing my artistic dreams. I mean, I could've BEEN one of those assholes!! I had been on my way, but I set it all aside for the sake of chasing the unfulfilled career goal of sitting in a trailer for days on end.
So.....I was talking about the good part of temping. Heh. Now for the bad part.
Some places are really cool. Sometimes you get to work with awesome people, doing interesting things - once I helped put together packets for volunteers who wanted to help impoverished children learn to read. It didn't pay well, but it was easy and I felt good about myself and my tiny contribution to the world of literacy.
Most places are nothing like this. Most places, like yesterday's job, walking in the door is the equivalent of falling off a fun-filled cruise ship into shark-infested waters, nobody saw you go over, and oh yeah, you never took those swimming lessons at the local Y.
Yes, folks. I was drowning. And being eaten alive at the same time - just the way I always wanted to go.
So here it is, the worst part of temping - the people you work with somehow expect you to enter their building full of knowledge about what it is you're supposed to be doing. They think you already know their 20-line phone system. They assume you can figure out necessary passwords. They know that you know all that technical jargon that only applies to their particular line of work - so when they yell, "Hey, bring me that 4-ply poly-rhythmic sheetscrob," you not only know what the fuck that is, but where they keep it.
Basically, they expect you to be the person you've replaced. They think you're possessed with the spirit of the departed, which you can easily exorcise at the end of the workday so that he/she can show up in corporeal form tomorrow.
But while you're there in their place, you're treated to a plethora of eye rolls, exasperated sighs, and sniffs of disapproval, all while trying desperately to figure out why you can only find the 3-ply poly-rhythmic sheetscrob, damn it all to hell.
You're probably thinking about now, "yes, but what about the mayonnaise? I was promised mayonnaise on this story." To which my answer is, "See? I can't please ANYBODY!!!!!"
To add insult to injury, when I ran to get my lunch - a ham & cheese sandwich from the cafe downstairs - I was in such a hurry to get back, I only grabbed one small packet of mayonnaise from the condiment tray before rushing off - and I only grabbed that because I like an unhealthy amount of mayo on my 'wich. But I had made the gross assumption that no cafe would make a sandwich that didn't already come with a sauce of some sort, only to be rudely awakened when I opened my styrofoam box to find a dry sandwich. On top of which, it was made with extremely thick, crumbly bread which appeared to be composed of a sawdust-like material. (Oh, and my side caesar was topped with bean sprouts, which I found interesting, disturbing, and nauseating all at the same time.)
So I squeezed my tiny packet of mayo onto the most moist portion of the sandwich I could find, proceeded to eat those four or five bites, then tossed the remainder in the trash. And I hate wasting food.
What made my lunch truly satisfying, though, was knowing that twenty minutes later I would be given the opportunity to continue my fruitless search for 4-ply sheetscrob.
The moral of this story? Be a Boy Scout. Always be prepared. Learn every single goddamn computer program and filing system out there, memorize it, keep a notebook or twelve filled with detailed instructions on life, the universe, and everything. Then you'll never, ever find yourself in need.
In this life, I guess you've gotta be your own condiment stand.
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