One of my students at Carver High was absolutely appalled that I didn't get paid weekly and furthermore that I didn't get paid in cash. (He was trying to beg a couple of dollars at the time which, mean old bastard that I am, I certainly didn't give him.) You see, in the planet of black ghetto West Baltimore, even those with vaguely legitimate jobs are paid weekly in cash, because nobody there has a checking account and wouldn't trust a bank in any case. Life functions with cash only--which, I sometimes think, isn't a bad policy after all.
Poor DJ would be even more horrified to learn that I don't get paid at all during the summer, but it's an occupational hazard. My dear old pal WK, the child of two teachers, remembers that as a little girl she learned very early on not to ask for anything during August, since the summer savings was nearly depleted by then.
My summer savings, which wasn't much this year, is already depleted and so I have turned to my old standard of living: temp work.
You know, in some ways, I love temping. The pay is marginal, but so is the work. The vast majority of temp jobs allow you to sit around on your ass doing absolutely nothing, because all the company really needs is a warm body to fill a chair while the real person is sick, or until they fill the recently-vacated post. Thus, you can usually bring some mindless summer reading, or cater to your little English-major heart and read one of the more tedious hallmarks of literature that you were supposed to read sophomore year, but for which you actually bought the Cliffs Notes because you'd spent the entire week getting bombed. Or, as I did today, you can indulge in your English-major specialty: working crosswords in pen.
Temping also allows a few Personal Victory Moments. As a temp with more than three operating brain cells, you can go the extra mile, produce first-rate work for a job that really only requires two brain cells, and thus earn the unending awe of the people for whom you're briefly working. I elected that strategy today: I hadn't temped for a while, so I figured I'd impress the hell out of them, which could get me a couple of extra assignments. Then again, I'd like to spend a couple of weekdays at the beach, so... well, we'll see where the next week leads. If all else fails, you can utter the timeless phrase, "I don't know. I'm just the temp." While this makes you look idiotic, it also absolves you from any actual responsibility.
You see, people do not expect anything from temps. This is because a majority of the temp work force is amazingly stupid. In the past, I've wowed clients because--get this--I could type. Crimony! You're an office temp, you're supposed to be able to type. Sheesh, with computer keyboards, even the trusty hunt-and-peck system will get you 40 words per minute. Since I learned to type in approximately 1907 on a manual Olympia typewriter, I can type almost 80 words per minute on a computer keyboard. Back in the dark days when I periodically temped for a living, I repeatedly won the temp-o'-the-month award. I figured this was mostly the result of showing up every day and not actually drooling on the computer.
Today's assignment was of a sort that I'd never handled before. I had to "manage" a seminar at one of the big downtown hotels. This was kind of cool. I like big downtown hotels; there's a bit of a charge that comes from the elegance and bustle of those places. In my next life, I think it would be really cool to be the manager of the Lord Baltimore or the Jefferson or something. Then I can be just like that pissily imperious guy with the heart of gold in "Pretty Woman," and Julia Roberts will want to date me, and... Oh, never mind. So anyway, here I am at the Tremont. All I have to do is make sure the conference room is set up properly (more on this later), check in all the registered attendees, take their payment if they haven't already, record the session, and sit around for four hours until they're done. Then I pack up all the crap, FedEx it to the company running the seminar, and leave.
This is not difficult. During my September-to-May existence, I plan daily lessons that are designed to keep thirty ninth-graders quiet for an hour. I frequently do this approximately five minutes before the class starts, and I can pull it off. I am used to fudging attendance records so that the school's administration doesn't look bad. So, really, ticking off eighteen people on a list and pushing the "record" button just ain't too stressful. All the same, when I called in to the seminar programmers to report the necessary information, they were floored. The chick with whom I spoke said--I quote directly: "Wow. You must have managed a lot of these seminars before." "Er, no," I replied. "Actually this is the first time I've done it." Moment of silence. "No way. Usually I have to walk the temps through everything on the phone the first time. I hope we can get you back again." "Well," I said, "that would be fine, but I'm only available during the summers, you see..." This continued for a few minutes, but once again I realized: there are a lot of really dumb people out there.
Most of the day required that I do nothing more but sit at a registration table in the rather imposing hallway and look either decorative or menacing. Maybe it's the crosswords-in-pen; perhaps the USMC high-n-tight haircut, but I evidently do both. The Tremont includes a vast array of meeting rooms, and several of them were in use today. (Oddly, one of the most ornate had been allocated to a conference on treatment of blindness which seemed to involve several blind participants--what a pity that these folks couldn't see the gorgeous trappings that surrounded them.)
There I was, sitting at the table outside my seminar, with scores of people drifting past. Public behavior is a funny thing. People will yuk it up as long as they're with their friends, but the presence of an authority figure shuts them right up. I was no more an authority figure than was the empty chair beside me, but apparently all of these people thought that I was, because their conversations died when they saw me.
Most amusing was the pair of cute blonde twenty-somethings that strolled down the hallway. These two were attending a conference on historic preservation, which makes the following scenario all the more appalling. While the Tremont itself is a hideously ugly '60s hotel, it has lately encompassed a beautiful old Masonic temple for its meeting/ballrooms. This place is tricked out in more marble, silver and crystal than you can imagine, and all restored to an inch of its 97-year-old life. So, preservation types should revere it, no? No. The blonde babes, who would probably wet themselves if somebody lit a cigarette in an 18th century tobacco warehouse (I'm going for irony here, work with me) were chatting and were about to deposit their empty plastic water bottles into a potted palm tree. Until, that is, they realized that I was looking at them, at which time they retrieved the bottles and scuttled to the elevator. Hmm...butch Marine haircut strikes again.
If I weren't such a stickler about the way one behaves in public, I would've said "Hey, it's cool. I'm just a temp."
Poor DJ would be even more horrified to learn that I don't get paid at all during the summer, but it's an occupational hazard. My dear old pal WK, the child of two teachers, remembers that as a little girl she learned very early on not to ask for anything during August, since the summer savings was nearly depleted by then.
My summer savings, which wasn't much this year, is already depleted and so I have turned to my old standard of living: temp work.
You know, in some ways, I love temping. The pay is marginal, but so is the work. The vast majority of temp jobs allow you to sit around on your ass doing absolutely nothing, because all the company really needs is a warm body to fill a chair while the real person is sick, or until they fill the recently-vacated post. Thus, you can usually bring some mindless summer reading, or cater to your little English-major heart and read one of the more tedious hallmarks of literature that you were supposed to read sophomore year, but for which you actually bought the Cliffs Notes because you'd spent the entire week getting bombed. Or, as I did today, you can indulge in your English-major specialty: working crosswords in pen.
Temping also allows a few Personal Victory Moments. As a temp with more than three operating brain cells, you can go the extra mile, produce first-rate work for a job that really only requires two brain cells, and thus earn the unending awe of the people for whom you're briefly working. I elected that strategy today: I hadn't temped for a while, so I figured I'd impress the hell out of them, which could get me a couple of extra assignments. Then again, I'd like to spend a couple of weekdays at the beach, so... well, we'll see where the next week leads. If all else fails, you can utter the timeless phrase, "I don't know. I'm just the temp." While this makes you look idiotic, it also absolves you from any actual responsibility.
You see, people do not expect anything from temps. This is because a majority of the temp work force is amazingly stupid. In the past, I've wowed clients because--get this--I could type. Crimony! You're an office temp, you're supposed to be able to type. Sheesh, with computer keyboards, even the trusty hunt-and-peck system will get you 40 words per minute. Since I learned to type in approximately 1907 on a manual Olympia typewriter, I can type almost 80 words per minute on a computer keyboard. Back in the dark days when I periodically temped for a living, I repeatedly won the temp-o'-the-month award. I figured this was mostly the result of showing up every day and not actually drooling on the computer.
Today's assignment was of a sort that I'd never handled before. I had to "manage" a seminar at one of the big downtown hotels. This was kind of cool. I like big downtown hotels; there's a bit of a charge that comes from the elegance and bustle of those places. In my next life, I think it would be really cool to be the manager of the Lord Baltimore or the Jefferson or something. Then I can be just like that pissily imperious guy with the heart of gold in "Pretty Woman," and Julia Roberts will want to date me, and... Oh, never mind. So anyway, here I am at the Tremont. All I have to do is make sure the conference room is set up properly (more on this later), check in all the registered attendees, take their payment if they haven't already, record the session, and sit around for four hours until they're done. Then I pack up all the crap, FedEx it to the company running the seminar, and leave.
This is not difficult. During my September-to-May existence, I plan daily lessons that are designed to keep thirty ninth-graders quiet for an hour. I frequently do this approximately five minutes before the class starts, and I can pull it off. I am used to fudging attendance records so that the school's administration doesn't look bad. So, really, ticking off eighteen people on a list and pushing the "record" button just ain't too stressful. All the same, when I called in to the seminar programmers to report the necessary information, they were floored. The chick with whom I spoke said--I quote directly: "Wow. You must have managed a lot of these seminars before." "Er, no," I replied. "Actually this is the first time I've done it." Moment of silence. "No way. Usually I have to walk the temps through everything on the phone the first time. I hope we can get you back again." "Well," I said, "that would be fine, but I'm only available during the summers, you see..." This continued for a few minutes, but once again I realized: there are a lot of really dumb people out there.
Most of the day required that I do nothing more but sit at a registration table in the rather imposing hallway and look either decorative or menacing. Maybe it's the crosswords-in-pen; perhaps the USMC high-n-tight haircut, but I evidently do both. The Tremont includes a vast array of meeting rooms, and several of them were in use today. (Oddly, one of the most ornate had been allocated to a conference on treatment of blindness which seemed to involve several blind participants--what a pity that these folks couldn't see the gorgeous trappings that surrounded them.)
There I was, sitting at the table outside my seminar, with scores of people drifting past. Public behavior is a funny thing. People will yuk it up as long as they're with their friends, but the presence of an authority figure shuts them right up. I was no more an authority figure than was the empty chair beside me, but apparently all of these people thought that I was, because their conversations died when they saw me.
Most amusing was the pair of cute blonde twenty-somethings that strolled down the hallway. These two were attending a conference on historic preservation, which makes the following scenario all the more appalling. While the Tremont itself is a hideously ugly '60s hotel, it has lately encompassed a beautiful old Masonic temple for its meeting/ballrooms. This place is tricked out in more marble, silver and crystal than you can imagine, and all restored to an inch of its 97-year-old life. So, preservation types should revere it, no? No. The blonde babes, who would probably wet themselves if somebody lit a cigarette in an 18th century tobacco warehouse (I'm going for irony here, work with me) were chatting and were about to deposit their empty plastic water bottles into a potted palm tree. Until, that is, they realized that I was looking at them, at which time they retrieved the bottles and scuttled to the elevator. Hmm...butch Marine haircut strikes again.
If I weren't such a stickler about the way one behaves in public, I would've said "Hey, it's cool. I'm just a temp."
posted by Daniel | 12:40 AM
1 Comments:
Ah, temping! The joy -- and pain -- of no one remembering your name.
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