Classic blog: Do Temp Workers Dream of Electric Peeps?

This blog and "Temporary Insanity" are actually older blogs. One of the things I would like to do is to put up all the old stuff on here (in response to comments to do so), while I'm prepping new posts that can be put up with some semblance of regularity. Since I was looking for writing samples anyways, I decided to put up a few job-related ones that I submitted for this blog-writing gig I applied for tonight. These were written about 3 years ago. Here's the next one, named in such a clever manner after the Philip K. Dick classic:


This has been some week. I figured since it was a short one for me that I would experiment with trying to, check this, LISTEN TO MUSIC WHILE DOING DATA ENTRY! Now, this would be a wild idea for any job other than a robotic data entry one. I don't answer phones, nobody talks to me, I even get overlooked for office birthday parties and office lottery pools. So, what the hell, I am my own city-state apparently, my cubicle being its own independent entity from the whole, with benefits. Like Puerto Rico.

Everything went well the first few weeks, blew through tons of work with utmost focus, because I wasn’t thinking about my life, personal histories with other people, my band, what I need to but from the supermarket, etc. After a month, however, a task was revealed to me, one so important that I don't even know yet that
I should be doing it, after working at this place for three months. Apparently, I can't be listening to music, even with one headphone in my ear, because I need to cover the phones. Nobody told me this for a whole month, nor was this covered when I first started working there, but I did hear this conversation spoken loudly through cubicle wall between my supervisor and her supervisor, whose cubicles are adjacent to one another:

Her Supervisor: does the Temp know how to use the phone?"

My Supervisor: 10 seconds... "Yes."

Her Supervisor: "Then how is he going to answer it when he’s wearing the headset all the time?"

My Supervisor: "I don't know, I'm going to have to have a talk with him ABOUT THAT." (scathing emphasis on the last two words.)

They said more, but by repeating it I will be enraged again, and I need to sleep right now. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, nothing makes me angrier when

I'm referred to as 'The Help' or some kind of equivalent. Also, it's something when co-workers are gossiping loudly about you as if you're not within ten feet of them, because I'm apparently blasting my music and having a grand old time doing what I've been doing for the last three months, just with an earpiece in one ear listening to down tempo instrumental music. Talk about rude, and to ask if I even know how to use the phone when I've done it multiple times is like asking if I fling poo when I'm enraged. The funny thing is, my supervisor even saw me wearing the one earbud in one ear on multiple occasions and said nothing.

So here I am, powerless, feeling like an automaton finally. No reactions, no feelings, just waiting to be addressed for something totally bullshit, just because some bigwig had to answer one extra phone call, and she was having a bad day or something. Nothing happened today, maybe my big chewing out will come tomorrow, I can't wait.

In three months I've only answered a handful of calls, whenever I'm specifically asked to because everyone else is going to a meeting. I am not supposed to answer calls otherwise unless my phone rings. This is what a robot does, it is fed orders and does them out in a mechanical fashion. My orders:

1. Pull staples.
2. Scan
3. Enter Data
4. Re- staple
5. File

In summary, office life sucks sometimes, it's like preschool. Today I overheard a woman explain to the HR person for over a half hour that she only called a co- worker a 'stupid (expletive)' because English wasn't the co-worker’s first language and he didn’t understand her directions the first time around. For some reason this explanation was supposed to get her out of trouble. Geez, I find it often takes a few explanations for anyone, native English speaker or not, to understand directions for an assignment fully.

On the plus side, the liquor store owner told me tonight when I came in at 9:59 (right before the NJ cutoff, hoorah) about all the crazy homeless people who make crafts and barter with him for crafts in exchange for MD 20/20, and then he has to yell at them and a scene occurs. Every night this happens. Knowing this information, I feel like a citizen of Montclair, New Jersey now.

I remember when I worked in a liquor store. I read a lot and got to take an occasional nap on my 12-hour shift. Why did I let it go?