So anyone who is bored at work or home who reads this little blog has probably worked a temp job before. If not, then you are familiar with the process enough to know that it can either be the easiest money ever made or the most backbreaking, mind melting experience ever. No matter what, it is usually bizarre and mostly boring.
Like a drop of Visine I splattered into the offices of Sentrix last week, a medical advertising company. This was actually mildly exciting, this job could be interesting, and whether I'm put behind a computer or actually away from the internet for eight hours is fine by me.
With visions of paychecks dancing through my head I confidently strode into the waiting room, expecting an employee to whisk me away (unemployed people are very naive) and get me to work, STAT!
Whisked away I was, into... a conference room. I was given a Coke and told to stay put. 'Fair enough', I thought to myself, I'm on the clock either way. I wish I had brought something to read, but at least there's a half-eaten sandwich on a plate in front of me to stare at.
Twenty minutes passed, then forty. I wanted to poke at the sandwich, get to know it better. There was only one thing up on the wall, a framed poster that was obscured by a cabinet door. For some reason, I was glued to my seat, so I couldn't see who it was a poster of. All I could see was some curly hair and a 'B' and possibly an 'r'.
A Bruce Springsteen poster? I didn't care enough to find out, because for some reason not knowing was more entertaining. Going on an hour now, the person who met with me in the lobby finally entered the conference room. She gives me a stack of fifteen marketing packets to go and copy. I realize I will have another temp stand with me and stare at the copier for an hour. Her name is Karen (for the purposes of this blog), she has four kids and they drive her crazy, and while she looks like she's thirty, I find out one of her kids is twenty. "I left high school, and started having kids" is her story. Compared to the sandwich, this conversation was on a 'Robocop level' of entertainment.
Many full-time employees were very angry that Karen and I were making copies. Even though their copies were coming through as well, they wanted these meddlesome temps out of their power zone. Dudes, talking about the Knicks game and last night's Saturday Night Live without that familiar machine to lean on? No, just me and a cranky ageless mother. I may as well have been pouring my piss-warm Coke on the machine, so I could have ended this self-conscious moment of being glared at.
Our supervisor moved us to another conference room, which was colder and had a "Born to Run" poster on the wall, clear as day. No guessing here, and they had a coffee maker. Finally, I felt like I was doing something practical, and brought my boredom to a caffeinated level.
I'm going back tomorrow, I hope, because as boring as my time there has been so far, I actually made money for staring at a sandwich and the Boss, and at the end of the shift "Boys of Summer" played and I was finally convinced that life was completely ridiculous. Ridiculous is not a bad thing, right?
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