The last couple of weeks have been full of new developments! I'm working at a new job, I'm writing reviews and blogs for other websites, and I saw Watchmen, Morrissey, and Uncle Floyd over five days. My brain is full!
More on the new job in a future post, let's get to the weekend wrap-up:
I thought Watchmen was good, and more than half of fans of the graphic novel feel the same, judging from the message boards. People unfamiliar with it, whether they liked it or not, ultimately seemed confused. Massive failure? No, as I feel like it's a cookie for the fanboys like me who enjoyed it and will gladly pick up the inevitable uncut DVD. For the rest, hey, it's over and you still have the graphic novel. Sadly the geeks will argue until Wolverine: Origins and Star Trek come out in May. Ultimately I'm just glad that movies over 2 hours long aren't in vogue anymore; it seemed like after Braveheart a movie had to have a 3 hour running time to seem "important". My bladder disagrees, and I will never forgive Peter Jackson for that ending to Return of the King where Hobbits stared at each other with longing eyes and the movie seemed to end again, and again, and again, and again, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting...
Morrissey was in his typical foppish mood on Monday, and delivered a fine show that I got pretty drunk for. I usually don't do that anymore when I go see music, but in a strange way it was kind of like a St. Patrick's Day celebration for people who don't like St. Patrick's Day. I'm part Irish, but can't stand amateur hour nights at the bar. It's like waiting in line for the DMV or an ATM while someone is continuously yelling in your ear, until eventually that person starts puking on the side of your face.
I ate way too much food on Tuesday when I went to see Uncle Floyd at Colucci's, an Italian restaurant in Haledon New Jersey. While Morrissey had a heart-shaped sweatstain appear through the back of his shirt by show's end, Uncle Floyd waxed on for almost 15-20 minutes at a time about about convenience stores in Lodi and Garfield, so for me it's a toss-up over who gave the best performance. Morrissey did name-drop Pal's Cabin, a steakhouse near here.
And that's that, more to come as I embark on my first week of work, and try not to eat so much.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
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?
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?
Classic blog: Temporary Insanity
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?
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?
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Internet Trashbin
So here it is, the exciting new upgrade to my blogging lifestyle! After a ridiculously long time on the sidelines, from losing my job to getting bored with Myspace and subsequently confused by Facebook, I've decided to start writing blogs again, this time on the sort of neutral blogspot.com. What to expect? I don't know, a lot more randomness I guess. Between my obligations to my retarded Tuesday movie nights in New Jersey and my band in Brooklyn (ugh, how the name deflates the sentence!) these things will be popping out with the usual "whenever I feel like it" regularity. I'll let y'all know when something new is forged on the social networking outposts.
To sum up what's new with me, basically I'm unemployed, popping out 10-20 resumes a day, and hearing back from about 2% of the places I send to. I guess submitting to jobs online is basically like the old monorail episode of the Simpsons where at the end of the episode Marge's narration tells of how the monorail fiasco taught the citizens of Springfield to not support the whims of any song-and-dance man who steps into their town hall, except for the wooden skyscraper and escalator to nowhere that were later built. In a lot of ways I should be learning my lesson when I send out a resume/cover letter and get no response from most of these places. The proverbial "inbox to nowhere" basically, and forget about the private information trap that is Monster. If I hear from one more life insurance place trying to get me to shell out friends and family phone numbers I'm going to go ballistic. I'm even signed up on my old employer Yahoo! hotjobs and haven't reaped any rewards yet. Should I be surprised?
The prevalent thought of any office drone is the awesome things they could be doing with their time, especially awesome things they could be getting paid for. I should be taking trips, unloading more shit, finishing one of those unfinished written projects, but instead I'm opting for spending more time on the computer and hey, making music! It's not so bad, but man, if only I could hear back from more than 1 potential job a week, because ultimately the paycheck would be nice. Then again, what bullshit would occupy my precious hours not in the office? Dinner, maybe a movie or TV, some reading, and sleep I guess. It's such a double-edged sword, it's nice that at least this time being unemployed doesn't seem as much like a lazy abnormality as it did 2 years ago when I was last in this situation. I'm doing stuff, really free stuff though. Oh, how the computer can provide with the free.
One thing that I've noticed in my job searching is how so many jobs are throwing only the slightest of bones out there for the ravenous unemployed dogs. "Part-time, $10 an hour" for a Midtown Manhattan job? Where are the cheap apartments and tax breaks to accompany this maybe $300 a week trophy? When I got out of college almost 7 years ago $10 an hour part-time jobs were the norm for Ulster County, where an apartment for $400 a month or less was commonplace. Here we are in 2009 and not too much has changed, except now I'm talking about the Manhattan area where you're lucky to pay below a grand a month.
There's always ebay though, from what I noticed when I recently attended the NY Comic Con (my first Comic Book Convention) is that there is no shortage of geeks ready to shell out for action figures that are specifically for the "adult collector", as mentioned on the packaging. More on that some other time, for now I've got to throw at least five more resume/cover letters into the internet trashbin.
To sum up what's new with me, basically I'm unemployed, popping out 10-20 resumes a day, and hearing back from about 2% of the places I send to. I guess submitting to jobs online is basically like the old monorail episode of the Simpsons where at the end of the episode Marge's narration tells of how the monorail fiasco taught the citizens of Springfield to not support the whims of any song-and-dance man who steps into their town hall, except for the wooden skyscraper and escalator to nowhere that were later built. In a lot of ways I should be learning my lesson when I send out a resume/cover letter and get no response from most of these places. The proverbial "inbox to nowhere" basically, and forget about the private information trap that is Monster. If I hear from one more life insurance place trying to get me to shell out friends and family phone numbers I'm going to go ballistic. I'm even signed up on my old employer Yahoo! hotjobs and haven't reaped any rewards yet. Should I be surprised?
The prevalent thought of any office drone is the awesome things they could be doing with their time, especially awesome things they could be getting paid for. I should be taking trips, unloading more shit, finishing one of those unfinished written projects, but instead I'm opting for spending more time on the computer and hey, making music! It's not so bad, but man, if only I could hear back from more than 1 potential job a week, because ultimately the paycheck would be nice. Then again, what bullshit would occupy my precious hours not in the office? Dinner, maybe a movie or TV, some reading, and sleep I guess. It's such a double-edged sword, it's nice that at least this time being unemployed doesn't seem as much like a lazy abnormality as it did 2 years ago when I was last in this situation. I'm doing stuff, really free stuff though. Oh, how the computer can provide with the free.
One thing that I've noticed in my job searching is how so many jobs are throwing only the slightest of bones out there for the ravenous unemployed dogs. "Part-time, $10 an hour" for a Midtown Manhattan job? Where are the cheap apartments and tax breaks to accompany this maybe $300 a week trophy? When I got out of college almost 7 years ago $10 an hour part-time jobs were the norm for Ulster County, where an apartment for $400 a month or less was commonplace. Here we are in 2009 and not too much has changed, except now I'm talking about the Manhattan area where you're lucky to pay below a grand a month.
There's always ebay though, from what I noticed when I recently attended the NY Comic Con (my first Comic Book Convention) is that there is no shortage of geeks ready to shell out for action figures that are specifically for the "adult collector", as mentioned on the packaging. More on that some other time, for now I've got to throw at least five more resume/cover letters into the internet trashbin.
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