Temp Job

I had a temp job doing filing work at a medical office. All I had to do was take armloads of files off of a shelf, put them onto a cart, push the cart across the office, then put the files onto a new shelf. It was precisely as exciting as it sounds. I did the whole thing with my headphones on, Otto-from-"The Simpsons"-style.

On the second day, I was faced with a dilemma; I could keep busting ass, and get out of there as soon as possible, or I could slow my pace, put in more hours and get paid more. I thought it over. They had me moving files into an isolated room, so I blocked the view from the door with my cart, then sat behind the cart, listening to comedy albums on my iPod. Potential employers will please note that I was clocked out while doing this.

Everything went bananas on the third and last day. Mere minutes into my shift, I got a papercut on the joint of my right thumb, and proceeded to bleed all over one of the
files I was moving. I hid the file on the shelf, cleaned up my hand, then went to the office kitchen to heat up my breakfast. The microwave made my oatmeal explode, and I had had to spend a few minutes cleaning molten hot oatmeal off of the microwave carousel while this other guy waited to heat his food. Embarrassing!

Back at my cart, my phone rang. It was the place where I'm trying to get a regular job, that pays literally 2.5 times as much as the filing gig, and doesn't hurt my knees. They wanted me to come fill in, but I had to say no, out of some twisted sense of obligation to the filing job. Furious, I put a mystery novel into an interoffice envelope and snuck it into the bathroom, where I read for twenty minutes. Potential employers will please note that I was clocked out while doing this.

Hey East Coasters, get this - The clock is set an hour back, here in the Midwest, but people counter that by doing everything an hour earlier. Folks eat lunch right at noon, "CSI" comes on at 9, and 10 is a more common bedtime than 11. Why bother with changing the clock?

I took lunch at one o'clock so that I could avoid having to share a lunch table with the same crowd of friendly people that I'd eaten with the last two days. Things had gone sour with that group when I realized that the women I had thought were at least my age were actually 5+ years younger, making the fatherly men who flirted with them and tried to work their golf scores into the conversation all the creepier. Their big joke about me was that I was running from the government, because I had lived in so many different cities (four and counting!).

Finishing my fried chicken alone in the office kitchen, my stomach rumbled and I decided to sneak one off. Imagine the sinking feeling in my stomach when i felt the splatter in an otherwise perfectly good pair of boxers.

First I ran out of the kitchen, but decided to leave the floor not through reception, but through a side door. On my way to the side door, I almost crashed into the guy who had to wait while I cleaned out the microwave that morning. I wondered if he could smell me. I was covered in nervous sweat.

I hauled ass (get it) across the H-shaped elevator/entrance area, heading for the bathroom. The bathroom door code on this floor was different from the one on my floor. Shit! Literally! So, I bolted over to the entrance to the stairs, and found myself standing in a strange part of the office, breathing heavy and staring around like a serial killer. The stair entrance was down the hall. Wrong door.

Finally, I made it downstairs to the bathroom, MY bathroom, cleaned myself up, and disposed of the incriminating underwear, returning to my post wondering what the innocent office workers would do if they knew that only a thin layer of denim was separating them from what crasser writers might refer to as "my love muscle."

This action had tired me out, so I opened my book on a shelf that was at chest level and stood there reading for thirty minutes. Potential employers will please note that I was clocked out while doing this.


As soon as I finish reading "The Bonfire of the Vanities" I'll do another round-up of all of the books I've been reading about douchey New Yorkers, in an effort to keep myself from missing the place too much.