Making It Work

I’m the world’s all-time best ever temp. Every temp assignment I’ve ever had has been extended – once from the initial two days to an eventual seven months, and they were disappointed when I had to leave because I moved out of state. Now here I am temping again, on an assignment that was supposed to be two weeks but has already been four and will be at least one more. I am so proud to have taken my Harvard degree and become a career office temp.

This has become the story of “making it work” (thank you, Tim Gunn). I have debt to pay off and am apparently completely undesirable to all employers other than temp agents, and so I temp. For the devil. I am answering phones in a Philip Morris office. Many of the individual people here have been extremely nice, and the job is rather laid back as far as office gigs go (though the lack of internet for the girl with nothing to do but sit at a desk and wait for a phone to ring is extremely aggravating). There are occasional harmless remarks from executives who don’t realize that the age of workplace paternalism is over, and there was that one woman who got really angry in a meeting and made a comment about how she wanted to kill people and had fortunately just gotten her gun license the day before, but all in all the daily experience isn’t too bad, just excruciatingly boring.

What I can’t get over, though, is that in exchange for a whopping twelve dollars an hour I am facilitating the sale of a product that, when used as directed, causes death. Slow, agonizing, expensive death. But I need income, and this is what was available to me, and so here I am – making it work.

Is this really necessary?

I'm writing cover letters, which is among my all time least favorite things to do. Honestly, I'd rather scrub the bathtub - at least then I'd know a nice bath was coming at the end of it. Writing cover letters just feels like useless bragging, a giant pissing contest against a bunch of people I'll never meet. I'm so not into it. If I could, I'd send this to every potential employer:


To Whom It May Concern:

I'm AWESOME. You should hire me.

Love,
Me


I mean, that's all a cover letter is, when you get down to it. Why bother dressing it up all fancy? Let's get real here, people. I need a job. You need someone remotely competent. This could be the start of something moderately unpleasant but generally beneficial for us both.

The Office, v. LRC

I've just started a new part time job, and for the pay-to-effort ratio it's one of the best jobs I've ever had. Maybe THE best job. Not when you consider other factors, of course, like contributing to society or helping the human race in some fashion, but I'm enjoying what I've got.

I sit and surf the internet. Or read books. Or get work done. And maybe once every two or three hours I walk into a room, put a DVD in a player, and press play. Or take it out, put it back in the case, and turn off the lights. Does it get any better?

This has gotten me thinking about other jobs I've had, both good and bad. I don't think I'll do an in-depth study of each, but here's a bit of a highlight reel of the last however-many years:

- I served wine in tiny plastic cups and scooped brownies out of a tray.
- I played a 16 year old track star (trust me, this is hilarious) in a touring, anti-smoking propaganda play.
- I worked for a maniac.
- I worked for someone who barely spoke.
- I worked at a place where I had nowhere to sit for a week so they put me in an office with no phone and no computer, where all I could do was sit and wait for someone to give me papers to file.
- I've taught calculus. Oh yes.
- I once learned a programming language so I could write scripts for the web pages I was learning how to build.
- I babysat for a lot of children - some lovely, some definitely not.
- I stood on a street corner handing out pamphlets to passersby.
- I stood on a different street corner handing out water and energy beans to marathoners in training.
- I sat for eight hours a day and read. (Mostly.)

...and I'm sure there are more that aren't immediately coming to mind. But for my age, I feel this is a decent list of odd ways of having made a paycheck.

What are some good, bad, or just plain weird jobs you've had?