Monday, November 10, 2003 My Secret Identity
or:
I hate myself and I want to die
Today I called temp agencies, real ones, unlike the one who sends one exclusively to the fucking call center. I had had enough. I went to word school, and I wrote several fine articles about local government meetings and the irrelevant yet heartwarming activities of children for a small town paper, and I wrote a goddamn (terrible, but shush) novel, and today was going to be my turn to sit at a nice desk in a nice office and make copies and bring coffee to the nice people.
So, I go to the temp agency that is the first to answer their phone with a live person when I call them, and I take tests in microsoft word, and excell, and typing. (Interesting sidenote: I got maybe 50% of the regular features of excell, because I've never had occasion to use it, but I scored 100% on the "advanced features" portion of the test.)
I was dressed in my one respectable outfit, which still looks a little off. If I am going to be an officina, I told myself, I will have to use the first few of my (comparatively) enormous paychecks to buy pretty new clothes. Ones lacking in holes or stains.
Anyhow, I sat there fililng out paper work, dreaming of a desk of not-my-own in some swanky building somewhere. I also felt deep shame regarding my scores. They said I type 50 words a minute. Can you believe it? I can't. In a pig's fucking eye I type 50 words a minute. My error was not to peck joyfully, the way I usually do, but to try to do some semblance to touch typing. It was to be the day's first giant mistake.
Meanwhile, the employment agent is looking at my ID. "I think I have a job for you," she said. I was thrilled. By that point, I was kind of expecting them to throw away the entire application when I wasn't looking.
Then she explained the nature of the job, and I was less thrilled, and then she explained the hourly pay rate, and I got thrilled again.
My job was to be a "Mystery Shopper," but instead of purchasing items att boutiques, then writing the shopgirls up for insolence, my job was to be travelling all over the northern part of the city, attempting to purchase beer or cigarettes.
If thew clerk ID'd me, I'd give him or her a green card saying something like "Good job." If they didn't, I'd give a red card and tell them they were scum, or something along those lines.
I was to follow a set route, according to directions they gave me along with the red and green cards.
Things went well for most of the afternoon, except the directions were a little unclear, and I'm a little shitty at navigating without a map, so day turned into night, and I was still only halfway through my route.
Then I realized that when they said my route was to be "North Richmond" they were "lying".
I ended up very south, in a town called Mineral. Well, eventually I did. Beforehand there was an interlude where the goddamned money eat dragon of a car which is so going to get donated to the less fortunate if it doesn't watch its ass, that fucking bucket, it sprung a flat tire.
So there I was, on the side of the highway in my one respectable outfit (I'd gone straight from the agency to the open road that afternoon), wrestling with the assinine Volvo jack in the dark and the cold all by myself.
Eventually, a cop showed up. I had him hold the cop light while I did fiddly stuff. One of the lugnuts wasn't coming off, and I was beginning to panic. Luckily, the cop was there. "Nope, looks like it's stripped or something, or it's got one of those locks on it," he said. I told him there was no lock on my lugnut, because I would know, and it might be stripped, and if so, what then? "You'd probably have to call a tow truck out here and get it to a shop," he said.
I looked at him with a gaze of wrath and scorn, and I took that lugnut off with the Powers of My Mind.
I and the pessimistic officer put the donut tire on, and I went on to Mineral. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, here's a helpful clue. Mineral is just outside of Gum Springs.
Now, it was time for my second terrible mistake of the day.
A sane person would have turned around and gone right home and finished narking on the teenaged gas station clerks the next day.
Not me.
I continued on the circuitous route through the sinister country roads. Once, a deer jumped in front of my car, and I became terrified of hitting a deer, so I drove even slower than the donut seemed to require.
That meant I was stuck for several hours more in the dark. By myself, in the middle of nowhere.
In the end, I couldn't finish. It was too late to go to the last restaurant.
Yes, how's that for excruciating? Part of the job means that I have to go to certain restaurants, ask to be seated, and then attempt to order a beer, then cancel the order, then give the appropriate colored card to the manager.
The instruction card for me specifies that I must do this alone.
At first that made me feel like someone rawboned and sinewy, a cowboy, perhaps, or some other tough, lean character who must work alone for the sake of the cows or what have you. Later, it made me feel like I was pulling a low and pointless prank, and that I had no friends.
Anyway, I ended up exhausted and hungry, and driving around in circles. I will have to finish the route tomorrow. I have failed.
But Jesus! I almost forgot to tell you all about why my decision to keep soldiering on was a terrible mistake. Because I didn't hit the deer or anything, and I got home OK, I guess.
But when I got home there was an instant message from Helen saying: "Where the hell are you? The terrible Melena is kissing the terrible Zach!"
I knew I had failed doubly. If I had been there to watch Joe Average, I could've used the Powers of My Mind to prevent this travesty, by dropping a boulder on both Melena and Zach. Later, I would have arranged for generous compensation for the little one that I like.
Point being: why don't I have Ti-Vo? Everybody else gets to have Ti-Vo. posted by Frenz | 11/10/2003 11:51:00 PM
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