Day 20: Temp Jobs I've Had

1. Backstage at the Nordstrom shoe department. I spent eight hours each day pulling wads of tissue paper out of pumps and lacing up boots in the dusty semi-darkness, while haggard, over-pomaded men whisked in and out wringing their hands in search of a size 10 Nine West in brown.

2. Some kind of high-tech firm in Carlsbad. I don’t know what they did, but I know what I did: Cut shapes out of card stock with an X-acto knife for eight hours (no reason was given.) I sliced off the top of my thumb, and continued cutting with a few band-aids to stanch the bleeding. At one point, I noticed I was alone, and after a long time a man came running in to say the front of the building was on fire and I should go move my car.

3. The Money Store in La Jolla. They didn’t ask me to do anything, not even answer the phone, but all day people came by to chat, smiling and thanking me for my efforts. A few of them offered to bring me coffee and baked goods. Most of them told me how much I reminded them of Julie, an apparently much-loved former receptionist. When I asked how we were similar, one gal said wistfully, “Oh, she sat there, too…”

4. Some department at MIT (I’ve already talked about this one) where I decided to steal all the supplies they had delivered from Central Processing—including tissues, pencils, tape and glue—and then came this close to getting caught and probably arrested.

5. A high finance company in downtown Boston, where they handed me a really long dot-matrix printout of unintelligible notes and asked me to create an outline. They said it should take a couple of weeks. By 11:00 am. I’d finished and been suddenly stricken with a debilitating flu. They sent me home for some rest, praising me for my incredible speed. When I woke up four hours later, the agency called to let me know they had fired me.

6. The Republican National Convention offices in Del Mar. I was on phones. But my actual job was to get screamed at every five minutes by a person I’d never seen before, who would lunge around the corner, snarling like a jaguar, to tell me I’d screwed up their call. At 3:00, I was told to announce on the P.A. that it was June Birthdays, and everyone to reception. Someone plunked a chocolate cake next to my phone, and for ten minutes everyone came out and ate it, laughing and talking. Then they went away. For the rest of the day, every time someone came by to yell at me, their faces contorted in fury and disgust and they spat, “You have chocolate cake on your face.” I hadn’t touched the cake. I have a dark brown beauty mark next to my lower lip.

7. Cabot Advertising in Charlestown, MA, where my job was to answer the phone and type letters for five junior executives. Four women—all of whom typed their own letters—and one man, senior to me only by virtue of not being a temp—who couldn't or wouldn't even type his own name. One of their clients was Prime Computer, notable for creating a word processing program that required EIGHT STEPS to underline a word.

8. The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA, where I answered phones in a windowless room populated by three other people, all chain smokers. I actually loved them, and the job, despite the smoke. There was very little to do, and I yakked on the phone and read all day when I wasn’t gossiping with the two women, and went on long lunches in Harvard Square.

9. Children’s Hospital Boston, where I was a secretary for an extremely famous emeritas heart surgeon, who was now 95 years old. He came in only about once a week, seemingly just to chat with me. The rest of the time I sat alone in the office and hoped the phone would ring. When it did, it was usually him, telling me (in his thick Hungarian accent,) “Sa-MAHN-ta, I am lunching at the Harvard Club today and won’t be in. Please hold my calls.”

10. Insurance company in Laguna Beach, CA. I was the file clerk. I learned all about how much people hate insurance agents. And became really good at alphabetizing. I also fell in love with one of the agents, not knowing for a long time he was the son of the company president. Our flirtation was as aggressive as blood sport, yet he had a girlfriend, a wispy thing who looked like she had trouble supporting the weight of her own hair. Still, it was extremely painful the day I was unceremoniously fired (along with all the other temps) in a downsizing move. The son and I sat on the curb outside the office until nearly 8:00 p.m., not quite able to to go somewhere together, but not wanting to say goodbye, either. And then I never saw him again.

DEAR READERS: Can you guess which one of these jobs became a permanent position?

Extra credit: Can you figure out which THREE of these jobs offered me a permanent position by the end of the first day? (P.S. There's no overlap.)