A Spider In The Snow
"And as I would walk down K Street to some temping job
As winter froze the life out of fall
Yeah, I must've been having a ball"--The Dismemberment Plan
I just moved around about $200 million dollars this morning but it felt more like I was programming an Apple IIE from 1984. (So not only was I feeling a little like Matthew Broderick in WarGames, I was sadly probably using his exact same equipment.)
I take that back, Matthew Broderick's computer was much better than mine
It was strange though, there were no suitcases full of money, no important men to meet and discuss the details of the transaction...it was mostly just typing a few numbers into a stupid Dell at my barren cubicle on the fourth floor of the corporate headquarters at the bank I am temping for. If it was this easy, I've thought to my self, I can see how the guys from Enron just somehow happened to divert a few billion dollars. On a different level most of us know why credit cards are so dangerous, there is no sense of the import of your transaction.
I certainly don't feel important for doing this job, should I get a throne, a fancy computer or at least some sort of recognition for shifting around money equivalent to the annual GNP of some developing nations? Shouldn't I be turning a key at the exact time as another surly temp?
Ok, hang on, because I'm going somewhere here and that larger point is...working in a large factory, corporation, or any sort of huge collaborative effort where you just feel like an interchangeable part really sucks.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that this is hardly a new insight. The comic, absurdist vision of the modern corporate workplace as soulsucking hellhole has been seen in Dilbert, Office Space, The Office, as well as more serious fare like About Schmidt and American Beauty.
(In fact, "The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit: An A to Z Lexicon of Empty, Enraging and Just Plain Stupid Office Talk," just came out this month, and contains more anti-office snark.)
But I just feel more qualified to talk about it after my last three weeks of employment of temp work. Its not long, but I already better understand the insanity, banality, and false camaraderie of the corporation.
And now for the first time in five years...I hate my job.
Ironically, the last job I hated was blue collar. Five years ago I was a warehouse drone on the night shift at a textbook distribution center and basically I packed up and lifted boxes for 10 hours a night. This was not a good job. It was monotonous, we were discouraged from interacting with each other (but did anyway, the nice thing about boxes is that you can HIDE behind them) and we had Big Brother Robot looking over our shoulder and grading us on efficiency with scanners.
I worked there for three months before I got my first newspaper job and the day I found out I got the job, I partied like it was 1999 (of course it was 2001). The quitting process was quite elaborate, I went to work as usual that night, but when my boss Yohan told me what my assignment, I casually told him "No." Then I loudly announced my new job, started singing, dancing, exchanging high-fives with now ex-coworkers, and ran up the stairs and bowed to much applause before sprinting out of the building.
In retrospect, that may have possibly been the happiest moment of my life.
But...I digress. As defeating as MBS Books was, I was at least able to interact with co-workers (I argued the merits of Christianity, baseball, and Allen Iverson with a former marine all the time) plus it made ripped, though not in a very Vin Diesel way.
Now that I'm a temp, however, it's JUST about the cold hard cash. I am merely an office mercenary....a Secretary of Fortune.
Why else would I murder my eyes by typing thousands of 12 digit numbers into a spreadsheet?
Why would I put up with a sycophantic boss who scolds me on the first day for being slow and tells me I'm lying for saying I could type 40-50 WPM?
I'm like Rasheed Wallace. Just CTC me. Cut the Damn Check.
Wow. Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays!
