6.14.02 - Will Temp for Reasonable Hourly Wage

With a dearth of temp jobs out there, it's becoming clear I need to find new ways to practice my craft.

(My craft is temping, in case that wasn't clear.)

Companies are being picky about the temps they'll hire these days, insisting on personally interviewing them, rather than simply accepting whatever random, glassy-eyed, troglodytic chowderhead the agency sends over, as they used to.  This has certain chowderheads worried, and looking for other options.

(The chowderhead in question is me, in case that wasn't clear.)

Luckily, I think I may have found the answer.  This afternoon, while taking my morning constitutional, I had an idea.  I saw this fellow who had set up an easel near my apartment, and was standing there painting a picture of a nearby building.  I see these artist types every so often, sometimes painting pictures of lakes or trees or historic streets.  In addition to the painters, I sometimes see people practicing Tai Chi in the park, or doing that thing where they have a stick in each hand, and they use the sticks to whack a third stick in circles without letting it hit the ground.

So, my first thought was that I could just go out and temp!  Outside!  Near a lake, or perhaps in a park or courtyard.  If people can paint, Chi, and whack in public, why can't I temp?  I could set up a little desk with a little phone and a little keyboard and a little page-a-day calendar, and just get to work!  File things!  Forward calls!  Mislabel folders!  Take breaks!  Knock off early!

Then again, simply temping near a pond or in a copse of trees isn't exactly going to be profitable, which led to my second idea:  It's time to take my temping to the streets!

(My second idea was that it's time to take my temping to the streets, in case that wasn't clear.)

Lots of people these days can be seen hard at work on our nation's streets.  There are performance artists, street-corner poets, and disheveled people trying to raise your interest in religion by screaming bible passages at you, but if you ignore all those freaks, you'll see people playing guitars in train stations and playing harmonicas in stairwells, and others juggling or dancing or singing right out on the sidewalk, always in front of dollar-filled cups or guitar cases.

These street artists are folks who are not discouraged by a lack of regular paying gigs, a lack of performance halls, a lack of interest in their work, or a lack of talent.  They're just out there, working their craft and making money.  Why not me?  I figure if I sit at a desk on the sidewalk or in front of a store and perform my temping duties, such as filing or typing or napping, and someone comes by and drops $18 into my coffee mug every hour, I'll be all set!

You may be thinking, "Gosh, what a great idea!", in which case I'd like you to e-mail me whatever great idea you're currently thinking about, because mine clearly sucks.  No one is going to walk by and drop $18 into my cup.  I doubt I'd even get a parking validation or a slice of cake from Cathy's birthday party.  I mean, there's no Cathy!  And no party for her!  Still, there are ways I can improve my cash intake by being, to use the street vernacular, "proactive."

At one time or another, you've probably driven through a large city and, while stopped at a traffic light, had your windshield cleaned by a friendly and energetic street person, right?  I could do something like that, only instead of washing your windshield with grayish water and an old shirt, I would reach in through the passenger window and quickly organize the spare change in your ashtray, or alphabetically file all the papers in your glove compartment.  If the light was long enough, I could bring you coffee, answer your cellphone for you, proofread the words printed on your side-view mirror, schedule you a tune-up and oil change, or arrange a conference call or luncheon with the people in the next car.

(The people in the next car are Phil and Nancy Cummings from Commack, Long Island, in case that wasn't clear.)

But wait, there's more!  Door-to-door temping, why not?  Kickin' it old school!  People used to make a living going door-to-door selling vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias, so why don't I pick up where they left off?  Actually, I already have, I'm broke and jobless.  But wouldn't a stay-at-home Mom or Dad find it empowering to have someone tidy up their cluttered desks and balance their checkbooks for them?  Who couldn't use someone around to enter the contents of their fridge into a spreadsheet, and wouldn't an extra pair of hands make forwarding those Inspirational-Thought-of-the-Day e-mails to your children and relatives a whole lot more efficient?

Yes.  Definitely.  I think door-to-door temping is the wave of the future, and I will be riding that wave on the surfboard of innovation, while wearing the swim-trunks of facilitation and getting the sunburn of progress.  And while I may be exaggerating just a tad, and while maybe not everyone needs a temp working in their home, at the very least, I should be able to find work answering the kitchen phone for somebody. 

"Hello?  Yes, hi.  Yes, Mrs. Alexander would love to gossip with you about who that tramp Melissa Leary is dating these days, but she's a little tied up with a diaper-change right now... I could pencil you in for 4pm, right after her trip to the drugstore and before she folds the laundry."

Wouldn't that be useful?  I think so, and so I'm off to hit the streets.

(Oh, and Melissa Leary is dating me.  In case that wasn't clear.)

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

6.13.02 - Women in Art

Whoo!  Got some new Reader Art to show off, and boy is it sexy!  Now we're finally getting into some stuff I can dig.

First, the illustrious Dragonblink made me a couple pieces of NMD art;  one involving her belly and its button:

and one involving her arm and some ink:

The tattoo is real (and pretty cool) and my site is written in (which must have been hard).  Thanks, DB!  You can visit Dragonblink's site by clicking here!

Speaking of bawdy bods, bare bellies, and buttons, here's Dru with the name of my site drawn on her tum-tums in lipstick:

A lot of lipstick, by the looks of it.  And another view:

Golly!  Thanks, Dru!  You can visit Dru's site by clicking here!

Since I am totally into cute chicks drawing on themselves for me, I am reposting two pictures sent in by the pioneer in this field, Laura, a while back.

Pretty damn cool!  Here's a link to the site Laura had me link to, although it was the site of her friend Jaimie, who actually did the drawing.  Thanks again you two!

Finally, Mia sent in this picture of a porn star sporting a NMD top and practicing a little face-building (which is probably important in that line of work:

Thanks, Mia!  You can visit Mia's site by clicking here.

Let's hope this trend of women exposing their succulent flesh and writing the name of my site on themselves continues.  And while we've got some bellies and arms posted today, why, there must be some other body parts that can be written on, right?

Can you think of any???

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

6.12.02 - "I Strenuously Object?  Is That How It Works?"

Is there anything nicer than a cold beer, a comfy hammock, a patch of sun-dappled shade, and a baseball game on the radio?  Top researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, after spending years exploring myriads of possibilities, have determined that the answer is yes.  There are, as it turns out, two things that are indeed nicer.  One is when MIT Head Research Administrator Dr. Gilbert Madison actually decides to eat a couple Altoids and not breathe his stupid garlic breath all over them all freakin' day long while they're trying to work, dammit, and the other is, as they put it, "beaucoup cleavage."

Topping the list of things not nicer than the beer/hammock/shade/baseball combo are: when you cut your bagel unevenly and it gets jammed in the toaster, Applebee's Restaurants, ingrown hairs, Donal Logue, genocide, sit-ups, and awkward segues into temping stories.

Speaking of which, I went and signed up with another temp agency this morning.  The routine is just about always the same, what with the paperwork, the interview, the more paperwork, the testing, the rest of the paperwork, the orientation video, the post-paperwork wrap-up, and then the revelation that they haven't had any new job orders in weeks and that you've just wasted your entire morning.  Then you fill out a few forms and you're done.

This time, however, there wasn't really an interview.  Usually, they'll want to talk to you a bit, find out a little about you, what you've done in the past, what kind of work environment you enjoy, and generally get a feel for the type of person you are.  They didn't do that at this agency, which was fine with me, because it doesn't matter the slightest whether you enjoy fast-paced, high-energy offices or sleepy little Mom & Pop operations.  They will plant you at the same sticky customer service desk wearing the same headset with the broken volume-control whether you describe yourself as a "people-person" or not.

Today, however, in lieu of an interview with an actual human being, I was given a "Personality Test" by the computer, which presented me with a series of about fifty statements, on things like workplace conduct, personal preferences, ethics, morals, ideals, sexual fetishes, etc.

Basically, it stated things like "Some employees find it easy to steal from employers, because most employers look the other way when it happens."

and:

"There are some circumstances in which it is conceivable that an employee may miss work without calling in to notify their employer."

Under each statement, there were five buttons:  Strongly Disagree, Disagree, In Between, Agree, or Strongly Agree.  Although I'd never taken a test like this for an agency before, my veteran temping instincts kicked in and I decided right at the outset exactly how I would handle this test.

My friend, who was signing up at the same agency simultaneously, scored a 95.  I scored slightly less.

"A FIVE?" the woman processing me said.

"Is that bad?" I asked, the stupidity of the question probably dropping me down to a negative 17.

She gave me a look, which I can only describe as "a look", and handed me the results, which were divided into two parts.  The first part showed my attributes, a list of two qualities that I can't even remember, because the second part, labeled "Areas to Explore", or in other words, "Areas in Which Chris Is A Total Fuck-Up", displayed a list of about 37 items.  I wasn't surprised that I hadn't passed with flying colors, considering my strategy, but I hadn't expected to completely fail with one pale, smudgy, badly-limping color, either.

My strategy, in case you were wondering, and let's face it, you were, because you're fascinated with me, was as follows:

First of all, Charles Manson could get a perfect score on this test, if he wanted to.  It was pretty obvious how to answer these things, namely, to strongly disagree with everything that might paint you as a lackluster employee, while strongly agreeing with things like "When I have completed my work, I go looking for more" and "I am always cheerful, no matter how stressful my job is."

My strategy did not allow for that, because my strategy called for honesty.  I'm not sure why my strategy called for this, frankly, and I'm really going to have to sit my strategy down and have a talk with it in the morning, and find out if it has been doing drugs and what sort of crowd it's been running around with, because my strategy should really know better than to fiddle around with this honesty crap by now.

I had also decided that both of the "strongly" buttons were right out.  If I agreed with something, I agreed with it.  I saw no need to modify it with "strongly."  And didn't the presence of "strongly" before "agree" seem to imply that to simply "agree" meant to "weakly" agree?  I was not appreciative of them implying that when I just plain agree with something, it is in a half-hearted manner, so I chose to ignore the "strongly" buttons, and furthermore, I didn't think that... boy, this really made sense to me while I was taking the test, somehow.  Crap.

Now, I'm not a rebel.  I'm not trying to rock the boat or the vote or the tree or the hizzouse.  But I don't like sucking up, and I don't like being led around by a computerized test.  It's obvious how they wanted me to answer, and I'm sure they'd be thrilled if I reprogrammed the test to add a buttons labeled "By Golly I Sure Do Strongly Agree Very Strongly, Darn Tootin' You Betcha!" and "My Good Holy Lord In Heaven, I Would Never, Ever So Much As Think Of Taking A Slightly Longer Lunch Because My Boss Was Away, And Anyone Who Would Do Such A Thing Is Not Worthy To Pass Through The Digestive System of a Diseased Hyena."  Bah.  Bah, I say!

So I failed, and spectacularly so.  It was made worse by the way the computer parsed my answers, because in my "Areas to Explore" results, agreeing to a statement like: "Some employees find it easy to steal from employers, because most employers look the other way when it happens", while certainly honest, would print out as my result: "Feels it is easy to steal from employers."  This is not an exaggeration, this is what it really said.

I also agreed with things like: "There are some circumstances in which it is conceivable that an employee may miss work without calling in to notify their employer."  My logic was, if I had 3rd degree burns over 90% of my body or if I'd had my belly ripped open by a distressed mandrill, or if I was, you know, DEAD OR SOMETHING, it was conceivable that I might not call them.  The result on the printout took none of my brilliant logic into account, and read something like: "Feels it is not necessary to call when missing work."

Ah, well.  I was honest.  Fuck them.  Strongly.  I handed her back the results and said "I stand by all my answers!"

She seemed amused by my response, at least, and said she'd submit me for two positions, and that I seemed professional, and capable, and my other test scores were great, and she would keep me in mind, and that she'd call me soon.

Honest!

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

6.11.02 - Hi.  Again.

I had an uninteresting day, and I have an early interview with yet another damn temp agency tomorrow.  Sorry.  Hilarity will be pushed off to Wednesday.

In case you missed it in the mess of last week, I was recently interviewed by Chefelf of Lance & Eskimo.  You can check it out here!

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

6.10.02 - Hi.

Whew.  Last week was a long one, and I'm still kinda recovering.  So, no real content today, just... some stuff.

When I wrote this, I was really tired, so I... oh, wait.  I'm not doing commentary this week.  Oops.

Sorry!  Tough habit to break.  Still, if you are looking for more commentary, you're in luck!  Zomp, the lanky and loveable scribe of zompist.com, has created a Reader's Commentary on my Writer's Commentary!  Go check it out, it's hilarious.  And if you need help with some of the in-jokes, don't hesitate to e-mail zomp!  Go directly to zompist.com to check it out.

(For zomp's readers who might be heading over here for some context, click here.)

Now, for some Diversions (which are again on the left-hand sidebar)!  First, a real crowd pleaser, Create-A-Fart!  Pick the desired qualities of the fart from a few lists, then sit back and enjoy your creation!  You can even e-mail your fart to a friend (note: please do not e-mail me your farts).

Next, we've got Way of the Stick!  You may have seen those flash stick-figure martial arts movies online somewhere, and here's your chance to kick some ass as a stick man.  Enjoy!

Finally, there's the South Park Studio, where you can make yourself into a character from the South Park cartoon!  Once you're done, I don't think you can do anything with it, but it's kinda fun.  Flash required.

So, we also have some new colors and stuff here, and hopefully they're not too awful or hard to read.  I'm not really in love with it, but it was getting late so I kinda had to go with it.  I also moved the Site Info box to the top for some reason, probably so people will see it.

Anyway, I'm a little talked out from last week, so I'm just gonna end here for now.  Hopefully, I'll have some hilarity tomorrow!  I'll let zomp close out the site today with a picture he made of me (I think he's a little obsessed).  Hey, the colors even match!

e:mail: temp@notmydesk.com

Last Week on Not My Desk!