One thing about temping in the professional business world, it kind of makes me feel, well… like an adult. I walk down the street in the bustling city with my jacket and tie and briefcase, and it makes me feel like a real businessman. I could be anyone. A lawyer, a stockbroker, a consultant, a particularly successful janitor… Its kind of cool. I feel like getting some business cards printed up saying: Blake Successful, Professional Business Lawyer Director Consultant.
Okay, it's all a ruse: I am pretty much broke and I spend all day sitting at other peoples desks using their bacteria-laden keyboards, but hey, to the average person on the street, I could be an important member of the business community. No one can tell just by looking at me that I’m just a temp. Not even the guy who runs out of the mall and stops me in the street.
"Excuse me!"
These two words, when shouted on the street of probably any city, big or small, are two words that make the average, world-weary, cynical, untrusting, people-hating person, such as myself, cringe. They rank up there with "Got change?" and "Look, vomit!" Just some things you don’t want to hear on your lunch break. So, I immediately jump in front of a bus. Then I realize that there is no bus, for once, to jump in front of, so I coolly cover by jumping in front of an elderly pedestrian, which, while not creating the effect I am hoping for, namely, my instantaneous death or speedy relocation a few blocks south, it will provide the old guy with something unusual to talk about over dinner. So, with no public transportation to end my life with, I turn and face the person that called me.
It’s a guy in a suit.
I think it must be mall security, since I had been in the mall on my lunch break and since my pockets are stuffed with stolen merchandise. Also since its kind of a cheesy looking suit.
"Do you live in the Bay Area?" he asks.
Oh. Directions. I don’t know why, but people are always asking me for directions. If NASA really wants to find life on Mars, they should just drop me off there. Within fifteen seconds, an alien life form will appear and ask me if I knew where 1607 Webster Street is.
"Well, I just moved here," I say so he’ll leave me alone. I also say it with a thick Nigerian accent, so he won’t try to engage me in a conversation.
"Well," he says, undaunted, "I just noticed you inside, and you look like a professional guy, professionally dressed, and I thought to myself-"
Oh. He wants a date.
"Hey, here’s my bus," I say. Once again, despite astronomical odds in my favor, there is no lurching, careening bus approaching, or even a cab for that matter, so I just climb into the nearest car that happens to be stopped at the corner, and scream "Drive! Drive, you fool!!" at the bewildered owner, who floors it and doesn’t stop until reaching Canada.
Actually, I just stand there listening to the guy in the suit as it becomes apparent that he doesn’t want a date, he wants something else.
"Do you have steady employment?" he asks. I tell him I am doing temp work. After his laughter subsides, he starts telling me about his work, making the inaccurate assumption that I give a crap. Apparently, he works at a brokering firm.
"Do you know what a broker does?" he asks me.
I’m a little insulted. Of course I know what a broker does. A broker is a guy who does things like brokering, at a place with a thing... that brokers. Everyone knows what a broker is. It’s like asking me what escrow or mutual funds are. I know, I just can't express it in comprehensible words.
"Well, we’re a little different at World Concepts," he says.
Uh-oh.
"Right now, were looking for some bright, young people."
Its AmWay.
I swear its the same pitch I heard from a friend who talked me into coming to a meeting of her "new business" because I seemed like a sharp guy. I wound up sitting in front of some jerk from Texas who used the worst grammar I’d ever seen. Yes, seen. His grammar was so bad you could actually see it swirling around in the air and breaking the laws of nature. A sample: "You know what my wife done when she seen that first big check I brung home to her? She done spent every cent of it."
The really awful part of that experience was seeing all the other young, supposedly bright people my friend had suckered into that meeting, smiling and laughing with Tex, their eyes glazed over and filled with wonder. They were already lost, sucked in, hyp-mo-tized by the loudmouth redneck who was explaining how to make money by, from what I could divine, enslaving your friends. I remember, near the end of that meeting, I moved beside one of these young people, a nice, honest-looking guy about my age. He had said hi to me at the beginning of the meeting, and I had seen him chatting with a few others, and he seemed like a genuinely friendly and all around good person. Sliding into the seat next to his, I leaned over, nodded in a friendly way, and then set him on fire, thereby providing a distraction for my escape and saving the guy from a far worse fate.
Now suit-boy is trying to set up a meeting, presumably one that doesn’t take place on a sidewalk where I might be able to escape by wriggling into a sewer.
"Do you have a message line or voice-mail number?" he asks.
"I don’t have a message line," I say. "Why don’t you give me your card and I’ll call you?"
"I don’t have any cards," he says. "Why don’t you give me your home phone number?"
"I don’t have a disease of the brain that would render me so stupid as to give you my home phone number," I say.
We seem to be at an impasse. Then I strike upon a brilliant idea. I kick him in the shins and run. Actually, I give him the phone number of my temp agency, and tell him he can leave a message for me there, which, as far as I know, is completely untrue. Then he writes down the number of World Concepts, and asks me to call someone named Barbara.
Back at the office, I decide to play detective and do a little research on World Concepts. Very little, if you know what I mean. I search the internet for the name, and come up with nothing except a Web Design company. Hmm. He didn’t mention anything about computers or Web design. Well, that won’t stop me. I decide to try the phone book. There is no listing under the business white pages and he didn’t really tell me what the company was or did, so I can’t effectively search the yellow pages. The only thing he mentioned was that the office was at the airport. Hmm. Airport, eh? Well, I'll just book myself on the next flight to the airport. Heh-heh. Wait. That’s wrong.
I call the number he gave me, and, surprise of surprises, its not a working number. I call again to make sure I dialed correctly, and I get the same three-note song. I try directory assistance and they have no listing for World Concepts. They do, however, have a listing under the guys name, which I will say is Devan Shyster. I call Devan, and get answering machine. A little girl’s voice tells me to leave a message but I do not. I figure if he gave me a bum number for a bum company, he might have also lied about his name.
I wonder what this was all about? Was he trying to pull a con? He should at least have had some business cards or a fake voice-mail or something. Unfortunately, the story ends here, which, I suppose, is one of the drawbacks of writing non-fictional accounts about my life. It just ain’t that exciting. I mean, I might have gotten a lead from the pretzel vender on the corner, or maybe Mr. Shyster would have turned up murdered the next day, the number of my temp agency clutched in his hand... something interesting. But no. It just ends. However, I have included in this essay, as a bonus, the last sentence of the story as it might have happened if truly interesting things ever happened to me.
Devan Shyster, international corporate spy and AmWay representative, plunged from the window of the burning building, his body riddled with bullets, as I hauled up on the stick of my Harrier jet, sending me into the clear blue sky with the supermodel on my lap and my pockets stuffed with cash and my agent on the phone telling me my book was being published and the cast of Baywatch waving happily and all recordings of Carol Channing's voice having been destroyed.
ALSO FEMALE TEMPS RULE THEY ARE THE COOLEST AND I LOVE THEM AND THEY SHOULD GET A MILLION DOLLARS.