Let’s say you’ve never worked in an office before, don’t have a lot of experience with computers, and aren’t all that confident in your typing skills. Don’t sweat it! You can still be a temp, because there is more out there than just desk jobs. Most temp agencies, even those that advertise that they are office-based, place temps in positions that don’t require clerical expertise, such as shipping clerks, electricians, assemblers, construction workers, lab technicians, maintenance, and janitorial work, just to name a few.
No office skills? Don’t worry! You can still work! You can still be a temp! Your life can still suck!
I know what I’m talking about, for I‘ve had my share of non-desk jobs. I had just joined up with a new agency in Oakland, one that even had the word "office" in the title, I’d aced four computer program tests, kicked butt on the typing test, and had a solid interview, instantly forming a rapport with my agent. And, for whatever reason, they refused to place me behind a desk.
My first deskless job was at a computer company, and I was supposed to videotape some presentations. It didn’t sound too bad, and I had done a lot of camerawork in high school and I’m always chosen to tape my family’s weddings. I arrived at the office and set up, and was told the reason I was taping this in the first place was that several executives were out of town, and wanted to see the presentation when they got back. I initially hoped I would be able to simply point the camera, turn it on, and promptly go to sleep. It didn’t happen that way.
There was a class of about eight people who, I was told, would be giving notes and feedback during and after the presentation, and I was supposed to put them on camera while they were talking. There were slides to be shown also, and the presenter, a rather new-age looking woman, told me she moved around a lot while speaking, so I’d have to take pains to make sure she was on screen at all times. Also to be taken into consideration was that I had not been given a chair, just a tripod, and the camera, not I, would be sitting on that.
The presentation was, in a word, dull. It was all technical jargon, and jargon specific to a particular, in-house software product, so I had no hopes of understanding what was being said. It was like being in a classroom where a bunch of Germans were being taught Russian: I neither understood the language that was being taught, nor the language it was being taught in. All this amounted to me becoming extremely bored, which is quite a dangerous thing on its own, not to mention the fact that I was operating a video camera.
I started thinking about little ways to make the presentation more visually appealing, and my creative streak, while really little more than a smudge, began to awaken. Take the speech the woman gave on user access codes in order of priority and rank. I thought her point about the software recognizing various levels of access according to historical database functions would best be punctuated by the camera slowly zooming in on, say, her left nostril, until it completely filled the screen. And the stuff she was saying about automatic debugging of search codes? I thought the viewer would appreciate a little drama there, by way of slowly tilting the camera to the left, which would give the impression that the speech was taking place on the Titanic during her final hours. And for the end of her moving dialogue on the SQL features of version 3.1’s trace data function, I figured a slow pan across the room coming to rest on that one guy digging in his ear would make a really powerful statement.
During the feedback session, as per my instructions, I was turning the camera at whoever was talking. However, they all seemed to be talking at once. Not to mention that the tripod I was using was meant for still cameras, so it shook, jerked, squeaked, and shuddered anytime I had to move the camera, which was constantly.
I was located in the exact center of the room, with the presenter in front of me, and the eight students all around me in various parts of the room. Anytime someone had a question or comment, I had to swivel around and find them with the camera. Often, by the time I got focused on them, they had stopped talking and someone else on the other side of the room had started, and I had to yank the camera around again.
So, large portions of the tape would no doubt consist of nothing but dizzying pans followed by quick, jerky shots of people not talking. At one point the chattering was so frenzied I was simply whipping the camera around every time I heard a noise, even when one woman sneezed. I am pleased to say, I caught her second sneeze on tape, and almost in focus. The exec’s should be pleased.
Later, they started projecting slides, and I got a bit of a break because I could focus on the screen for minutes at a time. However, I noticed a new problem. Through the viewfinder, I couldn’t really make out the stuff they were projecting onto the screen, because the lights in the room were on. Luckily, I knew from my high school days that there was a way to change the amount of light that entered the camera, and I quickly found the button labeled "back lighting." I looked back through the viewfinder and pushed the button. The lighting didn’t change at all but the words:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
appeared at the lower edge of the screen.
Oh, crap, I thought. I squinted again at the side of the camera. Just below the back lighting button was one marked "Titles." I guess it had been pre-programmed with a festive message in the event someone happened to be taping a birthday party, which is a common use for these little cameras. I, however, was not taping a birthday party. I was taping a computer software training seminar for some absent executives. So, when they watched the tape in their big, expensive office, they’d see the words
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
appear on screen during the feedback session of the Javascript presentation, over some unreadable slides. Worse, I didn’t know how to turn the birthday greeting off. I pressed the "Titles" button again, and peered back through the viewfinder.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
thankfully, had vanished. Now it said:
IT'S A BABY BOY!
I pressed "Titles" again and again, wincing at each new cheerful proclamation as it replaced the previous one:
until finally, the larder was empty and the titles vanished completely.
Then, there are some jobs that you know from the very beginning are going to just outright suck. Take my second job from the Oakland temp agency. They sent me over to the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. I’ll cut to the chase: the first thing the guy said to me when I arrived was: "You’re gonna need a hairnet."
I’m not getting down on hairnets, or people who have to wear them at their jobs. It’s just that I had signed up to do office work, and the agency had told me to dress business-like, so I assumed I would be doing something that didn’t require a hairnet. So I stood there for a moment, in my jacket, tie, slacks, and shoes.
Then I stood there in my jacket, tie, slacks, shoes, and hairnet.
"Earplugs, too," the fellow told me.
I miserably screwed some yellow foam into my ears, then followed him, briefcase in hand, hairnet on hair, onto the factory floor.
"Boy," he shouted over the incredible din of millions of cans of Coke whizzing around, "you shouldn’t have worn a white shirt! Didn’t they tell you were going to get dirty?"
"No," I said. They didn’t tell me about the hairnet either, but he probably knew that.
The job turned out to be doing inventory of machine parts. Within minutes I was sweaty, grimy, and deaf, plus I was wearing a hairnet. I also was pissed. And I was wearing a hairnet. I stood there in a noisy, dirty, incredibly hot factory, wearing a hairnet, counting grease-covered machine parts, few of which were labeled. Those I couldn’t identify I created names for on my inventory sheet. I counted bolts, screws, joints, sleeves, valves, nipples, grommers, torques, fromps, brombels, hromppers, and geefs. I didn’t care. I did the worst job I could, because they made me wear a hairnet. To call me grouchy at this point would be like calling Ed Gein socially awkward.
I had one small measure of joy when something went wrong on the Coca-Cola can schleeper-shloover. I was coming back from a break, walking through the factory, and hundreds of cans suddenly went sailing off the assembly line, through the air, and onto the factory floor, creating foamy explosions everywhere. Burn, baby, burn, I thought as alarm bells sounded while the whole works grinded to a halt, and I took off my hairnet and waved it around in glee, feeling like the kid from Hope and Glory when his school gets bombed into oblivion by the Nazi’s.
It looked to me like Coke would go out of business right there, but the whole assembly line was back up and running within minutes. Anyway, it wasn’t really Coca-Cola I was angry with, it was my agency.
All in all, the hairnet job wasn’t too bad, I guess. The factory was pretty cool, with all the automated machinery, the three-story towers of billions of shining cans, the forklift operators zipping here and there at frightening speed, missing each other by inches but never slowing, like some sort of choreographed musical number. Sometimes they would drive in reverse down the rows of pop, toting huge stacks of bundled soda which would completely obscure the forklifts and drivers, giving the illusion that the crates were moving themselves around the factory, turning corners, deftly avoiding obstacles, all while hovering silently just inches above the floor.
So, I guess I’m glad I didn’t take my revenge by tampering with one of the gloopmer bearings or cutting some of the wires of the flow-mo-mometer, thereby destroying the factory and the Coca-Cola industry with it. After all, I personally consume four hundred and twenty-six gallons of Coke per month. And I know I’ll never find one of my hairs in it.
