The fourth of five volumes, from November 2006...enjoy!
The Many Jobs of Monsoon Forecast: Volume Four
Wednesday, 15 November 2006
I graduated from The Ohio State University with a master’s degree in Black Studies—but no marketable skills—in 1996 and moved to the Illadelph to peep out gainful employment. I applied to every newspaper in the town, including the Tribune, an African American newspaper. When I called the UPI (United Press International) office in Philly to inquire about openings, the reporter who answered replied rather forlornly, “Well, actually, this office is closing in a couple of weeks, and I’m gonna be out of a job. So if you know of any openings in the field, be sure and let me know, huh?” This should have tipped me off to the depressed state of the industry I was hoping to break into.
I applied to nonprofit foundations and community organizations. Having had some limited experience at OSU as a graduate teaching assistant, I applied to area colleges and private schools for adjunct teaching positions. I even sent my résumé to the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia (now the African American Museum). And every day my mailbox would be a yawning void of bills and junk mail, but no job offers (most of them didn’t even have the common civility to send a rejection letter).
[The African American Museum in Philadelphia, where Monsoon was not employed]
Oh, there were a handful of interviews. I remember getting all tarted up in my jacket and tie and going out to some swanky private boys’ school on the Main Line. Had a lovely visit and what I thought was a strong interview with the head of the English department. Never heard from them again. I interviewed with a nonprofit organization in West Philly near the el tracks. As was the case in graduate school, my lack of pigment was conspicuous among the denizens of the neighborhood and the outfit to which I was applying. And as was the case in graduate school, I was not welcomed at this particular nonprofit by my melanin-gifted brothers and sisters with open arms.
(I suspect that I landed this interview—and some others—on the strength of my résumé, which might reasonably lead one to believe that I was African American. I can only imagine what was racing through their heads sometimes when they expected Denzel Washington to walk in and got a bearded Ned Beatty instead.)
No phone call, no letter, no telegram. No “thanks for your time,” no “we’re moving in another direction,” no “go to Hell.” Nothing.
So inevitably, and after a period of depressed inactivity, I began to visit temporary employment agencies. My friends, from roughly 1996 to 2000 I was registered with—and in most cases, employed by—at least seven different temporary agencies: Kelly Services (yes, I was a Kelly Girl!), Office Team/Accountemps (both divisions of Robert Half International), Mack, Manpower, Labor Ready, Gage, and Human Assets. I have taken more Microsoft Word and Excel proficiency evaluations and timed typing speed tests than I care to recall. My typing speed was 75 wpm (words per minute) in my peak secretarial and data-entry days, and my fingers are still rather dexterous on the old keyboard. (For example, I typed the above paragraph in twelve seconds. Or thereabouts.)
Now, those of you who have spent any time learning about the Wonderful World of Monsoon can attest to the fact that I do not thrive on uncertainty, nor do I handle major changes with grace or aplomb. My favored milieu is a consistent palette of the routine and the stable, spiced up intermittently with mild surprises and intriguing diversions. And yet sometimes, routine becomes tedious and coagulates into a dull, deadening, mechanical repetition that is utterly intolerable. Such, you see, are the many contradictions that make me such a complicated chap. Still, the dominant emotion I experienced during this nomadic professional period was consternation spiked with frustration and anxiety.
I worked at offices, mostly. I did some light construction in 1996 when I joined about 20 baby-daddies in northeast Philly building a new Hollywood Video. They talked about their desire to join a class-action lawsuit that was apparently pending against the makers of the infant formula Similac—which turned out to be a hoax—and ducking their child-support payments. It was certainly an education. To this day, whenever I pass a Hollywood Video store, I inevitably say, “I helped build one of those!” Sometimes it’s to no one in particular that I make this declaration. When Mrs. Monsoon is with me, she inevitably—and with no small amount of bemused exasperation—says, “Yes, I know, honey.”
By and large, my misadventures in temporary employment during the last half of the nineties fall into two categories: gigs that I could only stomach for one day; and gigs that just kept going, eventually becoming full-time, “permanent” jobs.
A smattering of my most noteworthy one-day engagements:
1. PIRG, 1996. I responded to an ad for the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), which was looking for entry-level applicants in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. When I arrived for the interview, I met with a dreadlocked white girl (for the record, I am virulently anti-dread when it comes to the honky peoples) in a drab little office. And—I swear, y’all—Ani DiFranco was playing on a boombox in the corner. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
She hired me to begin working on a “fundraising and awareness” campaign for the Sierra Club that involved “community outreach.” Sounded like it was right up my alley.
Turns out, it was right in the alley. The actual job: using a list of potential donors in the western edge of Center City Philadelphia, canvass the area trying to sell Sierra Club memberships (you get a free calendar!). I went door-to-door with my chipper little mentor Lucinda, and recited my memorized sales pitch into the faces of those who actually came to the door. Most were friendlier, it occurred to me, than I would have been if visited at my home by a solicitor of any kind. Few forked over a red cent, which (I soon learned) posed a problem because there was some kind of sales quota to be met, and we weren’t nearly there.
It was a depressing and disheartening endeavor, and I couldn’t wait for the day to end. But the decisive moment—the moment that make this a one-day job—came when we knocked on the door of a hopping-mad little man who opened his front door and hollered at us through the screen: “Get the hell out of here! I can’t believe you would come to my door and bother me with this [matter]. [Vulgarity] off!” And I thought, You know, he’s right. And I went home. Never did collect my paycheck for that day of work…
2. A collection agency in Plymouth Meeting, 1997. This actually began as a temporary placement; I spent a week in a dingy office doing data entry on what had to be one of the very first desktop computers ever made—I think they were actually Wangs—and making phone calls to harass people who hadn’t paid their medical bills. I found this all positively loathsome, but I was desperate for a more stable position, and jumped at the one that was offered me.
A catch: since the collection agency was offering me a “contracted” position immediately after I had been placed there by a temp agency, the temp outfit (Office Team) was entitled to a hefty “finder’s fee” paid by my new employer. My supervisor had agreed to this very explicit clause when he signed my time card. And yet, he was almost supernaturally cheap, so he decided he’d just bring me on and conceal the fact from Office Team.
On my first day, my placement specialist from Office Team popped in to see how I had performed the previous week, and inquire whether the collection agency had any further needs that could be met by their parent company, Robert Half International.
Upon seeing her walk in the door, my new boss bounded out of his office, flailed his arms to attract my attention, and somehow communicated to me that I needed to hide. And so I ducked into the bathroom and perched atop a commode so I would not be seen by someone looking underneath the stalls. (I am not what one would call “nimble,” but this little maneuver is much more difficult than it tends to appear in the movies.)
I was not detected, but another complication arose. I began to notice something I hadn’t during my “temp” week: the women who worked around me (I was the sole hourly worker there with a Y chromosome) seldom got up. They took five-minute lunches—at their desks. They never seemed to have to relieve themselves. I soon realized why: performance benchmarks. These poor souls were practically chained to their desks, scrambling to enter enough data and make enough calls to save their jobs each day. Need it be said that this was not a union operation?
Screw this noise, I said to myself. This place is hinky. And so I went home. Never got paid for that day, either…
[A silver lining to this experience: during one lunch break in my “temp week” there, I went to the Plymouth Meeting Mall and saw a little Dalmatian up for adoption in the pet store window. I called Mrs. Monsoon and she came down that evening to see this dog, whose name was “Nacho” due to a patch over her right eye, and the fact that she had been named by a three-year-old. We met the liver-spotted canine, who was so excited to make our acquaintance that she urinated prolifically. We had dinner and decided that we absolutely could not handle a second dog—much less another Dalmatian—in our fairly small rowhome. Then we went and got her. I proudly carried her out of the mall, renamed her “Ruthie,” and brought her home…]
3. A pretzel factory in Lititz, 1998. Now living in Lancaster County, I contacted a whole new slew of temp agencies and landed some humdingers. One was to be two-week job filling in for the receptionist at a pretzel factory in Lititz; I’m fairly sure it was Keystone Pretzels. First, the smell. If you have never been in a pretzel factory, know this: the yeast, the dough, the salt, and the infernal process of pretzel fabrication conspire to produce the odor of a sweaty gym sock filled with rancid anchovies. It is an olfactory assault I hope never to repeat.
And comrades, this foul stench permeated every cubic liter of air in the wood-paneled, recreation room-like offices that occupied the same structure as the stinky pretzel-making apparatus.
[A brief aside, if I may: Smell is perhaps the most overdeveloped of my five senses. An odd odor or unpleasant aroma can turn Monsoon from glad to sad instantaneously. I have been told that I am also quite expressive and demonstrative when I am faced with a pungent tang. Well, that’s how I do. In my “classroom expectations” sheet this year I included the following passage: “Students will refrain from adjusting makeup, spraying perfumes, or applying lotions” in the classroom. And just between us, the only reason for any of this is because I do not want their dousings, scents and slatherings to distract or sicken me.]
Already nauseated, I was doing my level best to focus on learning the rudiments of my new position—answering phones, entering manufacturing data, and so on—when I met my boss.
He came through the front door and looked over toward where I sat, training for my new temp position with the current receptionist, who was headed on a two-week vacation. When he saw me, he looked as if he had just discovered that someone had spiked his pretzel dough with dung—which, I might add, would scarcely have made the stanky funk any worse. I soon overheard heated discussions between Alpha Boss, as I shall henceforth call him, and his underlings in the Pretzelair. He was horrified, in short, that a man had been hired as their temporary receptionist. In addition—though I had been told by my Mack Employment Services placement coordinator that this was a “very casual” work environment and had as a result dressed in khaki pants and a short-sleeve polo shirt—he felt I was criminally underdressed for his Pretzel Palace.
Now, let me tell you about Alpha Boss. He was one of these men. You know the type—one of these hyper-masculine, ultra-conservative, huntin’ an’ fishin’, order-barking, steely-glare, my-way-or-the-highway, USA-love-it-or-leave-it, women-belong-in-the-kitchen jagoffs. When I went into his office later in the day to give him something, a glance around at the deer heads “decorating” his wall and the gun case behind him (in his office) confirmed my suspicion: he was an unabashed schmuck. I was leaving his office when he blustered after me: “You—tuck your shirt in.” “You”?? I thought. Aw, hell no.
It has been suggested to me over the years that I have a “problem with authority”—much like Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon movies, albeit without the mullet or death wish. But I’d like to argue that in point of fact, I have a problem with what I view to be unearned or illegitimate authority. Or more accurately, and very simply, I have a “problem with assholes.”
Instead of tucking in my shirt, I walked out the front door, never to return. Needless to say, I never did get compensated for the time I spent there...
Stay tuned for Volume Five of the Many Jobs of Monsoon, on its way next week—just in time for Thanksgiving! I know I said there’d be four volumes to this. There are going to be five now. Okay?