Temp Jobs of Shame Pt.1

Someone wanted to know about all my lovely experiences in the er, job market before I went on the dole.  I cannot post them all–but my temp follies were sort of funny.  I got into “temping” at the urging of a friend because I had been complaining of the food service jobs I had been getting.  He said I could work in an office (turns out not all the time I also did factory work, grrr) and not work night hours (most of the time, I had one evening job) and be able to plan what to do since we would not be at the mercy of a food service scheduler who would want us to work nights, weekends, etc…Right after I started “temping” my friendship with this person stopped as we broke up but that is another story for another time.

It started with the shoes.  I had found the worst job in the world:  prepping shoes for the sales floor. It had started as a temp job at a mall my mother had found. Once I got the “job” I left the mall and went to work in the “hood” which is where I live now, actually, and had to commute in my ancient car.  It would be a short bus ride now.

It had irregular hours, I was always “on call”, and all the job consisted of was opening cases of shoes, taking the paper and other debris off them, putting a huge ugly security tag thru them and putting price tags on.  It was the most depressing job.  I was alone in the back room.   Sometimes I’d do 100s of men’s shoes in a color called “puce” which is a vomit gray color.  After the shoes were processed all I did was put them on a cart and roll them onto the sales floor–then open more cases of shoes.  My friend got a temp office job and told me it was more dignified.

It was my entry into the temp world, where I would find most of my jobs the length of my work history.  He quit the job right before I got on so I didn’t work with him.

The first temp job was not so bad.  It was filing in a nice office environment with a bunch of other temps.  I was assigned there twice.  The second time around people seemed meaner to me.  I also might have met my first perp there.  I told the story on my old blog how I went to lunch with a work friend and this other “woman” who tore me to pieces when I got up to go to the bathroom.  Still it was not the worst job I got thru the temp services .

There was this particular job I got all the time…I’ll call it “the papers”.  I got sent to do this about half a dozen times or more despite my education, etc…  It consisted of taking documents, packets of documents and files of documents and taking staples etc out and separating them and sticking the individual documents on white paper with tape to be microfilmed.  It was a boring thankless job.  The first time I did the “papers” was probably in 1988 and the last time was in 1995 when I complained and was put into a cold garage to do something else idiotic with old files. I got sick.  I worked with a woman who sat there and said God D***t all day just to get to me because I was a new convert.  Perp, probably.  She’d come in in a dress and combat boots.

I worked at several temp places starting in 1986 and the last assignment I did was probably 1996.  After that I rang the bell for Aunt Sally and worked at Mickey D’s for the second time.  My work history is the stuff of nightmares.  From 1979 when I had a paper route until 2009 when I quit the only job I ever really liked, it was one thing after another.  I have the trashiest job history in the world.  I’ve even been fired from volunteer jobs.

Stay tuned for more.