You Can Always Walk Away

Forgive my long absence, dear reader.

I have been under tight computer scrutiny at my current assignment and haven't gotten much of a chance to post. Obviously, I don't seem to care enough about that scrutiny anymore, because here I am.

I am currently temping in a department where I worked before, long ago. I know these people well. I can walk these rows of cubicles in my sleep. I worked here as a temp for two years, and I'm back for more, apparently. I was asked to return by my boss, who we'll call Mr. Scrubb. Scrubb is a giant, lumbering Mac master who is the lord of all spacetime in his domain.

He is a rad boss. His views on politics and humanity are appalling, but the dude is wonderfully hands-off. For the first time in years, I am sort of on my own schedule. Getting in exactly to the minute on time is not a big deal, and I can take however long I need for lunch. And I do, my friend, I truly do. He has told me that he doesn't mind if I surf the web or whatever I need to do, as long as the work gets done. He also fully understands that I am a human with a real life who doesn't want to temp for a living, and is very flexible about letting me go to auditions and stuff. Sweet.

Yesterday, Scrubb and I were talking about a co-worker's talent for making chocolate chip cookies. We both agreed they were some of the best homemade chocolate chip cookies ever. Scrubb says he won't use the co-worker's recipe, however, "as a matter of principle." You see, the recipe is reportedly Hilary Clinton's. "Of all of the women that could possibly become president first, why does it have to be HER?" he moaned. Man, those conservatives hate them some Hilary Clinton.

I am also now not answering phones for anyone in this position. This means I can wear headphones and listen to music all day if I so choose. And I do choose, I truly do. I get to work with graphics and Adobe CS3 and all the fun that goes with that. Unfortunately, what I am doing could only politely be classified as creative drudgery. My job is to digitally archive hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of old non-digital artwork to be added to the company's database. This involves lots of inventorying of closets and warehouses full of hand-drawn drawings, making charts and tallies, a hell of a lot of scanning, and a soul-crushing supply of data entry. There is enough work here for several people for I'm guessing at least 10 years. It's nuts.

I sort of hit some kind of data entry mental wall today, and kind of lost my mind for about an hour there. I just sat staring blankly at the screen and felt that if I had to add one more keyword to the asset metadata I was going to LOSE MY SHIT and kill people. My hands started literally shaking and my breath was rapid and my chest tight. In situations like this, it is best to know that you can always walk away, even if for a bit. It can take quite a while for your co-workers to notice or care that you aren't at your desk. Why, you could be anywhere! Bathroom, copier, meeting, who knows? I recommend, instead of head-butting your screen, to go outside if you can and take a nice, long walk. If outside is not available to you, try taking some personal nap time in your car or, worst case scenario, in a bathroom stall. You can even use the old "I'm a smoker" excuse and duck out several times a day for 15 minutes at a time. I left for almost an hour and no one noticed.

Not even my husband noticed, who, through an amazing network of bizarre circumstances, happens to be working in the cubicle next to me. This would be absolute heaven, except, you know, we're at work. And we have to work. On stupid work things. But in general, it is absolutely lovely to be only a few feet away from husband. It's a sort of exercise in torture and patience and comedic, well-timed coughing.

To update, because I'm sure you're wondering, why is husband there? Well, he just got hired back on, after almost two years freelancing in his old job. They finally threw him a bone. So this means husband is legit, and that we will soon be receiving health benefits. Hooray for that. I'd say it's a mixed feeling this time, more of a once bitten, twice shy distrust of the stability of the job and the studio in general but hooray anyway!

I will return soon to flesh out the rest of the characters inhabiting my work world. I just wanted to establish that yes, I am alive, well, and temping away in continued indentured servitude, albeit in a calmer, nicer, and less annoying way.

Say goodbye to me, and let me hear your footsteps as you walk away.

Supposedly, tomorrow is the end of my assignment with King Lear. I was invited to a special going-away dinner for him at a fancy restaurant tomorrow night, but there's no way in hell I'm going to sit there and watch 20 people spend my husband's salary in one night on steaks and alcohol (the animosity about my husband's salary, dear reader, is because he was laid off from this very studio for budgetary reasons).

The King has become rather grumpy as of late, as grumpy as a Englishman will show on the outside at least, which means inside he is a fuming chaotic ball of hate. Hate is the right word, for he's truly come to hate America and all its inefficiencies. Yes, it's not because of our politics, nor our greed, nor our shoddy accents that KL hates America, it's because he has to be slightly inconvenienced on occasion.

For instance: The other day, he wanted to mail a letter, but the postage rate went up and he only had 39 cent stamps! *flabberghastation!*

Also: The studio travel agents apparently are total nincompoops because they can't guarantee him a window seat in first class for a last-minute flight booking!

And: He left a check for the pool man in the refrigerator and the pool man didn't find it! What kind of idiots do we have around here in the USA?

And on and on. And on. And on.

It seems that once people have money, they seem to forget that they are living on Planet Earth and start thinking they live on Planet Themselves. King Lear is endlessly complaining to me about his misfortunes, expecting me to grieve with him. I am NEVER going to feel sorry for you, sir, no matter how much you complain that you sold your car and ONLY got $45,000 in cash for it. That is almost double my yearly salary, sir. I will not pity you for the endless hours you spend on the phone nattering at your builder in London, where you are doing the practically unheard of task of building a gigantic new home in Soho for millions and millions of pounds. I don't care that your gargantuan art collection hasn't yet arrived to England's shores from their shipment out of the ports of Los Angeles.

Have fun rolling around in your riches, wherever you go from here, sir. You go alone, with no one to love, and no one to love you. I hope you find whatever it is that fills the hole, and I hope it's something to do with charity and giving and realizing that the world owes you nothing, not even a more efficient postal forwarding system.

"You Must Be So Bored!"

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that line around here. "You must be so bored!"

You must never, ever, ever, never agree with this statement. If you ever say, "Yes, I am bored," you are asking for a world of hurt. If, as a temp, you agree that you are bored, you will immediately be sent to the salt mines of filing or some other horrendous task. Your freedom and your autonomy will be sacrificed, possibly for the rest of your assignment. That's when the others come at you with things they've been putting off for years, like cleaning out stock rooms, inventorying supplies, even dusting and cleaning. Do not ever fall for this trap.

Even if you are bored out of your mind and feel as if you could go stark raving mad at any moment, never show your hand. As long as there is the Internet in front of your face or a book in your hand or even a frickin pen and paper for doodling, you are not "bored."

Trust me on this.

How Green Was My Dummy

There's this thing that King Lear does that might very well cause me to lose my mind.

It's simple, really. So simple in fact that only an idiot would have any confusion about it.

It's his inability to recycle.

Lear has a black, regular trash can in which to discard things. Sitting DIRECTLY next to it, SO CLOSE THAT IT'S EVEN TOUCHING, is a recycling bin. The recycling bin takes such varied items as plastics and mixed papers. Really, you can throw just about anything in there, and it'll get recycled.

Every day, I go in and see huge amounts of paper and plastic water bottles in his regular trash bin. I grit my teeth, pull the stuff out, and move it to the recycle bin. I drop hints. I give dirty looks. It doesn't matter. You'd think he'd notice that all his papers are sitting in the recycle bin and that the trash bin seems to be emptying itself magically, but I guess he doesn't. It MUST be that he doesn't notice, because I don't want to hear that he doesn't care.

This, again, is a completely commonplace phenomenon company-wide, even though this studio is considered to be a company on the forefront of green technology and practices. People don't CARE. They don't get it, they don't see it, and they don't care. There is opportunity all around them to recycle, to power down, to conserve in general and they just don't do it.

I think social ostracism is the only way to make it happen. As a temp, this involves making sure that your disdain and disgust is voiced loudly and with purpose. You can get away with this more as a temp than a real employee because you are, on some level, seen as the objective observer. "Can you BELIEVE these people, putting water bottles in the trash?" I say, "Why are they even USING water bottles when there's a water cooler right there and they have their own glasses?" "Why the hell did you leave your monitor on overnight?" "You ordered a plastic takeout box and then ate it there? Why not use a plate?" "Wait, you want me to print out a 168 page PDF when it's totally readable online?" "Who was the numbskull who ordered virgin paper?" etc.

The bin is one inch to your left, sir. One inch.

Cheapskates

There is a phenomenon I've found in the executive set of the movie studio system that drives me insane. Shitty tipping. I'm not sure what the deal is, but these wheelers and dealers take their high rolling executives out to VERY fancy restaurants several times a week, but seem to have NO sense of how to tip. They generally tip about 10% or LESS.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? You're not even paying for it yourself! The company is reimbursing you! Pay the poor server their share! You were probably snotty and annoying and high maintenance anyway!

For instance, King Lear just brought me a receipt from a VERY schmancy restaurant where he entertained several clients. The Bill came to $525.55, and he tipped only $60!!! By my calculations, a proper tip would have been almost double that. And it's not because he's British. I had another extremely high up boss a while back who wouldn't tip over 7%. I wanted to scream at her.

This happens across the board for practically everyone I've worked with. If I were a server, if I saw studio people coming, I'd probably spit in their food.

Nitter Natter

King Lear is something of a crank. A British crank. He likes to go on long, sort of boring, almost academically lazy rants on whatever pops into his head. When I say long, I mean like a good half an hour. The outgoing assistant warned me about this, but truly, there's nothing I can do to stop it. Even having my patent vacant, glazed-over expression of complete disinterest doesn't seem to work.

So far the rant topics have included:

• How people in America don't make any sense
  
• How our travel agents don't seem to understand how to reserve a hotel
  
• How Americans can't seem to get the mail system down - why can't I send something registered mail? (you can!)
  
• America sucks because I can't send my taxes in by courier
  
• Los Angeleans are the fakest, most evil people ever (ok, I can't argue with him on that one)
• My temporary apartment isn't a penthouse, it's only one bedroom
• One time I had to stay in a hotel room that faced another wall and it had no light and it was dark
  
• Kids in America get to have school buses and marching bands and in my day we walked to school and had no marching bands
  
• The people in the cafeteria are so inept that you have to explain every little detail about your order to them or they'll burn your toast
• In my day my town had only one movie theatre and we saw Papillon with Easy Rider and we liked it

Etc. I'm boring myself even typing this.

Flush

I prayed for an easy assignment after the preceeding nightmare.

What I have is something a bit awkward.

My new boss, we'll call him King Lear, is (was?) a President here. It seems he has been deposed. I am here because his assistant was re-assigned and I am to see out the end of his term. He is something of a lame duck. Apparently the office used to be nonstop activity but now people don't call him or have their weekly meetings with him because he's been fired-ish.

I'll get to more on all of that later. What really matters to me is that I'm typing this because it's 6:12 PM and I'm still here because he's been in his private bathroom for 53 minutes and doesn't seem to be leaving. I have to go. I have a yoga class at 6:30.

The question is, do I just leave? Knock on the bathroom door? It's a dilemma.