You've Won This Round, But I'll Be Back

Stereotype Sally is turning me into a jerk.

I'm starting to take it home with me. That's when you know, as a temp, the line has been crossed. I go home and yell at my (insert roommate/relative/significant other here) , bite at my cat, and kick my dog. At least, metaphorically.

I can't let this happen. A temp can never let the boss best her. The previous assistant warned me this would happen. I just didn't think it could happen so soon. The previous assistant was with her for six years. She said it was six years she could never get back. I'm starting to feel that way about minutes.

The thing is that the woman is relentless. She wears you down, like water grinding away at a stone. If only I were turning into something so poetic. The gripes are small, and like water torture, fill my days with endless drops of ridiculousness. There aren't even good examples to share, because they all go by so quickly, but they add up. There are probably only 2 to 3 minute stretches of peace, surrounded by The Crazy.

• Sally spends much of her time on her private line yelling at people. I don't know who she's talking to, or what they did, but there are long periods of fists banging on tables and extended shouting. The rest of the time she is yelling at business associates. When I announce her call to people, I hear them audibly shudder. (Speaking of this, she just slammed down her phone three times in succession, punctuated by "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" It's probably for something trivial, like a doctor's appointment change or something.)
• Right now, she is yelling at someone named Barry, who I think might be her ex-husband. Something about not wanting to be stuck on hockey duty with her son again. There's always some sort of gripe about her poor 16 year old son (who is in therapy, thank god), who just gets yelled at or about nonstop.
  
• Upon going through some files with her, Sally came across one entitled Charity. It had one lonely sheet of paper in it from 1998. "CHARITY? I don't give to charity. Throw this out." Perfect.
• She'll deliberately throw out piles of paper when a recycling bin is exactly one inch next to the trash bin. Don't even get me started on the plastic water bottles. There is a recycling bin right outside the door. It will never get used.
• Almost virtuosic refusal to understand how Outlook or the internet work.
  
• Today she yelled at me because she lost her corporate credit card, as if I was failing her because I couldn't conjure it by sheer will. I don't have your damn card, lady.
• Her crises always begin exactly two minutes before I'm scheduled to leave for lunch or at quitting time. One time, she didn't even make it IN to work until 5:58 PM, and flurried all kinds of crap upon me to finish in two minutes (you'd better believe I leave at 6 on the dot, temp friends, and so must you. you always "have a class to get to.").
• Upon asking her if I could please leave a few minutes early for lunch to attend an audition, Sal totally lost her mind. "AN ACTOR??" she whelped, "I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THEM TO SEND ME NO ACTORS! They're horrible and flaky and unreliable!" "Thanks, lady," says I, "I'll be glad to go." "NONONONO!" says she, "you are GREAT...I meant...other actors." Sure you did.

You can see how all of this is absolutely nothing, but it turns into a lot when it snowballs. You can also notice that none of this is about music, which is what this job is SUPPOSED to be about. That is the heartbreak to me.

As a temp, I must be better than this. Tomorrow, I will start with a comprehensive plan of Emotional Shutting Down that will place the real me so far outside of harm's way that my exterior self will be but a husk, a robotic shell who can do anything any heart-hardened assistant can do: attend to the Beast without getting bitten.