Holiday party...again

I just took part in the third and final holiday party of the year at the company that I don't even work for, really. It was an afternoon affair, as they all have been, possibly due to the fact that the entire company seems overly enthused by the prospect of getting out of work early.

As we sat at one of about four tables in the restaurant event space, we were handed a sheet of paper. "This will be SO FUN!" said the woman who handed us the paper. "Go around and guess which fact belongs to which person!" It was hard to read the facts and not be judgemental. "My favorite color is red" was at the low end of the fact totem pole, while "Participated in a banana eating contest during intermission of a monster truck rally" was at the very, very top. Since I had not been asked for a fact of my own to be included, I started claiming other peoples' facts. In fact, I claimed several of them. "Yep, I had a gin and tonic with Walter Cronkite while running a marathon. Shortly thereafter, I had scarlet fever and my husband and I had six grandchildren."

Throughout all of this, a waiter hovered around our table. He had asked us if we wanted wine when we first arrived, but since I had been on the losing end of a battle between my corporeal body and a shaker of chocolate martinis this past weekend, I merely blanched and asked for a diet Coke. The waiter smiled and creepily said "Your happiness is important." He passed by frequently, each time saying something along the lines of "I want to look out for your happiness," which made me turn to a co-worker and remark on the fact that I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of missing teenagers in his neighborhood and a lime pit in his crawlspace.

At the end of the little soiree, the head of the design department stopped by to chat. A lovely woman, she fended off the creepy wine-pusher as best she could, but she had already had enough to bring color to her cheeks and loosen her tongue. "You've been here a year, right?" she said, looking at me. I nodded in assent and she said "That came up in a meeting not too long ago. We totally didn't realize you had been here a whole year. Everybody wonders why you're still temping."

I gathered that she meant people thought I should be an employee or a contractor or something, but there's a nagging feeling that everyone is wondering when my assignment will be over for real. I'm working on a database that only I use and no one in the company likes. It's like having a really unpleasant, ugly baby...no one wants to help you with it and you're not too thrilled about being its caretaker, either. But it still persists because the new database meant to replace our system is an uglier, more unpleasant baby...with chronic diarrhea.

So I keep temping. Nothing else to do, really. If I have gotten nothing out of this temping experience (aside from steady paychecks), however, at least I know that someone in the company used to be a child model and someone else got a concussion playing T-ball.

A Generalized Fuck You to the Bitches at the Christmas Party

Last night was the office's company Christmas party.

"Oh look!" said a young woman standing near me at a cafe table that we had all gathered around. She brushed her ironed blonde hair carefully back, "There's Paul the temp! He looks lonely."

Indeed he did. Across the room, standing just to one side of the giant doors that led into the lofty GAR Memorial Hall, was Paul the temp, nervously looking around as if desperate to find a familiar face in the crowd. As a temp myself, I identified. Last year at this time, I was told that my temporary assignment would only last until the end of the year, so I refrained from making the acquaintance of people outside of my direct sphere of influence. "The end of the year" changed to "through January," then "at least until the end of March," and before I knew it, it was December and I was standing at a cafe table with a glass of Cabernet in my hand, introducing myself to people I had worked with for an entire year.

"I feel bad for Paul," said another woman to my right, "I mean, he doesn't even have a cubicle." A brunette girl that I recognized from a time that we rode the same train in to work and walked down the same sidewalk to our building together without speaking piped in with her observations, "But did you see how he arranged the boxes in his corner to look like a cubicle? And he even has a box with a picture of a computer monitor on it set up like it was a REAL computer!" The cafe table erupted into cackles.

"I don't like him," said a girl to my left, "he listens to his headphones so damn loud I had to tell him to turn it down. His HEADPHONES! And when he has to use that rubber stamp, he just BANGS it down! I mean, when I'm on a project and working, I can't be DISTRACTED by that. He's weird." I noticed she had bad skin.

"I just feel so BAD for him," said the woman on my right again. "Don't," said the girl who couldn't be distracted, and I noticed then that she had overprocessed hair.

"I saw him in his little corner, sitting on the floor eating McDonald's one morning!" said the brunette who had yet to make eye contact with me, even there at the party.

"I told you, he's weird." Someone should get her a deep conditioner and dermabrasion.

"I still feel bad," repeated the woman to my right. Apparently, she didn't want to be left out of the fun because she changed conversation tactics then by saying "I saw him line up his coffee cups in a U-shape and just LEAVE them there! The U gets bigger as the day goes on."

At that point, I excused myself to go get another glass of wine. Paul had left his post by the door and was lost in the crowd. "There but for the grace of God go I," I thought, and rejoined the group at the cafe table.

"And then he told her how to make copies!" The woman who had been on my right was starting to get up to speed on the Paul talk, "I mean, shut up! You're just a TEMP!"

Apparently, I must have given her a look because she looked abashed and stammered out, "You're different, Amy. I didn't mean you." Blotchy VonSplitends laughed.

I may not line up my coffee cups and I do happen to have a cubicle of my own, but at the very basic level, yeah I am just like him.

I work for a company that sends its employees into multitudes of other companies to do the work that they can't or won't do themselves. We don't have health insurance provided for us and, if we want it, we have an average out-of-pocket expense of $200 for basic coverage with a high deductible and no prescription coverage. We have no dental plan, no maternity leave, no sick days and we don't get paid for holidays unless we've worked 35 hours or more for 23 weeks in a row. It's virtually impossible for a temporary employee to work that consistantly for that long, except in cases like mine.

I am a temp because I left a stable job in New York to come to Chicago and work for a company that promised me that I would be able to do the work I love for a comfortable salary. Within moments of my arrival at said job, it was apparent that the boss who had promised be independence and autonomy was a raging lunatic with a Christ complex who was inordinately fond of verbally abusing his wife in front of his employees. So, I had to leave. I am a temp because I had the audacity to believe that I would FINALLY be allowed to do the work I love for a living wage. How stupid of me! Defeated, broken and rejected by several retail establishments, I turned to my old standby, the temp agency.

And what of Paul? Is he fresh out of college and directionless? Did he take a job with the temp agency because he had no other place to go? Were his bills piling up? Is his family dependent on him? Was he a victim of the punishing economy?

If Paul looks THAT lonely in a crowd of strangers, imagine how his loneliness echoes when he is alone with his thoughts. Imagine what it must be like to not belong at the place where you spend the majority of your day. Imagine how it must be to have no one speak to you except to ask you to copy something or to tell you to turn your music down or to stop stamping papers so loudly.

Imagine working some place where no one knew your name for a year.

I am ashamed that I didn't speak up. I am sad that I work with such people. I am going to buy Paul a Christmas present. And I'm going to buy that raving bitch with cheap highlights some goddamn Clearasil.

Fucking hyenas.