This week in Tom
I have a job interview today at 4:00 for work as an administrative assistant at a law firm. Fingers crossed people. I had a pretty good phone conversation with one of the people yesterday, and I'm trying to not get my hopes up, but I'm kind of optimistic about this one.
I think I'm going to have breakfast for lunch tomorrow. I have some eggs in the fridge that are just begging to be scrambled.
I even got to work for half a day on Tuesday. For those of you who don't live in the city, this requires a bit of backstory. The city of Chicago has recently sold off the rights to regulate parking meters in the loop. They may have sold the rights to the entire city, but the loop is the only area I'm sure about. This has made a lot of people very upset, because the same company that now has the authority to set prices for parking meters also has the authority to hand out tickets. Naturally the first thing this company did was jack up the prices all over the city, and I've heard reports of people getting two and three tickets for a single parking infraction. Some people have taken to vandalizing these new parking meters. A PR effort is needed, and that is where I come in.
This same company has installed payboxes to pay for parking all over the city similar to the kind you might see at airports or a sporting event. It spits out a ticket that you put in your dashboard and that acts as your parking permit. They've also hired a bunch of temps to stand around and instruct people in how to use these strange new devices. The whole thing is horribly organized though. We've got people standing around to monitor payboxes that haven't even been installed yet, so when I was supposed to work for 5 hours on Tuesday, I spent the first 3 just waiting for the box to get installed. Standing around with 5 other temps waiting. And waiting. And waiting. After about 2 hours of standing around in the harsh Chicago winds we decided it would be better to go wait in Starbucks. I mean, as long as we were getting paid. That's right, there's very little supervision on all this and nothing to stop us from just wandering around the city all day and get paid for it, so long as we are in place when the supervisor comes by at the prearranged time to clock us out for the day. I have no misconceptions about people taking advantage of this.
Finally a paybox is installed and I stand in front with another guy waiting for idiots to show up. That's who we are catering to you know, idiots. They aren't idiots because they don't know how to work the paybox. They are idiots because they don't understand the step by step instructions posted on the box itself, and so the require the help of two (TWO!) people to figure it out. And about 100 yards away there is another paybox with two other people standing around waiting for idiots. You know, in a way this is kind of insulting to the people of this city. The idiot-to-normal-person ratio can't be high enough to warrant this. And get this- this is a 6 month campaign. They expect to pay people to keep this up all the way to nearly October.
As you can guess, I called my staffing agency and opted not to do this job the rest of the week. I have a job interview today, and there was an 80% chance of rain yesterday. I will do many things for very little money, but I will not stand in the rain for those rates and wait around for idiots. I may do it again on Monday, weather permitting, but we'll see. The only reason I want to do it again is so I can be abandoned in some random sketchy alleyway in the loop, and then I can place a call to my boss for this assignment and say "Hey, there's a man with fake breasts yelling at me to go away because I'm bad for business. What should I do?" I would enjoy making that phone call very much.
I think I'm going to have breakfast for lunch tomorrow. I have some eggs in the fridge that are just begging to be scrambled.
I even got to work for half a day on Tuesday. For those of you who don't live in the city, this requires a bit of backstory. The city of Chicago has recently sold off the rights to regulate parking meters in the loop. They may have sold the rights to the entire city, but the loop is the only area I'm sure about. This has made a lot of people very upset, because the same company that now has the authority to set prices for parking meters also has the authority to hand out tickets. Naturally the first thing this company did was jack up the prices all over the city, and I've heard reports of people getting two and three tickets for a single parking infraction. Some people have taken to vandalizing these new parking meters. A PR effort is needed, and that is where I come in.
This same company has installed payboxes to pay for parking all over the city similar to the kind you might see at airports or a sporting event. It spits out a ticket that you put in your dashboard and that acts as your parking permit. They've also hired a bunch of temps to stand around and instruct people in how to use these strange new devices. The whole thing is horribly organized though. We've got people standing around to monitor payboxes that haven't even been installed yet, so when I was supposed to work for 5 hours on Tuesday, I spent the first 3 just waiting for the box to get installed. Standing around with 5 other temps waiting. And waiting. And waiting. After about 2 hours of standing around in the harsh Chicago winds we decided it would be better to go wait in Starbucks. I mean, as long as we were getting paid. That's right, there's very little supervision on all this and nothing to stop us from just wandering around the city all day and get paid for it, so long as we are in place when the supervisor comes by at the prearranged time to clock us out for the day. I have no misconceptions about people taking advantage of this.
Finally a paybox is installed and I stand in front with another guy waiting for idiots to show up. That's who we are catering to you know, idiots. They aren't idiots because they don't know how to work the paybox. They are idiots because they don't understand the step by step instructions posted on the box itself, and so the require the help of two (TWO!) people to figure it out. And about 100 yards away there is another paybox with two other people standing around waiting for idiots. You know, in a way this is kind of insulting to the people of this city. The idiot-to-normal-person ratio can't be high enough to warrant this. And get this- this is a 6 month campaign. They expect to pay people to keep this up all the way to nearly October.
As you can guess, I called my staffing agency and opted not to do this job the rest of the week. I have a job interview today, and there was an 80% chance of rain yesterday. I will do many things for very little money, but I will not stand in the rain for those rates and wait around for idiots. I may do it again on Monday, weather permitting, but we'll see. The only reason I want to do it again is so I can be abandoned in some random sketchy alleyway in the loop, and then I can place a call to my boss for this assignment and say "Hey, there's a man with fake breasts yelling at me to go away because I'm bad for business. What should I do?" I would enjoy making that phone call very much.