Garth

My last job ended last Friday (yeah, I know it took me a while to post about it). But the temp agency has an interview lined up for me on Monday for a receptionist position in downtown Oakland. The last time I took a job as a receptionist didn't turn out too well, but I'm feeling rather optimistic about this.

So, I've pretty much just been chilling this week. Feels good.

Also: Stompy Jones (née The Swing Session) will be playing Ashkenaz this Friday. It's been a while since I last went swing dancing. So I think I'm gonna go. I'll definitely have to show up early for the free group lesson, because I'm way out of practice.

EDIT: I fail at calendar reading. Stompy Jones was last Friday. Dangit.

Just got a call from the temp agency. They wanted to know if I was interested in taking a temp-to-permanent position as a customer service rep for an industrial gases company. I mulled it over for a bit and finally said no. It would've been mostly answering the phone and taking orders. I told them that taking calls was probably my least favorite part of my previous jobs, and that I can multitask well but unexpected interruptions throw me off. I said I was looking more for clerical stuff, like filing.

I hate turning down a job offer, and I really hope this doesn't hurt my ability to get jobs through that agency. But I'm sure I would;ve been miserable in that position, and I'm sick of courting nervous breakdowns when I'm working.

We have a car again. It's another Saturn. This one has OnStar and LoJack, though. ;) Plus a CD player and A/C, which the last one lacked. Getting it took most of the day.

My car was stolen last night.

I was at a friend's house in Oakland. The plan was to play a couple of board games, then head out to Emeryville to shoot some pool, and break it all up around 11. We played a game each of Goldbrau (which isn't that great) and Monopoly, then left to go to our cars around 9:20. Only mine wasn't there anymore. No broken glass (and I know I locked it), just a big truck where my car had been parked. So instead of playing pool we were stuck at the house waiting for the cops to come so they could take a report (why they couldn't do it over the phone I don't know, since there was nothing to see there). I had to send a friend out to pick up my dad and bring him there, since he was the registered owner and had the insurance info (and I couldn't remember the license plate number).

So we all ended up waiting around. My dad waited out front to wave down the cops when they arrived, my friends mostly stayed inside, and I went in and out—in for warmth, and out to escape the horrendous VH1 reality shows my friend's GF insisted on watching. The cops didn't arrive until about 12:20, and of course it only took minutes to write up the report (but they couldn't send it in right away and get us a case number, because their computer was down). My dad and I didn't get home until after 12:30. Between that, and having to get up 40 minutes earlier than usual so I could take the bus to work, I ended up not getting any sleep at all.

At least I won at Monopoly.

Woke up at about 4 in the morning with my heart racing. The branch manager at my job had been on vacation all last week and was coming back today. There's nothing quite like waking up to a panic attack, wondering "Oh gods, what's going to go wrong today?" I almost called in sick—actually, I did call in sick (to the temp agency), but after talking with my mom called back and told them scratch that, I'm coming in.

The job is driving me up a wall. I want out. Only the branch manager knows when this gig is scheduled to end; the agency doesn't. They're supposed to call tomorrow to find out. I've made it pretty clear to them that sooner rather than later would be preferable, and that I'm stressing like crazy.

Today actually went fairly smoothly, aside from some irritating messiness when doing the accounting. But still, I feel like I'm teetering on the edge. Hopefully, I won't have to tolerate this bullshit for too much longer.

Just got a call from the temp agency. Apparently, the title company wants me back tomorrow.

While I'm happy that I'll continue to draw a paycheck, I do wish that they'd make up their minds.

So much for that being a summer position.

On the Monday after I started, there was another temp there. It turned out that the branch manager thought I wasn't working out, and had asked for a new temp, however, the agency had failed to call and tell me, so they let me stay and work. By the end of the day, however, the manager brought me into her office and said that they'd decided to keep me on instead of the other temp.

However, this Friday she told me that since the office had gotten so busy, they were re-hiring somebody who'd been laid off from the office before to act as a floating assistant (assistants have more responsibilities than receptionists, as they handle part of the escrow process). She said that if things continued the way they were going, they'd probably want me back in a couple of weeks. And she put in a good word for me with the agency. Still, that means I'm out again.

It's funny. The last job I got through the agency I hated, and when it ended I was really down and bitter. This job I didn't mind so much, but I don't feel so bad this time.

So I managed to convince the temp agency that I still existed, and yesterday they called me in to take a few tests on office skills: 10-key typing, MS Word, and Excel. I ended up doing really well on the 10-key test (surprisingly, since I almost never use the number pad).  I was expecting the Word and Excel tests to be harder than they were: it turned out to be mainly stuff like "open a document", "make this passage bold", have this cel calculate the total profit", etc. I did really well on the Word test, and pretty decently on the Excel test (although some of the ones the system said I got wrong seemed to have the correct results at the time, so I dunno what's up with that). The woman there went over the results with me and said they were impressive, but also said they didn't have any job openings currently.

This morning I get a call from them, asking if I'd be interested in a front desk receptionist job. I said yes (I'm not really in the position to say no), and they said they'd send the company my resume and that I'd get a call from them sometime for a phone interview. This afternoon the company called, we talked, I did my best to make a good impression, they asked some questions, I answered truthfully, and it seemed to go well. They said they'd try to set up a real interview soon. Later, though, the agency called again and said that the company seemed to like me, and could I start tomorrow? YES.

Only downsides: it's across town, and work starts at 8 every day, which is earlier than I'd like. However, it beats getting up at 5am and driving on the freeway half-asleep to get to the furniture warehouse, which was the last place the agency sent me. And of course I'm nervous as hell.

Due today (seriously past due, in fact): more than $900 for health insurance, more than $300 for the minimum payment on my credit card

In my checking account: about a thousand bucks.

I seriously don't know what I'm going to do. I'm so fucked.

Last Tuesday my mom asked if I'd be willing to help out the woman who runs the restaurant & bar under my mom's office. She was running (very) late on getting her W2s done and her employees were starting to get antsy. I said sure. It was a paid job, but also sort of a favor to a friend. I thought it'd be pretty simple: get the data for her employees, get the tax software, do some data entry and print it all out. I figured I could use an unoccupied computer upstairs at my mom's office. I thought it'd be one day of work.

Wrong. First off, the tax software turned out to be for Windows 95, and my mom's office is all Macs. So that was out. No big deal. I typed up the data in Excel so I could calculate the per-employee totals (the data was month-by-month), printed it out and emailed it to myself.

The email never arrived. It got lost in the ether. Also, talking to her on the phone I found that I'd misunderstood some of the data (I hadn't entered a couple of months' worth of data because I thought that a second packet she'd given me covered them, but in fact it was entirely separate). So I had to redo a whole lot of stuff at home (fotunately not all, since I had printouts). That night I dreamt about W2s. I woke up with numbers in my head.

This job is a gas: that is to say, it expands to fill all available space. The information she'd given me turned out to be incomplete with regards to employee names, addresses, and social security numbers. I'd call her and ask for information on somebody so I could fill out the forms in the tax software (which was pretty crappy and unhelpful, BTW), and she would have to go looking when she had time (she splits her time between both restaurants, and is the cook as well as the owner). She's the most disorganized person I know; she makes me look like I've got my shit together. She'd ask an employee for their social and address, write it down on a scrap of paper (e.g. on the back of an order), and never write it down in a central place. I swear she had to ask some people three times because she kept losing the paper slips that she'd stuffed in her pocket or left on the counter or something. And then just when I thought I had everything, I'd find another piece of missing info. Eventually she finally said that I could leave the socials blank on the ones I still didn't have and she'd type them in herself.

I brought her one pack of "finished" W2s, and found that I'd assigned the wrong employees to the wrong company. So I had to buy a new pack of pages and fix things. Finagle's Law was in full force. I handed her the "finished" pack of W2s Monday morning. That evening she called and said that a few were missing. No matter; I printed out the ones I'd overlooked and handed them in to her Tuesday morning. This evening I get a call saying that there was a mistake: she'd accidentally used the last name of a previous employee for a current employee with the same first name.

It never ends!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA