2004-04-20 - 10:27 p.m.

Never know what I might do next

Well, I was a rebel today.

My little sub-sub-sub-department at work has undergone a change. Remember, it's three people and me, THE TEMP. No, I will not stop harping on that, thank you very much. The three people were my boss, Betty, the other girl, Veronica, who was supervised by my boss, and my boss's boss, MH. Well, Veronica, after almost getting a promotion in October and getting faked out of it at the last minute, finally got it, and she's out of the department. They hired another girl, from inside the company, to replace her. Let's call her Midge.

A couple of weeks ago, Betty interviewed Midge, and decided to hire her. When the offer was made and accepted, there was much rejoicing and delight and all that. So Betty brought Midge over to where we all sit, to introduce her to MH and Veronica.

No... I didn�t leave someone out of the introductions, in that sentence.

Can you imagine how you'd feel as Midge, being brought over and introduced to every person sitting in a row of cubes... except the one chick on the end? When she was introduced to everyone else and then they just skipped over me, she gave me the same look all the new employees always have, when they're brought around at orientation and told, This is Betty, she does this. This is Veronica, she does this. This is MH, she does this. Then the new employee looks at me expectantly... and is whisked away by the HR rep before they can accidentally speak to me. I generally smile to show I'm not dangerous. But they always walk away looking like they're thinking, hmm - wonder why they didn't tell me who she is and what she does?

I used to work as an office manager, and while I was at that company, our business grew and we needed to hire a full time receptionist. While we were looking, we went through several temps. This was before I had done much temp work myself, but I had a few who were veterans of the temp life, for one reason or another. One woman was with us for several months, and when she left, I got her a little flower arrangement to say goodbye and thank you.

The flowers didn't speak, you understand... purely symbolic.

Anyway, she was so surprised and touched - and she said to me that she had really enjoyed working with us, and that we had been so different from most places she temped. I'll never forget - she said, "People actually spoke to me here." She said that at most places she'd worked, when people found out she was a temp and not a new hire, they didn't bother learning her name. In a lot of cases, they wouldn't even say hello to her in the morning. It seemed really odd to me at the time that she'd be so surprised that people said hello to her and acknowledged her existence. Now I get it.

Sometimes I gloss over the complete disrespect by pretending I work for the CIA. They don't talk to me because my work is too important to be disturbed and too clandestine to be discussed. Who's that girl? Oh, her? We don't really know and we don't ask. She comes in every day and does something; we're not sure what. Sometimes she leaves for a few days and then comes back. If we were supposed to know who she is, someone would have told us, and they didn't, so we're probably better off not knowing.

I'm probably getting the CIA thing from the book that I'm reading currently. One of the very minor sub-stories in this book describes how a particular CIA agent once managed to go for several weeks with no assignment, by using the fact that everyone at the CIA knows they're not supposed to ask anyone else what they're doing. If you had any business knowing, you'd already know, is the basic premise. Questions of that nature are strongly discouraged. This is a simplification, but pretty much what he did was not talk about his activities, and if anyone asked, imply that he couldn't talk about his activities.

I don't have quite that exact environment, but the correlation is closer than I'd like.

So the new girl, Midge, who is SO friendly (honestly, she is), started working in this area yesterday. By the time she started, she'd been steered around me so many times, even she wouldn't speak to me. So today as I was leaving to go to lunch, I did something startling.

I walked over to her cube and introduced myself.

I don't think anyone saw me... I don't think there will be repercussions.

I just wanted her to know that I don't have anything against her, and that I'm not over there in time out or something, not allowed to speak to any of the fellow inmates.

It's just that if she finds out too much about what I do, nations will crumble, powerful leaders will fall, and many innocents will suffer. I know she wouldn't want that to happen.

Odd though to see how they treat a new hire... you can tell she's not a temp.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -