Today I had a one-day temp job in a very small town about 30 minutes away. It didn't seem so bad--just answer the phones in a lawyer's office--so I said okay. They seemed desperate to find someone on such short notice.
What they didn't tell me was that I would be temping for the Devil.
Let's call him Larry. Larry seems like a nice, lawyerly name. Also I have a deadbeat lawyer uncle named Larry, so it fits.
I got there at 8:30 and walked in the front door and came face-to-face with a sheep. A mounted head of one, anyway. Ill-thought out place to put one, IMHO. Not only was the sheep on the wall, but the office smelled as though the sheep and its recent geneology had been grazing in the office as well--in other words, it stunk so bad I almost asked what was wrong. Apparently nothing was.
Instant headache. Then the normal receptionist leaves (why? I don't know) and I am left to cover the phones, e-mail, fax, and a large and thick file of things I didn't and still don't know anything about.
Larry comes in, says hi, says, "If you need to call me, page me on the intercom." WTF? His office door is two feet away and I can see him from my desk. Needless to say, things got worse: he was always crabby if I paged him, and then crabby again if I didn't page him right after I answered the phone (in case it might be for him). Larry knew nothing about computers, and he's only 50 so he shouldn't be that bad. And Larry knew nothing about social graces, such as not cussing everything to hell and back again in front of someone he's known for less than three hours. Then he'd look at me and say, smiling, "Is there anything else for me?"
There's a word for this...ah yes, bi-polar.
I can't possibly explain the smell, the dirtiness, the ill-organization (no wonder Larry was swearing), and how I got treated like dirt. There's nothing quite like stepping into a new office with its own little idiosyncrasies that can't be made worse by yelling at the poor temp worker who is not at fault and would like, very much thank you, to crawl under the desk and make the bad devil man go away. But I smiled at him every time he looked at me, I helped him look for the things he needed, I figured out where the things I needed were without asking, and I bit my tongue so hard and so many times that I think it's going to fall off.
So please, I would like to get my sainthood now. Ending a day without losing it or purposely doing a bad job or complaining to my temp agency should qualify me for a halo and the prefix both.
--Saint Angloesque