2006-05-19

how many calls?

So, I had an interview yesterday through my temp agency for a position at some kind of property management company. It was this really weird thing where the company owns the office building and supplies admin workers to smaller companies that rent out office space. It was to be the receptionist, so basically, you are really the receptionist for all the hundreds of companies that work in the building (and the "ghost" companies that work from home and occasionally use the conference rooms). It was kind of bizarre--all the different phone numbers would go through the one receptionist's line. The phone would show the name of the company that the person calling was trying to reach, and you would answer as if you were working for that company, not the management firm. What a way to make a receptionist position even more of a dead-end job!

Apparently, the receptionist's phone was supposed to ring 600-900 times per day. The lady also told me that it was the hardest job they had and that she had seen people "crack" under the pressure of the job. So I politely declined to take it. It's not like it pays more than doing a regular reception job at a company where you spend most of the time staring at the wall and filing your nails. They also expected you do try to do data entry between calls--how cheap are they that they won't hire more people? I was worried that the agency would be unwilling to find me something else because I refused a contract after interviewing for it, but, they are having me go back to the vi.deo g.ame place on Monday. She probably realizes that the job sucked. I'm going to look online for anthologies of stories so that I can find some material to translate while I'm working.

I am supposed to hang out with Paddy this weekend. As I mentioned, I have been hanging out with him quite a bit--once a week since coming up here a month ago. We're "friends," which means that we hang out, he buys me dinner, stares deeply into my eyes as we talk about life, and then we go home to our respective empty beds after a hearty handshake. Just kidding about that last bit; we end the evening with a nice platonic hug. Bah. What can I say? I still like him and it is still fun to hang out with him and I still haven't dated anyone else, a couple of years later. So, it is probably really really foolish of me to spend time with him again. I know this. It's kind of like a really dumb tv special, where you know that everyone involved is being stupid, but you enjoy it anyway and would be upset if you had to stop watching. Such is life.

xanthium at 2:03 p.m.

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