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Oct. 21st, 2017 07:47 pmRight. I mentioned to some of you that I had a temp. job, but never got around to giving details. Soooo...
The one advantage of having an interviewer stand me up, as I remarked even at the time, was that the employment agency that had set this up now owed me one.
This is probably at least PART of why I then got a DIFFERENT temp. job without having to do an interview for it.*
Anyway, it's basically filing. This company out in Waltham switched to electronic record-keeping for most purposes a couple of years ago, but they still do some paper filing; more to the point, they have umphteen years worth of paper records, and they need to figure out what to do with 'em. Part of the answer is that they employ some sort of off-site document storage firm; but the files still have to be packed up and sent off, and they now want to (a) inventory them, and (b) group them by expiration date, so that when the time comes to have 'em shredded, they can just have their storage people throw out the whole box, rather than pull individual files. Since everyone there is busy already, and since I guess one or two people are on medical leave or something, this is now my job. It's unexciting, but at worst will look decent on my résumé when I'm applying for future office-type stuff.
Plus there's free coffee. And the people are friendly and chill.
As such, the big question** is How long is this going to last? This is a mystery for two reasons:
1) As I said, I've mostly been hired to deal with a filing project. Thing is, I'm still not entirely sure of the scope of the project; and the last time I got hired to do filing, I finished it in about half the time expected, and then basically twiddled my thumbs while my superiors hunted frantically for something for me to do. There's been vague talk about maybe having me do other stuff after that, but it's been just that: vague. This is partly because
2) I've barely seen my notional supervisor. I started on Thursday,*** which unfortunately ALSO turned out to be the day she was going to be in a three-hour meeting that had been several years in the planning; and then she was playing catchup the rest of the day, and then wasn't in at all on Friday. So I guess I'll try to figure this stuff up at some point in the course of next week. Because as things stand, I don't know whether this gig is going to end next Friday, or next year.
* Have I mentioned I hate job interviews? Only about a hundred times, I guess.
** Well, in addition to "Can I manage NOT to throw out my back lugging around and/or bent over boxes of files?"
*** Despite my concern that I might need to start the job the day I got the offer, I was actually supposed to start on Wednesday. However, I also had to take my car in to the shop on Wednesday, especially if I was then going to haul myself out to Waltham. And I could have just arranged to start half an hour late (dropped the car off, and then caught a train to work), except that I would then have needed to repeat this performance on Thursday (to pick it back up), and I figured that it would be less disruptive to just start a day late--if they were ok with that, which fortunately they were. Plus I had a couple of other appointments scheduled for Wednesday.
The one advantage of having an interviewer stand me up, as I remarked even at the time, was that the employment agency that had set this up now owed me one.
This is probably at least PART of why I then got a DIFFERENT temp. job without having to do an interview for it.*
Anyway, it's basically filing. This company out in Waltham switched to electronic record-keeping for most purposes a couple of years ago, but they still do some paper filing; more to the point, they have umphteen years worth of paper records, and they need to figure out what to do with 'em. Part of the answer is that they employ some sort of off-site document storage firm; but the files still have to be packed up and sent off, and they now want to (a) inventory them, and (b) group them by expiration date, so that when the time comes to have 'em shredded, they can just have their storage people throw out the whole box, rather than pull individual files. Since everyone there is busy already, and since I guess one or two people are on medical leave or something, this is now my job. It's unexciting, but at worst will look decent on my résumé when I'm applying for future office-type stuff.
Plus there's free coffee. And the people are friendly and chill.
As such, the big question** is How long is this going to last? This is a mystery for two reasons:
1) As I said, I've mostly been hired to deal with a filing project. Thing is, I'm still not entirely sure of the scope of the project; and the last time I got hired to do filing, I finished it in about half the time expected, and then basically twiddled my thumbs while my superiors hunted frantically for something for me to do. There's been vague talk about maybe having me do other stuff after that, but it's been just that: vague. This is partly because
2) I've barely seen my notional supervisor. I started on Thursday,*** which unfortunately ALSO turned out to be the day she was going to be in a three-hour meeting that had been several years in the planning; and then she was playing catchup the rest of the day, and then wasn't in at all on Friday. So I guess I'll try to figure this stuff up at some point in the course of next week. Because as things stand, I don't know whether this gig is going to end next Friday, or next year.
* Have I mentioned I hate job interviews? Only about a hundred times, I guess.
** Well, in addition to "Can I manage NOT to throw out my back lugging around and/or bent over boxes of files?"
*** Despite my concern that I might need to start the job the day I got the offer, I was actually supposed to start on Wednesday. However, I also had to take my car in to the shop on Wednesday, especially if I was then going to haul myself out to Waltham. And I could have just arranged to start half an hour late (dropped the car off, and then caught a train to work), except that I would then have needed to repeat this performance on Thursday (to pick it back up), and I figured that it would be less disruptive to just start a day late--if they were ok with that, which fortunately they were. Plus I had a couple of other appointments scheduled for Wednesday.
