Week One, Night One: The Beginning
5:25pm, Break Room
The group of us have just been led upstairs to a large conference room where we will await further instruction.
“Let me know if you need to go to the bathroom, because you can’t get out,” the lady says.
“And you won’t be able to get yourself back in,” she adds.
She surveys the room, and walks off.
I sit down and exchange names with those around me. The guy next to me, who introduces himself as Derek, looks disheveled and shell shocked.
“I only interviewed for this job an hour and a half ago,” he says. “It was like, a ten minute interview, and then they said you’ve got it, and you’ll make it there if you get going right now.”
“My interview was yesterday. It took all of five minutes,” says a twentysomething named Heidi.
Her eyes flicker between the group and the flat screen TV showing The Biggest Loser.
“That guy Kumar doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she adds.
“You had him too?”
A chorus indicates that everyone met with the same recruiter for the job.
“Who cares,” says another. “There’s fourteen of us, and there are supposed to be fourteen full time jobs at the end of this. And there are like, no jobs out there.”
What we know about the job is that it’s Mondays through Fridays, 5:30 till 10pm, doing customer service, for six to eight weeks.
Plus, there is the hope of a prize waiting at the end: there are fourteen of us, and there might be fourteen full time jobs that get offered.
“This is my second job,” says another. “I’ve already got a day job.” She is wearing a suit and is slumped in her chair, pressing buttons on her phone.
“How are you going to pull that off?”
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I think if I drive here in the morning, leave the car, take the train back to the city, do my day job, then take the train here….” she trails off, frowning.
“And do this job, then at night, I drive home,” she concludes.
“Are you crazy?”
“I have to pay off my car,” she says, slumping further in her chair.
“All I know is, we’re getting paid,” says a woman who introduces herself as Sharon. “They have to pay us starting at 5:30, even if we’re just sitting here.” She leans forward in her chair.
“And tonight, they have to pay us till ten o’clock, even if they call it off.” She glares at everyone. I am relieved when she relaxes and sits back in her chair.
A door opens and a harried manager type rushes in.
“We’re almost ready for you. For now, just, ah, keep talking amongst yourselves.” He hurries off.
The TV blares on.
“Oooh! I love her! I totally want her to win,” says one overweight woman, gazing at the TV.
Derek sniffs and shakes his head. “I don’t watch TV.” He flips a page of his manga comic.
A temp peeks around the corner from the back kitchen.
“Hey guys. Serious coffee machine back here. You think it’s okay to use it?”
“Go for it,” says another, and a couple people wander back there.
We hear giggles ensuing and the hissing of a cappuccino machine.
The door whooshes again and a couple of people wearing badges and collared shirts with the name of the company on them come into the room and stand up front.
The temps from the kitchen file back in, clutching coffee cups.
Everyone swivels their chairs around to the front.
The first manager, who appears to be in her early 20’s, looks at us through her huge eyes rimmed in heavy black eyeliner. She is wearing black fishnet stockings, four inch heels, and low cut blouse that is belted so tightly at the waist that I’m not sure if she can breathe. She tells us she is Amber.
The other manager is a guy who is smiling but looks tired and he is sweating profusely. He tells us he is Julien.
It is now 6:30pm.
“We’ll just go have a smoke break and then we’ll get started,” Julien says. “Anyone here smoke?”
A few of the temps jump up and join Julien and Amber to head downstairs.
Damn. I knew I should have taken up smoking. I’m already out of the loop.
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