That Same Friday, 10:01pm
Leaving the Building
I am walking out with several of the temps but I grab Sara’s arm.
“Walk with me,” I say in a low voice.
She nods and we pick up our pace toward the dark parking lot.
“Listen, I know you feel like s–t because you haven’t been offered a full time job, and same here, so I’ll tell you something I found out tonight.”
I glance around, and, satisfied the other temps are trailing far behind, recount the details of my conversation with Amber earlier that evening.
“So you see, they’re not even real jobs,” I conclude.
Sara walks faster and I almost trot to keep up with her.
“Oh my God,” she says. “I was feeling like absolute crap tonight. Absolute crap. Like I didn’t even care what I was doing.
I was like, they offer almost everyone a job, but not me? I mean, Courtney I can understand, but Lindsay? She started after me. What is that? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s because I’m brown.”
“No it isn’t,” I quickly say. I know prejudice is everywhere, but most of the temps who have been offered full time jobs are minorities. And I don’t want to believe I work somewhere where they make hiring decisions based on race.
“Yes it is,” she insists.
I study Sara. She is of Indian background. Her skin is a gorgeous deep chocolate brown. Maybe she’s saying she’s being discriminated against because she has darker skin than the other temps? I flash back to the year I lived in Hong Kong, and all the creepy “skin whitening creams” there being hawked to Asian women. Could that really be a factor, that she has darker skin than the other temps?
“Look at Lindsay,” Sara says. “She is blonde and cute — and that’s what he’s doing, Julien is offering the jobs to the cute ones.”
“I don’t think Lindsay is cute.” We have reached our cars.
Sara stands stiffly and clutches her handbag.
“It’s because I’m brown,” she repeats.
I wait. I haven’t faced this kind of prejudice. I am not sure what to say.
“I don’t care,” she suddenly says. “Whatever people do in this life, it will come back to them.”
“It will come back to them, later,” she says again. I try to recall what the Hindu religion says about the afterlife but then I remember that she has told me she is Christian. Eh well, most religions have nothing on the Christians when it comes to you’re-gonna-pay-for-this-later kind of wrath.
I cast about for something to say.
“Look, Sara, there’s still the matter that these aren’t even real jobs, necessarily.
I mean, these kids — sorry, these twenty year olds, I know you’re still in your twenties — they think they have job offers, they don’t seem to understand that Amber’s just testing the waters with them, making a list of those interested.
What if they don’t understand that it’s not a real offer till it’s on paper? Shouldn’t I say something to them, about what Amber told me? That Amber is just making a list? I mean, what if one of them passes up a real job offer from somewhere else, thinking they’ve got one here, and then it doesn’t come through?”
Sara is still gazing into the darkness, her jaw set.
“Don’t you think this is a huge deal?” I pester her.
She’s not listening to me.
The other temps catch up.
“Goodnight guys,” they yell to each other, climbing into their cars.
“Goodnight,” I call back, feeling a bit guilty.
I turn to face Sara, but she’s gone.
**
Week Three, Night One
Kitchen, 5:32pm
I burst into the kitchen, breathless, with Julien and Amber hot on my heels. I’ve never been late for shift, and I hope they are preoccupied.
Fortunately, they don’t seem to notice my timing, and I slide into my seat quietly.
“You’re lucky,” says Justin, under his breath. “Last week I got busted for being late.”
“What did they say?” I murmur to him.
“They said not to let it happen again,” he said, and I shiver.
I hate being told I’ve done the wrong thing. Plus I’ve told everyone I know about having this job. Now that I’m back in the working world, I’ve suddenly become interesting and everyone wants to know what’s been happening at work. So I definitely don’t want to screw up having this job.
“Can I have your attention,” says Julien to the assembled temps. “We haven’t organized your work for tonight yet, so keep working on whatever you were working on Friday night.”
“But you told us we had to finish that,” objects someone.
“Yeah, I did all mine.”
“Me too.”
“Me –”
“Okay, okay,” he interjects. “I get it.
Ah, we’ll give you some more of the stuff that the day staff are working on. Go ahead to your desks and I’ll pull some files.
Just don’t everybody log onto the server all at once, or you guys will crash it again.”
People crowd through the door but I linger behind to study the vending machines. Hey, I don’t want to crash the server. I’m just trying to help.
Main Floor, 6:42pm
Woo hoo! I’ve downed two Cokes and a pack of M n’ Ms, and I am on fire. I am racing through customer cases and closing them as fast as humanly possible. No, maybe faster.
I am a goddess at this job. I am a legend. So what if Julien and Amber can’t see that I rule. I’ll show them.
Though, tonight, I guess I’ll just show Mike, I think, reminding myself that it’s his backlog of cases I’m working on this evening. I scan the main floor and am disappointed to note that he seems to have already left. Oh well. He can come in tomorrow morning and have, like, nothing to do. He shall be amazed.
Yeah, that’s it! Mike will tell Julien and Amber that I am the best temp. He will say, “HEY, do you guys want to order a pizza, and by the way, you are completely missing that –”
I come to a case that stops me in my tracks.
I lean forward and study it. OK, I am a goddess, so this shouldn’t be hard. Start with the customer’s name. The customer’s name is….Mike’s name. That’s confusing. Why would Mike be the customer?
I push back my chair and take a meditative sip of Coke. Well, sometimes we buy the company’s products, ourselves. We all have TV’s and fridges and the like. And sometimes products are going to break. We know that, working in this department, where we handle all those issues.
So it’s not impossible that Mike is the customer and he has a problem with his — I scoot the chair forward again to have a look — with his TV.
I frown as I scan the rest of the case. There are no notes, just an attached service report that lists the customer’s name as something different. A woman’s name. That’s weird. The customer names should match, anyone knows that. I could have worked here one day and known that. I could have never worked here and known that. I shake my head. These people seriously underestimate me.
I sigh and look at it again. Come on, make sense, I can hear everyone around me getting work done. I cocked my head to the side but the green lettering on the screen remained unchanged. You stupid screen. Make sense. Come on, make sense. What am I missing?
I tossed the empty can into the basket and thought again. I try to think of what I know about Mike. He’s funny and popular and everyone likes him. Even Maggie still likes him. And, Mike knows more than I do. He’s done this job longer, and he’s on the day staff. So there must just be something I’m not getting.
Maybe this woman is his grandma. That’s it! This woman is his grandma, and he’s helping her navigate the customer service process for her broken TV, so that she doesn’t have to do it herself. My impression of Mike shoots through the roof. What a great guy. I should never have thought badly of him. In fact, I bet he didn’t even mean to lead on Maggie. I’m sure I just imagined that too. That Mike, what a great guy. Helping his grandma. Right on, Mike.
I look at the clock. Almost break time. I’ve got to get this one off my list. I start entering notes in the system to Mike, but then I stop. I don’t want to embarrass him. I’ve already been bowing and scraping to Cacee for days to try to show her I’m on her side.
I delete the notes and write a long, handwritten note to Mike along the lines of “saw this case, can’t figure it out, let me know if you want me to do something, otherwise it’s yours” and put it on his desk. I remember that his cube is next to that of Dawn, the manager who Sara warned me about, and I fold the note over twice so that she really will have some explaining to do if she opens it and reads it.
Satisfied, I head to break. I head for the kitchen, still debating whether to tell the other temps about the revealing conversation I had with Amber last Friday night.
My footsteps, however, would have felt a lot heavier if I had realized what I had just done.
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