One day during the second week, Hippie Chick showed up an hour late because she’d had a job interview. She’d been out of work for two years, and this was the furthest she’d gone in the hiring process since being unemployed.
“I don’t want to be too confident,” she said. “That’s bit me in the ass before. Who knows how many other people were also applying?”
“I know the feeling,” I said. “I’ve walked out of at least five interviews over the past few months and thought, nailed it, only to never hear from them again.”
Later that day, Frat Boy and I returned from lunch at the same time. Since we weren’t official employees we didn’t have access to the employee elevator and had to use the freight elevator. When we got in, it had already been called so we were brought up to the fifth floor instead of the third. The gate opened to a large room with rows of stations about a foot apart from one another. The room was filled with foreign chatter, and women were hunched over boxes of mittens. Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” was playing on the radio, and they were all nodding their heads while pulling gloves from boxes and clipping on the new tags. They worked with such grace and speed that Frat Boy and I just looked at each other, slack-jawed. We didn’t say anything, but I’m sure we were both thinking, they’re a lot better at this than we are. They all had smiles on their faces.
A man pushing a cart stacked high with boxes got in the elevator with us.
“You go down,” he said.
“Yeah, we go down,” Frat Boy said.
As it got closer to 5:00 p.m., it became clear that we weren’t going to finish the remaining thirty boxes before the end of the assignment.
“Hey, dudes,” the project manager said. “So, I bet you’re all thinking, this job is so much fun, does it have to be over?”
Frat Boy looked over at me and rolled his eyes.
“How would you like to work a few more days?” He picked a needle gun off the table and pointed it at his temple. “Can any of you stay? Please don’t make me do it.”
“I can,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said and pulled the gun away from his head. “Anyone else?” He brought the gun back to his head. “Don’t make me do it.”
“Sure,” ComicConQueen said.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he said.
On Monday morning there was a new temp because the others weren’t able to return. Hippie Chick got the job she applied to and Frat Boy went back to school to help out with baseball tryouts, even though he was no longer a player on the team. I didn’t know Dumpy’s reason, but I was sure it was stupid.
The project manager had to get back to his regular work and asked if ComicConQueen and I would be comfortable training the new guy.
“Absolutely,” ComicConQueen said.
She could handle training on her own, so I stepped back and she took the lead.
“You’ve got to be really careful that you’re matching the right label with the right product,” she said while opening a fresh box of gloves. “And of course you’re going to want to make sure the sizes match. That’s the most important part.”
She watched as he attached a label.
“Very good,” she said. “Now if you can just do them all like that we’ll be in great shape.” She grabbed another box from the stockroom and placed it at his feet.
“Hey, Steve,” ComicConQueen said. “Anything to add?”
“Band-Aids are in the medicine cabinet.”
For those extra days, I brought my iPod loaded with interview-based podcasts. I listened to one of my favorite stand-up comedians talk about the fact that, even when he was selling out shows, he worried that he wasn’t good enough. Rarely did I believe I’d ever break the cycle of temping and be able to financially support myself with my writing. It inspired a tweet I posted at the break—“If you’ve never felt like your art sucks, your art probably sucks.”
After the job ended I paid off the first installment of my debt to the government and loaded my shelves with boxes of mac and cheese. It wasn’t long before I was back in the same place I’d been when I turned down the copyediting job. Had I taken it, my bank account wouldn’t have been so low that I couldn’t meet the twenty dollar minimum to withdraw money from the ATM, but I could live with that just so long as I didn’t have to put on the red light.
Christmas Cookies
When I was twelve years old, I shoveled driveways in the early weeks of winter to earn money to buy Christmas presents for my family. I decided that I was too old to give my mom a card made out of construction paper with a poorly drawn Santa Claus, and I could no longer get away with gifting my dad his own golf balls I’d stolen from his bag. My mom loved my sloppily decorated cards and put them on display above the fireplace until late spring, and my father appreciated the thought that went into my attempt at pawning off his personal belongings as a gift. But when my teens approached, I felt it was time I bought my family “real” presents.
I was proud on Christmas morning when I watched my mom open an eight-dollar bottle of perfume I bought at Canadian Tire.
“I think this is only for fancy occasions,” she said.
My dad seemed pleased with his golf-club-shaped soap-on-a-rope, and by the way he said, “Well done, son” as he put it aside with his other gifts, I could tell he was more pleased about the fact that I’d learned a lesson about money than he was happy about a piece of soap that boasted a fresh pine scent.
When I went off to college, all the money I made from odd jobs went to late-night pizza orders and bags of weed and when school broke for winter break I was always broke. It was uncomfortable to be gifted thoughtfully chosen books from friends and family, only to give a mix CD or coupon for five free driveway shovelings in return.
The first job I had after college that required a degree was in the financial department of a nonprofit. It was a three-month contract with the possibility of an extension. Before that, I’d been bouncing between warehouses and service industry jobs, which always brought on embarrassment when someone asked me what I did. “I kind of write,” I’d say. “Oh you mean, like, how do I pay the bills? I’m a pizza boy.”
In addition to having a piece of paper from a four-year college, the only other skills listed in the job description were typing, filing, and label making. I checked the box next to all three of those talents when I registered with the temp agency, and my recruiter thought I was “perfect” for the position.
I accepted when I learned the job paid a few dollars more than what I averaged delivering pizza. Relying on tips made every check unpredictable, so I could never make plans based on future earnings. Knowing the amount of my paycheck at the end of every week meant there was potential to redeem myself for the previous five years of poor gift giving. It had gotten so bad that my parents put my name on presents for my nephew. I was happy to know he wasn’t getting shortchanged because of a deadbeat uncle, but when my sister would tell him to thank me after unwrapping a present that was just as much of a surprise to me as it was to him, I felt a gut punch of shame.
Martha was in charge of organizing the books in preparation for the end of the year, and it was my job to assist her in tracking down financial records. Martha was in her mid-forties, had short hair that was more practical than stylish, and wore red and green sweaters with busy holiday designs that would kill at a hipster ugly-sweater party. Though she didn’t appear to wear them “ironically.” While she crunched numbers at her desk, she’d have me pull and file receipts from a long, waist-high cabinet that stretched through the center of the office. I spent all day kneeling on a worn beige carpet while reciting my ABCs in my head to figure out if “U” came before “V.”
“Steven, I need quarter two records from the Johnson account,” Martha would call out from her cubicle. I’d pull the appropriate manila folder and place it on the corner of her desk and then return to the stack that needed to be put away.
When Thanksgiving approached, cookies, cupcakes, and candies appeared on top of
the filing cabinet. The festive spread was put together before my arrival, and I didn’t know how it got there, but the diversity of the goods led me to believe it was a communal effort from the entire office. I wondered if there was a scheduled rotation and hoped temps weren’t expected to contribute. Or at least I hoped my coworkers were judgmental enough to assume a guy in his twenties who only had two work shirts wouldn’t know how to bake. They’d be correct. The best they could expect out of me was a sleeve of Chips Ahoy.
“Ooh, snickerdoodles,” Martha said. “It is the holidays. Maybe just one.” She had this debate with herself every morning, loud enough for me to hear, as though she believed I had a spreadsheet where I documented her daily caloric intake. After lunch she said things like “This is my last one, I promise,” or “Nothing but kale for dinner tonight.”
I never partook in the office treats, but didn’t want Martha to think I was judging her, so I said things like “I had a really big breakfast” or “I already had one when you weren’t looking.”
“What do you have to worry about? Your metabolism is so good,” she said while pushing a tray of brownies under my nose. “You’re going to make me feel like a pig if you don’t have at least one.”
Her assumption that my thirty-inch waist was a result of genetic luck was false. She didn’t know that my northern native Canadian roots were deep, and my ancestors sometimes went whole winters without food. I’d evolved to store fat like a walrus. One too many slices of pizza and I sprout man-boobs.
At the end of each day, she ordered me to take the leftovers home by saying, “You could use a little more meat on your bones.” It was easy to say no to a plateful of sugar cookies during the day, but I knew I wouldn’t have the same willpower home alone. I could destroy a whole plate of brownies during an episode of The Simpsons.
“No thanks, Martha,” I said. “I’m not going home right after work so I wouldn’t want it to go bad.”
While I crawled around the cabinet pulling files, she told me about her diet plan for the new year.
“I’m going to have a second cookie today because come January first, it’s no sugar for thirty days. Not even in my coffee.”
I looked up and gave her a reassuring nod. “That’s a good plan.”
“How about you? Any plans for the new year?” she asked.
“I’d like to find a permanent job,” I said and hoped she’d say something about the state of my contract.
“That’s a good resolution,” she said, but failed to recognize my hint.
I didn’t love the job, but more importantly, I didn’t hate it. The hours flew by as I filed endless stacks of carbon-copied donor receipts and thought about what I was going to write after clocking out. Six hours of filing may have been monotonous, but when I returned home I hadn’t been stripped of my desire to create. And there was the added bonus that thirty hours of filing paid more than forty hours of pizza delivery.
A contract extension would provide financial security without sacrificing my writing time—two things I once believed to be mutually exclusive. I’d placed a few poems in unpaying journals that went largely unnoticed, but I aspired to one day find myself in a position where my writing paid the bills. Filing for six hours a day seemed like a low-stress way to make money until that happened.
Hoping to give Martha a reason to keep me around, I engaged in small talk with her, which mainly revolved around the artistic merits of the frosting design on a snowman cookie or her son’s indoor soccer team.
“He scored two goals last week.”
“He must get his athletic skills from you,” I said while looking up to her from the carpet.
“Certainly not from his father.”
I didn’t know how to respond and looked across the room as if I just noticed something important.
“He’s got two left feet.”
“Sure,” I said, followed by a forced laugh. I turned my head toward her and noticed the absence of a wedding ring.
“Just because he gets to eat junk when he visits his dad, my son thinks he’s some sort of hero.” She reached over my head for a snowman cookie. She admired the delicate craftsmanship of the chocolate buttons that ran down its coat. “I don’t allow junk in the house,” she said, then bit off Frosty’s head.
During the second week of December, Martha appointed me gatekeeper of the cookies and instructed me to only allow her two a day. Since food monitor wasn’t listed in the original job description, I didn’t take the responsibility seriously.
“I’m stress eating,” she said. “Slap the food out of my hand if you have to.”
If I noticed her eyeing the filing cabinet I pretended that I needed to use the bathroom, leaving the treats unguarded.
“I told you not to let me have a third,” she said and threw the last bite of a brownie in her mouth.
“It’s the holidays,” I said.
When she asked about my Christmas plans, I thought she might be close to proposing a contract extension.
“Visiting family, but not long,” I said. “I’ll be back the day after Christmas.”
“My kid will be with his dad, so I’ll probably just volunteer at soup kitchen or something,” she said.
Two weeks before Christmas, my mom called to tell me she had scheduled and paid for my flight to visit the family, and I asked her what was on everyone’s Christmas list.
“Just getting to see you will be present enough.”
Knowing I’d have some money, I pressed her for ideas and hoped to recapture that sense of pride I felt when I was twelve. She made her best attempts to dodge the question, but I persisted until she revealed that my nephew wanted a spaceship Lego set.
On the last day before holiday break, Martha took violent bites of her angel cookie by devouring the feet and wings before decapitation.
“He knew I was planning on getting him a bike,” she said while aggressively chewing her cookie and spilling crumbs on the carpet next to the filing cabinet where I knelt all day. “He’s such a jerk.”
“You can still get him something cool,” I said.
“Nothing’s cooler than a bike.”
I grabbed an angel cookie and flew it around the air toward my face, then sent it into my mouth.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
She let out a soft laugh. “That reminds me,” she said. Her slight grin disappeared as quickly as it had formed. She played with a bell that dangled off the Christmas tree on her sweater. “You’ve been a great help.” She reached for a sugar cookie shaped like a present and pointed it toward her mouth. “We’re going to miss you around here.”
“Thanks,” I said.
A few days later I was sitting on the couch with my mom and sharing a plate of Nanaimo bars. Bing Crosby played, and a colorful Christmas tree displayed a lifetime of ornaments.
“Do you remember making that?” she pointed to a clay soccer ball on a low branch that hung from a fraying red ribbon.
“Not really,” I said.
“It was the year you wanted Super Mario Brothers 2.”
“I loved that game.”
“It wasn’t easy to get,” she said and reached for a bar. “I had to preorder it and do some wheeling and dealing. It was the most popular gift that year.”
I remembered my excitement that Christmas morning. After unwrapping the game, I ran off to play, even though I still had unopened presents. “I had no idea.”
“Seeing how happy you were was worth it.”
“I was happy,” I said. “I hope I gave you something good that year.”
“You did. That soccer ball hanging from the tree.”
“Doesn’t seem fair,” I said. “It’s not even well-crafted. You have to hang it from a bottom branch, and it’s still struggling.” The heavy ball of hardened clay dangled inches above the pile of presents. “I doubt you spent every waking moment, for six months, playing with that ball like I did playing that game.”
“I’ve been enjoying it almost twenty
years.”
“I guess that’s pretty cool,” I said as I stared at the ornament gently hovering above a metallic green bow stuck to a present for my nephew. It had my name written on the card. “I haven’t played Mario Bros in years.”
“One day you might not be able to come home for Christmas and I’ll have that to remind me of you.”
“Hopefully, next year that won’t be something you have to preorder. I’m sure I’ll have a full-time job by then,” I said, with a little bit of wishful thinking. I had no idea what my employment situation would be, but hoped if I didn’t have anything going on, Martha would be happy to rehire me.
“Have another Nanaimo bar,” my mom said. “It’s the holidays.”
Now for the Disappointing Part
Clenching every muscle I could, I found a small space near the wall where I stood on my toes. I was willing myself to be as thin and straight as possible. I didn’t want to touch the dirty wall behind me or the sweaty man in front of me, and here in the group of twenty or so people, I hardly looked out of place. They ranged in age from just out of teendom to the upper edges of middle age, and, as if we could be an ad for the American dream, featured every color in the rainbow. Still, I felt like I didn’t fit. Just a few months prior I was an account manager, sitting in a cushy office easily paying my bills and contributing to my 401(k). But that life was in the past, and every day I felt like I was further and further from returning to it.
I made sure not to get caught staring as I looked over each person, trying to determine what events had led them to this room. Two guys wore suits. A woman was in a dress and heels, which I thought was a bad choice. A number of men had on jeans and hoodies. One guy, wedged into the corner, wore blinding yellow Crocs. A man with long stringy white dreads opened and closed a Zippo lighter. I wore khakis and a button-up shirt I bought from Old Navy with a birthday gift card—underdressed compared to my normal job interview outfit, but slightly more professional than my typical T-shirt and jeans.
We had all responded to an open call for UPS holiday help. I was skeptical since nowhere in the job description was there a mention of the hourly wage. I told myself I’d accept anything above $14, which was a significant drop from the $20 an hour I had made at my previous job.
Now for the Disappointing Part Page 10