Temping, Sideswipes, and Crooked Tow Truck Drivers Part #1

The Following Occurred in November 2004 (cue dramatic TV Drama music) (actually, it starts in April. Sucker!, (cue the wah-wa-waaahh))

I had pretty much decided that law school was the place for me in April 2004. Unfortunately, I did not apply to any schools, so I was going to have to wait a year and a half before starting. So I did the logical thing, I quit my job. I took on a job for the summer that involved many hours (averaged probably 60 a week) but I did not really have to do anything. This was much more preferable to the office job I was working at the time. With overtime, the pay was comparable, so I jumped ship, and began the summer job. As the leaves changed colors, and began to fall off the trees, the summer job ended and I was unemployed. I had enough saved up that I could get through three months before I ran out of money and got evicted. So I began my job search. It is a funny thing; employers do not like to hear that you are going back to school full-time in a year. I suppose I should not have mentioned that tidbit, but that violates my never lie policy (if they did not all ask where I saw myself in five years, I would have been fine, but many, many job interviewers ask bad questions, but that is a future post).

After a month of this, I began contacting the temp agencies. Temp agencies are worthless. They care about nothing. They can talk all they want about sophisticated matching systems, they do not do shit. If you are ever in the unfortunate situation of having a Temp Agency looking for jobs for you, the only advice I can give is call them every other day. Persistence pays off. I, of course, am too damn lazy to do that (plus I had another couple months before my savings dried up). After a couple weeks, I got desperate and applied for a job that I was horribly over qualified for. I went in for an interview, even though it seemed like they were hiring all comers, and got the job.

I will not go into the depressing details of the job, but let's just say, that this one is not going on my resume. Basically it was clerical work, that paid $10/hour, a big step down from two previous jobs (OK, it was more like I jumped into the Grand Canyon). The only decent thing about this job was that it gave me the opportunity to watch PTI everyday. Of course, that meant that after PTI it was time for bed. Why? Because the work hours were 4:30 am to 1:00 pm. Oh, and I should mention that Saturdays were mandatory. I usually got Wednesdays off. Goodbye social life. By the time Saturday night rolled around, well, I usually did not see Saturday night because I was sleeping before the sun went down.

Right now, as you read this, I am sure that you will agree that this is one of the worst jobs of all-time (still above assistant crack-whore though). However, the coup de gras was that this place was 42 miles from my house. That's right, 42 freaking miles. Half of what I made went to pay for gas (of course back in those days, gas was like $1.30 a gallon). That would make it 84 miles round trip. Thankfully, it was all highways and I could make it in 45 minutes by going 80. That was only in the morning, because I left for work around 3:30, which meant I was up by 3 am to shower and put on my face (or shave every third day, whatever). I am sure that my neighbors loved the multiple alarms going off at 2. The 45 minutes did not apply to the trip home, which took over an hour. Additionally, 400 miles a week was taking a toll on my car, which already had over 200,000 miles on it.

Unfortunately, I never got the chance to drive my car into the ground . . .

To be continued . . .