I've decided to stop hounding my friends and family with emails citing links to "very interesting" articles. Instead, I will post them on this blog, which almost guarantees that even fewer people will take the time to click the link and read. But it doesn't matter, because here I can while ("while" vs. "wile"? http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-whi3.htm) away my time as an office temp. Anything to pass the time, which we talk about as though it was a commodity to spend or lose at will (see Metaphors We Live By http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011).
As anyone who has temped before knows, time is everything with this job. Not only are you ruled by the timesheet that you fax in every week to the company that is making money off of your blood, sweat, and boredom, but you spend the majority of your day fruitlessly checking the time, as the movie Clockwatchers (1997) depicted so accurately(http://imdb.com/title/tt0118866/).
As I sit at my desk waiting for the phone to ring or for the odd labeling job, I consult the clocks that rule my world. When it is 11:05 on the phone display, it is 11:06 on my cell phone, and 11:07 on my desktop. Only 6 hours and 20 some odd minutes to go. Rather than irritating me, these disparities comfort me. Time will march along in spite of me. And I log out according to the clock on the desktop, which is the fastest of the three.
This office obsession with time has also seeped into my relationship with clocks outside of the office. I recently fixed my car radio's time display to match the time announced on NPR; the announcer's version is somehow always at least one minute ahead. Does he go by an atomic clock, or is he just messing with my head?
This year's early shift to Daylight Savings was a surprisingly welcome shake-up. Although I hate getting up when it's dark, I love having extra time after work to forget the day behind me and enjoy what remains. This is one of the first times that I can recall feeling so personally affected by Congressional decision. That might be sad, but it's true. I don't know if crime and car accidents will go down as the legislation predicts, but from what I hear, most people are enjoying the extra hours of daylight. Maybe it's because the weather seems to have shifted along with the clocks; it's now officially spring, and we have the warm weather and rainy days to prove it.
Time to answer some more phones.
3 comments:
What a lovely distraction. Check out my blog. Love, the grandmother of your son.
I was wondering, if you were a full time permanent temp would you still be a temporary worker?
Nothing about temping is permanent, at least I hope, so I have to take pride in my temp status :). But then, there's always the option of "temp to perm" (not the hair but the status), where you temp to look for a permanent job. Contradictory.
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