So, as of today, my tour of duty in the bowels of hell comes to a close. I have known about this since April, but foolishly thought that I would get a permanent spot in the fiery pit when Harpy #1 retired and Almost-Harpy went to another unit. But noooo… I didn’t even get an interview. You know how it is; I’m a lowly temp, and they have to interview and consider the permanent people FIRST. Only when they DON’T find a suitable person from the permanent pool do they resort to having to interview temps.
This system, of course, COULD be used in one’s favour… but apparently I am not favoured enough. The manager doing the interviews originally picked two permanent people, but one of them dropped out at the last minute. The manager announced that they hadn’t seen anyone else they liked, so they were going to dip into the temp pool. My heart raced – possible permanent employment after only one year?!
Yep, turned out that it was too good to be true, and that, as I previously said, I am apparently not one of the favoured people. The manager then announced that she had been directed (don’t know by whom) to hire one of the permanent runners-up, thereby once again flipping a glib finger at those of us in the temp pool, drooling over the possibility of permanence. It’s okay, though, because I really really like the woman they hired instead of me. It still SUCKS, but I’m glad that she’s in the office because she’ll raise some sh*t after I’m gone, I can feel it. YAY for anarchy in the fiery pit of filing!
Anyway, it seems that the method here is for Employment to “re-assign” someone when their contract expires. Okay, so I was supposed to be re-assigned. Hey, it’s still a job and I was determined to look at the movement as an adventure. You know, learn more about the Service… possibly get the chance to work in a place with LESS than 98% catty-ass women… Since Employment had known about my impeding release from the fiery pit of filing since at least April, you would think that someone, somewhere, at some time, would have said something to me about it, right? Wrong!
It got down to about a month left on my contract and I started to get worried, so I e-mailed a woman in Employment, in charge of Civilian Staffing. She e-mailed back, telling me not to worry, that they were working on re-assigning me. On Monday July 21 (exactly 10 days to the end of my contract), I talked to the woman in Employment, and she told me that she had two jobs for me. It seems that my two choices were:
a) working way out of my way, listening to tapes of 911 calls and plugging numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. I guess pretty frequently, coppers and lawyers need to hear the 911 call of an incident, so they go to the 911 centre and request a tape of the call. I know, listening to emergency calls all day sounds kind of interesting, but really. Imagine doing that all day, every day for MONTHS. Maybe YEARS. Sitting and listening for something specific on a tape and then marking it. Then filing the tape. Honestly, I’d be asleep five minutes into the job. So, not really an ideal job for me.
b) Records. It’s a HUGE department, and sadly, not one with a great reputation. Apparently, it’s worse there than the Harpies were, here – they actually warned me about it! 
Scary! But, there are people who’ve been in that unit for upwards of 20 years, so how bad can it be? It’s shift work, but only two day shifts and honestly, going to work at 11am some days really doesn’t sound at ALL bad to me. 
Same pay, same number of hours… and the added bonus of being in the building I already work in. So, I know people here, AND I can get here a lot easier than I could get to the 911 building.
There was brief excitement about another possible job that sounded way too good to be true… which turned out to be the case – it didn’t pan out (turns out that the job was only available in September, which didn’t help me much. Not to mention that they’d decided to make it a permanent spot, so I’d have a eunuch’s chance at an orgy of even getting an interview). Which might be just as well, since it sounded vaguely over my head.
So, it was finally decided that I would go to Records. The deciding factors were the proximity, the hours (really, WHO would complain about getting to sleep in every morning?!) and the opportunity to learn all sorts of exciting new programs that are in demand all over the Service. Not to mention that there’s a sort of general idea that people can become permanent employees much faster in Records (I guess there was some sort of coup a couple of years ago – a bunch of people had been in Records for years and got the Union involved. They argued that anyone who had been a temp in Records for over four years – at that time – showed an actual NEED for a permanent employee there, and the end result was that they all became permanent!).
I ran into a woman who works in Records yesterday afternoon (in fact, the very woman who was supposed to take a spot in my office and then gave it up – which is when the Bosslady said that they’d be going to the temp pool. Man, it’s creepy how connected everything is) and I told her that I was going to be transferred into Records. She was happy about it, and when I told her who I had to report to in Records, it turned out that it’s HER section! Hello, Twilight Zone. Anyway, she gave me an idea of what they do in Records, and told me, “I know you’ll have been told that Records is a nightmare – don’t believe any of it.” And that it was the best place she’d worked (in fact, more and more people are telling me that they “learned so much” at Records and that everyone should do a turn there. Funny how they all say that AFTER I made the decision to go there, eh?).
It sounds like I’ll be working down at the duty desk, where people come in for employment police checks (people working with little kids, or the disabled or seniors – to name a few – need to prove that they don’t have a police record, so they come in, pay their money and we give them a letter), so I’ll be working ‘with the public’. Oh, Gods. I hope I get a LOT of caffeine every morning before work! I asked The woman from Records if that meant that I had to be ‘presentable’ and she waved her hand was like, “Nah.” Which is good, because I have NO business formal clothes, nor do I have the money to buy any. I guess I’ll just have to suss out the general dress code when I get there and add some outfits when I can afford them.
The Bossman (he’s been working half days for a couple of weeks now) was in on Tuesday to finish up some work before his three weeks off and to say goodbye as well. He came in wearing shorts. SHORTS! And a short-sleeved dress shirt! It was A LOT more of pale-ass Bossman than I’ve EVER wanted to see, let me tell you. No joke, there was a full two minutes of stunned silence after he walked in, followed by the desperate snorting of people trying not to laugh out loud.
Anyway, partway through the morning, the Bossman called me into his office to say “Thank you” (pfft, ya right) for helping out and taking care of the students. Um? I did a WHOLE lot more than that, buddy! Honestly! What kind of a Manager has NO idea what their staff did for an entire year?! Okay, moving on. So, he “thanked me” for “helping” and then got up to shake my hand. As we were shaking hands, he leaned forward, grabbed my elbow and planted a WET one on my cheek. EWWWW. It took everything I had not to immediately wipe my cheek! Ick. He told me that he was sorry he wouldn’t be there for my “going-away lunch” on Wednesday (um, I’m moving to another floor. It’s not like I’m moving to Timbukthree) but he would take me out on his own one day to make up for it. ACK! It would be like a DATE with Bossman! Honestly, I thought I was having a nightmare, except I could feel the saliva from the cheek kiss running down my face. Ugh. Shivers.
So, the Harpies took me out for lunch yesterday, to say ‘goodbye’. We just went to the pub across the street, which was fine with me. I even got rebellious and ordered a beer with lunch, then had to spend the rest of the lunch hour explaining to the Harpies that a Guinness is only about 4% alcohol and I wouldn’t be a messy drunk all afternoon. Christ. Anyway, we ordered and the food arrived relatively quickly, which was good. Of course, the first thing anyone at the table says comes from Harpy #3, who complained about the tablespoon and a half of coleslaw with her fish & chips.
Apparently, it didn’t “taste right”. She then spent the ENTIRE hour bitching about the coleslaw, like it was some great mystery as to why it tasted bad. I tried to tell her, “Maybe this restaurant just uses a different recipe than you’re used to.” And “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it.” But no… she insisted on telling the waitress when she came to check on us, who then brought the Manager… It was so embarrassing. Harpy #3 told the Manager that she was just bringing it up to them so that no one would get sick and she was really doing them a favour by telling them that their coleslaw was bad.
He tried to placate her by bringing out a whole bunch of “new” coleslaw (that I would bet money had spit in it), which she declined to eat. Honestly, woman! It’s COLESLAW, and a tablespoon, at that! It’s barely enough to fill your mouth, and yet you whine about it? Eat the shit you’re paying for and ignore the garnish, dumbass! Gods, it was humiliating. Our poor waitress… At least one good thing came out of it – they paid for my meal. AND my beer. Score!
