September 2, 1999.

The Upward Spiral, part 1:

My internet whining seems to have paid off; an hour after posting an entry complaining about my lack of assignment, I called in & got three new assignments. Before you get too excited, two of those assignments total three days. But the third is quite promising: a weekend & Monday data entry position that a) will leave my weekdays free for volunteer work, temping & homework, b) is located less than 10 minutes from my house by car and c) probably will not require a large investment in formal office attire, as it will be the weekend. It's also exciting knowing that you're working (extremely indirectly) for a company that used to own over half of Canada. But enough hints. Don't want to get in trouble with the pesky freedom of expression this digital pacifier offers.

In any case, today was a brief training session for this last position. Although I'll be working close to home, today I was required to trek down to my mom's old neighborhood in the city. To celebrate, we had lunch at the Burger King she used to wage slave at...my mom's always a lot of fun when she's on a nostalgia tip, even if she's just returning to the site of teenage employment. We laughed as the manager yelled into the back, complaining of excessive quantities of poutine. Our theory was that the kitchen snapped & decided that they just didn't give a fuck about correctly filling orders. Chaos.

Finding my contact was an exercise in frustration...first I went into the actual store, was sent to customer service (2nd floor), who unsuccessfully paged my contact & sent me to the upper floor (3rd), where they claimed ignorance of any offices & sent me up one farther floor (4th)...where I found a nice computer guy who led me down 4 floors of back stairs, across a parking lot & into another building...where a woman was waiting for me. Although she wasn't my contact either. And I was 15 minutes late. But I got there, dammit.

The actual building was a somewhat surreal place: the whole interior was decorated in that pukey goldenrod colour that dominated 70's appliances...the front hall smelled like breakfast tea, although none was in evidence...under the floor snaked hundreds of computer cables...and it hummed. Quietly. To itself, as if it was a discarded science fiction prop, a Robert A. Heinlein set left empty by his death and filled with opportunistic business people. I clipped a visitors pass to the Pink Bag and tried to act like an adult. It worked okay until I got distracted by pretty nail polish during an introduction. Shiny. Typical me.

The fun really begins next week, when my "partner" comes back from vacation...then we can actually train. I spent 2 hours listening to, "we don't have any passwords for you...and I don't know how it's set up...but anyway [insert 1 hour of technical jargon & incompressible alphanumeric sequences that have to go in a specific place or someone will be shot in the 3rd World]." But all things being equal, they seem pretty nice. I like working with women. They're so...nice.

The Upward Spiral, part 2:

Just got off the phone with Paris. I teased him about liking the Boy better than me ("you like him better because he's a boy!" "no, I like him better because he talks D&D with me.") At one point he ignored me until I shut up.

It's nice having social contact again.