Days of My (Temporary) Life, week 4

April 21-22: week 4, Monday & Tuesday
My actual training in A/P began, although I had been shown a couple of things the previous week. It's a little frustrating for me, because I'm the type of person who HATES not knowing what they're doing. I mean I often would prefer not to do a thing, than to take a chance and do a thing incorrectly. This makes new jobs a huge pain in the ass for me. One good thing, though, is that I'm not afraid to ask questions.

Beryl—the temp who got hit on the arm—is showing off her insanity to the world at large. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Supervisor Karol was right to hit her; not at all, and there's no excuse for it. But Beryl is just going over the top now, and it's clear that she's just trying to make a big enough stink that the company won't get rid of her out of fear of some kind of suit.

Supervisor Karol scarcely dares to say a word to Beryl, for fear that it will be taken the wrong way; almost anything Karol says is met with barely disguised animosity from Beryl now. Even though their cubicles are right next to one another, 90% of the time Karol communicates with her via email. And even that doesn't work, because Beryl prints out the emails, and if they're corrective in nature or constructive criticism, Beryl says that "she's trying to set me up!"

Beryl is almost spending more time in the HR office than she is in her cubicle actually doing work. She snips back whenever Karol dares to speak a word. She corrals Andrea and myself every chance she gets, trying to get sympathy for her "cause".

On Tuesday, Beryl actually called the EEOC to report her incident. Supposedly, someone there told her she could call the police and make report the incident as an assault. So with that in her ear, she began to talk about calling the police. Great big ole can of crazy.

On a side note, the needed third temp, Coco, started on Tuesday as well. Now the A/P department has all the people that the high muckety-mucks say it'll need once all the work from the acquisitions trickles down.


April 23: week 4, Wednesday
Crazy Beryl does Something. I don't know exactly what, but everyone has had enough. Her temp assignment is being terminated, and she is being asked to leave the premises. In the meantime, I think she might have called the police and asked them to come out. Supervisor Karol was told to leave the A/P area, but to stay where she could be contacted in case the police needed to speak with her.

Some boss, bless their soul, decided to send Andrea, Coco and myself out to lunch on the company's dime. We took a long lunch, ate far too much, and didn't have to witness any of the yuckiness that may have occurred while we were out. All we know for sure is that Beryl is gone, gone, gone.

And to top everything off, Karol gets a phone call that her mother is terminally ill and fading fast. So now Karol is not only worrying that she might end up getting arrested, but also trying to make travel arrangements out of state to see about her mother. Somehow, I have become her sounding board and she tells me all this stuff; I really have no idea how that happened.


April 24: week 4, Thursday
Just around lunchtime, Coco gets a phone call. Like most of us temps, she's still "shopping" for a full-time gig even while temping somewhere. Well, she'd interviewed with a company the week before she came here, and they called to offer her a job. And because she's not stupid, she accepted the position.

A/P department scorecard: down 1 because crazy Beryl was fired yesterday. Now down 2, because Coco (who was here all of 3 days) won't be back after today. Karol has arranged to be out next Monday and Tuesday, since she's headed out of town for a long weekend for her family affairs. This leaves Andrea to oversee me… and the two NEW temps who will be starting on Monday. Poor Andrea. She's done most of the training for all the temps that have come through (except me), and now there are going to be two more. When the only backup person she has is little ole me, who has all of 1 week's experience in the job.

Karol mentions to me that even though the company uses temps a lot, and prefers to do so, there is an actual, permanent A/P position that has posted. You know, just in case I might want to apply for the job. She mentions this a couple of times. Gee, I wonder if it's a hint or something?