Strippin’

I had worked my heiny off in college to graduate a full year early. Unfortunately, my GRE score was less than stellar, so I decided to take a semester off to focus on raising my score and applying to graduate school. In the meantime, I looked for temp jobs to save up money and gain experience.

After submitting my resume online, I was called in for an interview at the local branch of a national temp agency. Everyone was very pleasant and encouraging. I took several skills assessments and scored high on all of them. They informed me that most of their positions were located downtown (only ten minutes from my home) and rarely paid less than ten dollars an hour. I was very impressed when they found me a position after less than a week, even though it only paid nine dollars an hour. Unfortunately, that temp job ended and MVW job began.

The temp agency did not call me until 4:30 p.m. and explained that they needed me to fill a position for a mail clerk the next day. It wasn’t until after the office closed that I finally received an email with details about the position. The hours were 7:30-3:30 in an advertising agency an hour from my house. A little disheartened by the early hours and the distance, I showed up for work twenty minutes early at an industrial park nestled in a remote suburb. After waiting for the receptionist to arrive (the temp agency did not tell me who my supervisor was, or what part of the building the business was located in), I got an irate phone call from the temp agency. Apparently the email was wrong, and the job started at 7:00, not 7:30. The mail processing facility was located at the back of the building, and would not open without a key card.

The mail processing facility functioned like a factory, where one worker was assigned a menial task in an assembly line. We had half an hour for lunch, and two ten minute breaks, indicated by a bell that was just louder than the whirring of the equipment. Since I was actually fifteen minutes late by the time I found the main entrance, the supervisor shouted at me. Then she led me through a labyrinth of machines in a warehouse and told me to start working before walking back through the labyrinth. My co-workers seemed to only know about a dozen English words. After about two minutes listening to promotional flyers get fed into a large printer before one of the regular workers shoved a box at me and shouted, “Strip!”

I blinked in bewilderment. “What?”

She grumbled and pushed past me, then showed me how to put a plastic packaging strip on a box of flyers.

And that’s what I did all day. I packaged envelopes together, then organized them on the warehouse floor. There were other tedious tasks involved that I learned in the same manner. Since her English was so poor, I would often make a mistake because I didn’t understand what was going on. Then one of the other workers would shout at me in broken English until I figured out what I’d done wrong.

By the end of the day, there were putrid sweat stains all over my clothes–the warehouse had no air conditioning and the machines generated a lot of heat. As we were packing up to leave, one of the regular workers tried some small talk, explaining how she needed surgery for her “pee pee.”

On the second day, three out of the six temps had quit and been replaced with another girl in her twenties, a teacher with a Masters degree, and an elderly woman with a limp that moaned about being on her feet all day. The temp agency hadn’t told them the dress code, so they all showed up in business casual clothes. Thirty minutes into our shift, the teacher accidentally started a small fire. For some reason, the supervisor shouted at all of us.

By the third day, only three temps remained (the teacher had quit).

Even though I hated the job– I was exhausted by the end of the day and I was tired of the supervisor calling me an idiot– I decided to stick it out for the full three weeks. Then on the fifth day, the supervisor informed all the temps that they were no longer needed. A little relieved, I decided to spend the next week with family.

While I was out of town, the temp agency called me and asked if I had been paid. The company was not paying any of the temps. After the temp agency argued with the company for a few days, I finally received a direct deposit. Noticing that my paycheck was a little smaller than I’d anticipated, I did the math. I’d been paid minimum wage. The temp agency had told me I would be making $8.50.