Honorable Employment

I used to do a lot of temporary work, back when there were "jobs." You kids don't know nothing 'bout that. Anyway, the most memorable of my post-college temp jobs was in a small company out of town, down the road an hour or so. It must have been to the East, because the sun was in my eyes the whole way.

The building was like a small hanger or converted garage. Most of the workers assembled in small open work stations and did... I don't remember what they did. On the other side were bins full of circular rivets, like ring tosses for folks with absurdly muscular wrists.

My job was to throw the rivets on the floor.

If the rivets sounded a solid bell-like tone against the concrete floor, they were put in the "keep" bin. If they clunked or shattered, into the "trash" bin with them.

This was a terrific job for me because it required such minimal attention, allowing me to plot my (awful) screenplay or to daydream about Ranma 1/2, an obsession at the time because it reminded me of my recently departed college life.

Enriching the experience was the fact that each of the employees had their own radios. No headphones or anything: everybody played their radios out loud, all the time. Each radio was about five feet apart. The acoustics of the place meant each radio was fully audible from where I was standing. Each radio was tuned to a different station. No one seemed to think this was purgatorial.

One of the employees was a cute young woman. Next to her stood a "simple" young man who constantly flirted with her. Flirting, for him, took the form of saying "Don't cry, baby, it'll be all right" in a self-satisfied sarcastic way every time she said anything at all, which was fairly regularly.

There was also a very pregnant skinny lady who smoked all day long.

This job ended abruptly when I smashed my car into the back of a truck on my way to work (did I mention sun in my eyes?) It wasn't on purpose, honest.