"Data entry" not as sexy as phrase implies

Apparently one of the last of my peers to secure a full-time job, I have spent innumerable hours this summer temping, whereby I join the legions of so-called casual workers helping to build America - and the world - one alphabetically organized file at a time. Actually, that's a narrow conception of a globally insidious phenomenon - the casualization of labor, bad for pretty much everyone except - in which office temp work is probably the least threatening aspect of it. But if I occupy one end of the spectrum, on the other is, I don't know, I'm making an educated guess here, "independent contractor" sweatshop laborers paid by the piece. Or some such thing. The point is that a casual workforce is an expendable one. I, personally, have been expendabled twice (and am working on a third): once, in a puzzling Kafkaesque fashion, for "unfinished tasks" which I supposedly materialized on an empty desk after I left for the afternoon, once by a scary woman named Jackie who claimed I took too many breaks, which isn't true at all, because if you never do any work in the first place, and your whole day is a break, well that's not "too many breaks now is it." Math = Jesus, Jackie.

I enjoy the rare privilege of being fire-able and not having it impact me in any significant way, except by extending my inconquerable credit card debt which just keeps holding no matter how many times I show up in a cheap suit and mismatched tie to some faceless office on L Street where I will pretend to care about meeting the CEO or like the Office Manager or Regional Districtal Analyzalicious Specialists, whose names I will promptly forget, along with my verbal data entry instructions, which don't stand a chance in my alcohol and lack of sleep-addled memory after my regimen of nytimes.com, e-mail, washingtonpost.com, onion.com, yahoo.com News, Facebook, current ebay auctions if any, craigslist goings-on for the day, credit card bill, bank statement, and by that point, eagerly anticipating a fresh breaking news story about how it's been too hot for JonBenet Ramsey to sneak snakes on a plane hidden in mascara, I go back to the NY Times to read about it, then The Onion to read the satirical version - and the beautiful cycle of life begins again.

At which point I'll enter half of one record of a 50-page stack, then go back to meandering in a stupor through the Internet. I could read a book, I could write in this useless depository of unwanted thoughts, I could chat-room argue with Christian fundamentalists which would at least be a mild exercise in expository writing, but instead I waste the time.

I could write in such detail about Bonnaroo, about two rather eventful trips to New York, about weekends with Lynne, about my friends here and there, about the glamour of the Olney pub crawl, the socioeconomic paradox that is our town, my impending trial, how many angels can fit on a pinhead...But no....

For the record, it's been a fantastic summer of which answering phones (once I actually picked up the home phone and said "W.H. Rental! This is David!" which was apparently so disorienting to my 80-year-old grandmother that before I could correct myself, she hung up and never called back. And we never heard from her again. For two days. Ever.), data entry, and other menial tasks, have been a small part. I think in total I've worked about 20 days.

But because I've spent 8 hours of the last four days computing personal information for dialysis patients, the subject happens to be on my mind.