Temping

The very first thing Allie and I did to prepare for our new lives in D.C. was to sign on with a temp agency. This felt very much like a Great Decision. We went through the interview process, passed all the computer literacy tests, signed official looking documents, and were sent away with the promise of numerous opportunities that were soon to rain down on us.
The reason I left Pittsburgh at the moment I did was because I had been told there was a temp job for me that I needed to be ready to start on the 15th of February. I told my boss no, there was no way I could stay an extra week at my job because I had this new and exciting opportunity waiting for me in D.C. I hadn't been given all the details on the job, like what time I was needed in the morning, or what building or what company I was going to be working in. So every day for four days before the start date I called the temp agency repeatedly leaving more and more messages asking for any of the necessary information.
I never received a single response, Tuesday came and went. Finally, Wednesday, someone answered my phone call and told me haha, oops! That fell through. We'll find you something else.
Needless to say, I was Very Annoyed.
I called the temp agency every day for two weeks, rarely getting through to anyone, often leaving messages, never getting called back. I despaired.
One fine Tuesday, I was asleep in my bed, the first day since moving I did not set an alarm. At 9:40 a.m., I was awakened by my phone. I managed to answer it, only knocking everything around it off the shelf first.
The woman on the other end was from, miracle of miracles, the temp agency.
"We want you to be downtown at their office at 10:30 this morning. You'll be working there the rest of the week, answering phones, sitting at the front desk, getting coffee, whatever needs done. You need to be professionally dressed, so a suit is all right. Okay? The building is a few blocks from Dupont Circle, call us if you get lost!"
I got off the phone at 9:45. I had FORTY FIVE MINUTES to get up, showered, dressed, fed, to the metro, and from the metro to wherever this building was without using a car and going from the suburbs in Maryland to the middle of the District.
Impossible, you say.
That is what a sane person would say, but I wanted MONEY. Luckily, one block from my house there is a bus that comes to take people like me to the metro stop at Friendship Heights. And I had a handydandy schedule pamphlet on the floor next to bed. Next bus, 10:03.
Now, I do not own a suit. But, I was dressed reasonably professionally if not at all awake and up at the bus stop by 9:59.
I am amazing.
Took the bus, ran into the metro, ran out of the metro, immediately got lost, talked to several helpful strangers, and was up on floor 6 of the office building at 10:36, which is late, but come on guys. That is pretty awesome.
I spent the next three hours learning about getting people coffee ("Be VERY attentive when you take coffee orders, they are VERY particular, you must not mess this up"), washing dishes (their dishwasher was broken and for some reason people in this office were incapable of washing their own cups during this difficult time?), getting the lunch order from down the street (Apparently their meals were supposed to come with chips. Never having ordered from this place before, I did not know. People get really cranky without their chips, but seriously, you don't need all those terribly unhealthy things anyway get over it), and falling madly in love with the guy showing me around the office.
It was a very busy time.
After rushing around and trying to learn things and keep things straight and quickly realizing that the last thing I ever want to do in my life is ever have to work in a corporate office again, I was asked by the woman who had ordered the temp to step into her office.
"So, we don't need you after all, as it turns out. Ha! Oops! What an oversight. Just go home."
"...go home for the day? Or go home and not come back at all this week even though I'm supposed to be working here all week?"
"Not sure...maybe, maybe not, we'll see, we'll call you, you know, if we feel like it."
And with that I was kicked out. After three hours of employment.
I spent almost as much on the bus and the metro and lunch in the city as I made.
No temp jobs since then, no one responded to my calls or messages at the agency that day, the next day, or the day after.
I have no faith in this system.