Sunday, January 11, 2004
Laughing all the way to the bank
Ok, maybe I"m not really laughing all the way to the bank. I'm crawling there. LIke my mom pointed out, once you started working, all you wished for was to go back to studying. With a bit of luck and a recommandation by lz ( thanke gal!) to call up an employment agency, I landed myself a relatively well paying job at TLL , a tuition center ( or as they liked to put it, an enrichment center)
I was totally unprepared for the first day, being calle dto the job a mere 3 hours before I was supposed to start.l I was clad casually in a blue top and some khakis. OH BOY. i looked like a fish out of water amidst a backdrop of neat looking people in executive suits. Wait.. i thought this was a tuition agency. So I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore the furtive glances that the others were shooting in my direction. DM, my supervisor, immediately piled me with a messy pile of papers to sort and file. Then she yanked me out of the room halfway through my sorting and gave me another job, soon after, she did it again. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and left with a whole accumulated pile of half done assignments. No one reallly talked to me and I was feeling rather lonely and awkward. Thank goodness the money was good.
On day 2, I was clad slightly more appropriately. More jobs were dumped on me. And I had to go overtime to finish some of them. Most people still ignored me in the corner of the room. I was too tired to try to make more friends.
On day 3, I started chatting up with a new temp R. One of my colleagues treated teh whole office by cooking Lontong for us. I also moved my workstation temporarily into the MIS room where the hub of the IT management was. The conversations that flew across the cramped room perked me up. The guys were utterly hilarious and they had teh room in a throes of laughter as they exchanged vibes. I had to make phone calls to check the details of students. Relief from parting with my mundane data entry task quickly turned into despair as I encountered some sharp tongued, irrate parents who had already informed the center about changes many months ago. We had to send out a a thousand plus bills to the studnets. So DM called for more temps and guess who came in.? HH!!! Whhhhheeeeeeeee..! We spend the afternoon checking endless bills , adding up numerals , folding the letters and popping them in envelopes. Just as we were finishing the lot in the evening, marc strode into teh room looking very frazzled and ordered us to halt. There had been a mistake and we had to rip out the letters and start from scratch. We were too tired even to moan. I started my day at 9am and I ende dit at 9pm. I think that's agaisnt the labour laws, but I looked like shit and felt like it and simply coudln't give a damn.
Despite the earlier hiccups and misgivings and the endless piles of data entry and filing to be done, I grew to love the job. The people were nice, supervisors hardly talked down to the other employees. The env was pretty cheery, except when the boss walked the floor. I got to go to ikea with my old friend CCG and shop for office furniture, I got to work that nifty looking thermal scan and direct the traffic of kids. I got to dress up and look like an exacutive. and on top of the list.. i get to earn $$ ( KER CHING!!!)
Ok, maybe I"m not really laughing all the way to the bank. I'm crawling there. LIke my mom pointed out, once you started working, all you wished for was to go back to studying. With a bit of luck and a recommandation by lz ( thanke gal!) to call up an employment agency, I landed myself a relatively well paying job at TLL , a tuition center ( or as they liked to put it, an enrichment center)
I was totally unprepared for the first day, being calle dto the job a mere 3 hours before I was supposed to start.l I was clad casually in a blue top and some khakis. OH BOY. i looked like a fish out of water amidst a backdrop of neat looking people in executive suits. Wait.. i thought this was a tuition agency. So I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore the furtive glances that the others were shooting in my direction. DM, my supervisor, immediately piled me with a messy pile of papers to sort and file. Then she yanked me out of the room halfway through my sorting and gave me another job, soon after, she did it again. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and left with a whole accumulated pile of half done assignments. No one reallly talked to me and I was feeling rather lonely and awkward. Thank goodness the money was good.
On day 2, I was clad slightly more appropriately. More jobs were dumped on me. And I had to go overtime to finish some of them. Most people still ignored me in the corner of the room. I was too tired to try to make more friends.
On day 3, I started chatting up with a new temp R. One of my colleagues treated teh whole office by cooking Lontong for us. I also moved my workstation temporarily into the MIS room where the hub of the IT management was. The conversations that flew across the cramped room perked me up. The guys were utterly hilarious and they had teh room in a throes of laughter as they exchanged vibes. I had to make phone calls to check the details of students. Relief from parting with my mundane data entry task quickly turned into despair as I encountered some sharp tongued, irrate parents who had already informed the center about changes many months ago. We had to send out a a thousand plus bills to the studnets. So DM called for more temps and guess who came in.? HH!!! Whhhhheeeeeeeee..! We spend the afternoon checking endless bills , adding up numerals , folding the letters and popping them in envelopes. Just as we were finishing the lot in the evening, marc strode into teh room looking very frazzled and ordered us to halt. There had been a mistake and we had to rip out the letters and start from scratch. We were too tired even to moan. I started my day at 9am and I ende dit at 9pm. I think that's agaisnt the labour laws, but I looked like shit and felt like it and simply coudln't give a damn.
Despite the earlier hiccups and misgivings and the endless piles of data entry and filing to be done, I grew to love the job. The people were nice, supervisors hardly talked down to the other employees. The env was pretty cheery, except when the boss walked the floor. I got to go to ikea with my old friend CCG and shop for office furniture, I got to work that nifty looking thermal scan and direct the traffic of kids. I got to dress up and look like an exacutive. and on top of the list.. i get to earn $$ ( KER CHING!!!)
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