This morning I'm sitting in my chair very straight-backed, like my chorus teacher always taught me to sit. No slouching here! And not because I'm trying to improve my posture a little late in life...but because my back is in agony, and any sort of relaxing on my part will cause much wimpering and pain.
This is something that is going into my "Why Temping Sucks: Part II" article...my attic misadventures.
Yesterday was a pretty slow day. I came in, poured my jumbo cup of coffee (mmm, brain juice!) and did my filing. The rest of my morning was divided up into looking out the window at the cold, dark sky and sending sappy emails to
the man in my life. (I love him too, by the way!) When I got back from lunch they had an all-new method of torture cooked up for me...the dreaded attic. There are tons of old bins and boxes in the attic, filled with Sales records, reciepts, reports, tickets, you name it. I had to go up there, pull all the old stuff, transfer those from plastic bins to records boxes to be shipped off, then put all the newer stuff towards the back. Luckily for me I brought my workout clothes, fully intending on going to the gym after work. I changed, put a new battery in the world's teeniest mp3 player and commenced to sorting! Within 3 minuites I was covered from head-to-toe in dirt, grime, cob/spiderwebs, and the ever-present dust. I started to get really into what I was doing. The sooner I finshed, the sooner I could come out of the attic, right? I was slinging bins around with gleeful abandon, dodging spiders and hoping that I was making a splendid racket doing so. I finished up in about 3 hours. Yay me! I made my way downstairs, where the dickheads that be informed me that there is not one but TWO attics. And attic #2 is about 3 times the size of attic #1, and much more full.
So the lady I shadow all day, Bobbie, takes me up to Attic #2. It's huge. And...hey! How come it's so dark in here?
Bobbie: Sorry, the light seems to have burned out. You'll have to drag the crates twords the attic door to see what's in them.
Me: Um. Okaaaay.
Bobbie: By the way, you might want to be careful up here. Some guy fell through the floor up here last year. Okay, have fun! (quick exit)
Me: Oh Fuck. This is SO going to be a featured article.
After about 3 minuites of dragging bins to the stupid hole in the floor attic opening, I started to hear something.
I wasn't alone! Imagine me now: Grimy, sweaty, dusty, exhausted, my batteries dead (so no more entertaining and distracting music), dragging huge bins full of paper (do you know how HEAVY that shit is?) to a hole in the floor where the light is coming in, while trying not to fall through the floor myself, and now in the presence of something I can only surmise is of the rodent variety? Yeah, the look on my face was 'comical' to say the least.
I started chucking bins downstairs wildly, (well, kind of) not caring how much noise I was making, because Rats is where I draw the line, thank you very much.
I dragged my bins to the clean, well-lit conference room, slammed them on the table and announced "I'm working in HERE for the rest of the day!"
No one argued.
It took me two hours to sort through 4 bins. I've got almost a hundred to go through.
Ow. My Back.
