I've been a temp for several years now, although I've left from time to time to work "real" jobs. I currently am a stay at home parent and primarily work on the weekends doing passenger counts for a train company, though my temp agency. It's really fun and I enjoy doing it, although it means my weekends/social life are massively tied up as a result. Of course, that's balanced by getting to see parts of the city/suburbs I've never seen before, which is kickin' rad.
My boss called me last week and asked if I was free Thursday and Friday of this week for a new gig. It's the new company's first opportunity with my temp agency, and they've had problems with temp agencies in the past, so my agency wanted to send someone GOOD out there. So they tapped me. I type 90 wpm and have excellent phone skills and am generally very reliable and professional. I'm not saying I'm the best temp/office worker in the world, but I treat temping as a real job, which a lot of temps don't do for a number of reasons. (Note: I've worked with a lot of very kick-ass awesome temps who are great at what they do and are super professional; I'm not trying to say all temps (other than me) suck butts or something. Just that the bad/mediocre ones really stand up.) The pay was pretty low, much lower than I'd take for a "real" job, but it was only for 2 days and my boss offered a small perk (movie passes, idek) and it was kind of a favor thing.
And then I found out that the place is not reachable by public transit. At all. It is a company that runs a public transit line, and their office is not reachable by public transit. Uhm. Hello? Disconnect much? Even if I took the train out there, I'd still have a 3-4 mile stretch that I could either walk, or take a cab. And cabs are not inexpensive. There was a brief moment where we thought that my husband's job was close enough that he could drop me off/pick me up (which on Thursday would involve me killing time for 3 hours after work, and on Friday would involve him killing time for 90 minutes after work) but no, his job's about 45 minutes away from where I would be.
I do not have a driver's license, although I currently have a learner's permit. If I had one, that in theory he could have borrowed a car from his family and I could have used his car, and blah blah blah musical cars. For very low wages.
In short, I had to call my boss and tell him that I couldn't take the job after all. Which I feel awful about, and unprofessional about, but seriously. It's the middle of carland. Urgh.
I had been counting on that money and now it's gone. Ah well. I'm working two long shifts this weekend so that helps some. But I'm miffed about the lack of public transit. Chicago's called the Second City, and we could be First in terms of public transit if we could just get proper funding (and properly non-corrupt people running public transit) and subsidies. It really chaps my hide that money for the CTA keeps getting cut, and services get cut, and routes get cut, and argh.
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