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brigidI'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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-14 06:36 pm (UTC)ARGH! SEPTA (in Philadelphia) is like this. In my current city (New Orleans), it's pretty practical to have a bike: our streets are flat, our winters are pretty tame, our drivers are accustomed to driving with bikers, pretty much every business has a safe place to lock up a couple bikes. But when I lived in Philly? Biking was taking my life in my hands. It was a terrible risk, and I hated having to climb on my bike to get somewhere that the bus didn't service.
I think it's re-freaking-diculous to be in that situation, and I totally feel your pain.
Re: PinesandMaples Philly
Date: 2010-09-15 08:13 am (UTC)West Philly, the best Philly
Date: 2010-09-15 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 08:26 am (UTC)I saw people doing the job you do on the buses I used to take. They sat behind the driver and hit this little hand held gadget to keep count of who boarded , noting locations on a clipboard.
I understand your frustration over transit cuts. In the city I lived in there was this mentality that you were a low life if you took the city bus. This is due to the fact a lot of the homeless mentally ill people would get free bus passes and just ride around the city all day. The bizarre behavior some of them exhibited scared the people who used the buses to commute to and from work. So, to keep that element out of the more upper scale areas of the city, they cut services. Which ended up screwing a lot of the workers that needed it to get to jobs in that area.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 04:35 pm (UTC)For Metra, I ride on the train and have a fancy notebook that I write numbers in with a pencil. It's very low tech. Some people ride the Metra solely to get drunk (they drink on the train and they pub crawl using it) and are general assholes and a few of them have actively tried to mess up the count, which can result in a passenger counter being fired. It's really... special. Other than that, it's an awesome job.
Some people who are homeless-- or can't afford heat or AC, depending on the time of year-- do ride the CTA around (CTA is mostly within the city, while Metra is long distance suburb commuting and has, like, soft seats and actual tickets and conductors and most lines have toilets on the trains, fancy pants) especially over night. I used to work with a woman who decided she had Had Enough and fled an abusive partner, but was very new to the city and had no idea where any shelters were, so she rode the train all night until it was time to come to work. The crazydanger quotient is pretty low overall, though. The service cuts generally involve buses in low income communities, meaning that people either can't get to work or else a bus that once came every 20 minutes now comes every 45-60 minutes fouling up the commute. School kids who live within a certain range of their school also walk or take public transit to school, instead of school buses. So it's possible to wait for a bus and see 3 or 4 in a row go past completely jam packed.