Diablevert

Airline Travel: An Untapped Vein of Humor

So, this is one of those posts where I feel like I should post to prove I’m not dead, but on the other hand nothing really interesting has happened, so I guess I’m just going to try and post the boring stuff entertainingly.

So, just before I flew home on Wednesday /Thursday, I got an email about a possible temp gig starting Thursday morning. My flight, and therefore my broke ass, got in at 8, so I was all, "Yeah, hell's yeah, I'm available. I may have to have my mom score an 8-ball for me so that I'm awake enough to function when I get there, but totally available." So I tried to sleep as much as I could on the way over, which wasn't too bad. I watched Mean Girls and thought it was pretty funny, but that might be the four-a clock-in-the-morning-somewhere-over-the-Mid-Atlantic factor. British Airways has cottoned on to the Jet Blue TV-in-the-seat thing, which was really pretty sweet. Instead of Starsky and Hutch whether I liked it or not it was Blackadder or Scrubs if I happened to feel like it.

I had a layover in Heathrow before flying to Dublin, and I don’t think I’ve ever been that exhausted in my life. We landed at 4:30 and it took more than an hour to get from Terminal 4 (Flights to the States) to Terminal 1 (Flights to the U.K./Ireland) and I didn’t even have to go through customs. “Numb, yet grim” isn’t a quite an emotional state, yet that’s as close as I can come to describing the sensation I experienced at 5:13 AM, after a 20-minute shuttle bus ride, two security checkpoints, and a ten minute walk, to come upon a sign warning me that I should budget another 25 minutes to get to my gate.

Dude, at that point I was just like, screw it, and let the moving sidewalk move me. I shuffled over to the side ---- by the way, the standing/walking lanes on escalators, stairs and sidewalks (strolling/walking on sidewalks, I suppose) are also on the wrong side of the road here ---- and hunched myself against the handrail, practically drooling with exhaustion. Man, those things are slow. A senior citizen in wheelchair rolled her ass past me, pausing only turn over her shoulder and mouth what I think was “Eat me, sucka;” her lips were somewhat obscured by the oxygen mask. As soon as I actually got to the gate, I quite literally collapsed, sprawling in front of the ticket desk with one arm linked though the straps on all my luggage and my bording past clenched in my fist. I must have made quite a picture --- “Dignity in Repose,” probably.

Anyway, I got home safe, and after some hemming and hawing and phone tag, found out I could start the temp gig on Friday. So that’s where I am now.

I haven’t figured out much about this place. It’s a law office, quite a small place, and I’m basically the assistant to this guy. The temp agency said they needed someone, “Um, indefinitely? I think.” But everyone refers to me as the temp and they haven’t got me a password for the computer system or anything. I’m sitting at a desk which used to belong to some girl, but it’s been made clear by implication that she no longer works here. No one really bothered to explain my duties to me when I got here, or show me around, although they’ve been nice enough --- people just keep looking vaguely surprised at the sight of me.

I think it might be because my boss eats people. Probably not literally, or anything. In fact he’s been amiable enough. But he’s a young guy, 36 or so, I’d say, and his last name is one of the names at the top of the letterhead --- the temp agency chick mentioned in passing that she thought he might be the son of one of the founders. And dude. This guy talks fast. I’ve been told I talk fast, but I have nothing on this guy. He’s almost frantic. I’ve been here two days and he’s already asked me to do something for him while he’s dashing out the door to a meeting 6 times, for 6 different meetings. His instructions tend to be frustratingly scant as well --- he had me type some letters for him this morning, then called me up this afternoon to ask if I’d faxed them yet. I had faxed the one on which he’d written “By Post and Fax,” but the others, on which he hadn’t written that… or provided a fax number…Um, no, actually. I’m beginning to suspect that working for him will involve developing either mind-reading abilities or a Forrest Gump-like stolidity and inquisitiveness when going over instructions. Furthermore, he keeps apologizing to me because he hasn’t given me more work, and it’s starting to creep me out. Like he’s one of those people whose leg starts to jiggle involuntarily and whose knuckles start cracking of themselves if they don’t have ten deadlines to meet in the next hour, and thinks that everyone else is like this as well. I dunno. It’s possible that might my time away from the legal grindstone has softened me irreparably. I’m not quite sure I want to be repaired….