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Jay’s Literature Page
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| Last updated: 04 Apr 2005 |
(2001-2003)
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A Short Term, Temporary Employment Synchronizing An Entire Building’s Worth of Battery-Operated Wall Clocks
While I was waiting for (*SECRET*) to come home from her quarantine, I went and made myself useful by answering a newspaper advertisment for a short term, temporary employment synchronizing an entire building’s worth of battery-operated wall clocks. The ad said it was in one of the high rise-commercial buildings in the commercial district. How high exactly the building was, though, it didn’t specify. I only got to find out exactly three days later, when I went to the building myself, having been hired. “Good,” I said to the hiring personnel, after she had explained to me the terms concerning my temporary employment. Naturally, she had mentioned also the compensation I was about to receive, which wasn’t much, but to me was enough, really. I started work immediately. A minute within signing my time card, I was directed to the Building Manager’s office. I went in, shook his hand, and listened as he discussed with me his expectations. He also discussed with me the problem with his building; it could basically be summed up to that the wall clocks in various floors were not synchronized. “I understand, sir,” I said. The work was pretty much self-explanatory. All I needed to do was synchronize all the wall clocks in the building. I wouldn’t get into the details of the actual size of the building, or the actual number of clocks I needed to adjust for that matter—I think those things are confidential, for security reasons. I will mention here, though, that I made a rough estimate, on my first day on the job, that by putting in eight hours of work on a five-day work week, I would be able to complete the task in two weeks. Ten days, in other words, (at least) I would appear before the building tenants to carry out my responsibility. That meant I would be needing at least ten sets of decent apparel to wear to look presentable. My first destination at the end of my first work day, quite understandably, was the mall. There I could choose the clothes that would be fitting to wear as I met various people of various professions and social standings as I adjusted wall clocks. Already I had scored low on dressing up smartly. On that first day of work, I wore a short-sleeved, collared shirt with dark blue jeans and a brown pair of leather shoes. I was unshaven, and the hair grooming chemical I had applied on my head was half less than what was appropriate to make me appear cool. (This latter was due primarily to my lack of fundings to buy me a new bottle.) The general reaction of people I had been passing along corridors and sharing elevator rides with all day was that of indifference, if not repulsion. To them, it seemed to me, I was but a regular low income earner on temporary employment—not that I wasn’t, though, but I figured that one requirement to performing my task well was to blend in with the general crowd. In the case of my building, the general crowd was comprised of professionals within the broad age bracket of twenty to sixty-four. More important than the age group, those people, if their yearly income was to be guessed according to how they dressed up, were really well-paid. It was not entirely improbable that these very people had tubs at home half filled with crisp (and genuine) five hundred peso bills. To blend in, therefore, I had to make myself appear to be earning at least as much as a regular building occupant. The clothes I picked were smart and decent enough. They were made of good fabric, nicely tailored and everything, and were branded with names of the trendiest, most fashionable designers of the day. I got me four pairs of shoes too, all genuine leather, also bearing designer names, eight pairs each of ties and genuine leather belts, hair chemicals endorsed by the hippest soap opera actors of local TV, a new pair of “triple-action” razors, an expensive tooth brush, designer socks and underwear, and ten handkerchiefs to match my shirts and ties. Of course I pampered myself to a beauty salon after my hours of shopping. There they cleaned my skin, practically picked and plucked out all the microsopic dirt in my face, treated my finger and toe nails, stripped me naked to be dipped into a tub of “exotic” herbs, evened up the tan of my skin through artificial means, relaxed my hair, gave it an artificial hint of dark-dark brown, gave my nerves a gentle electric shock, and built me up to actually believe that on profile, with the light 120 degrees clockwise to my forehead, I resembled a young male contestant to a “talent” search program on TV. I was then all set to be the presentable city employee that I was, when I remembered I lacked one last effect. I went to the cellphone store and asked the sales person for the trendiest, hippest, most sophisticated cellphone of the day. She gave me a folding T.E.W.B.G.S. mobile phone with flood-detecting capabilities. She said it was endorsed by the most popular celebrities not only in the country but in the world. She said an advertisement for that phone was run on major music channels everyday, and was seen by the hippest, most moneyed audience at least once every hour. The sales person said all I needed to do was wear it on my body, and upon being caught up in a flood, depending on how high up my body it was attached, I would be informed that I had, as a matter of fact, been wading that certain depth in flood water. |
| © 2005 Jay Santos |