I come to work each day and settle in at “cube 55.” There are about 79 cubes in my office and from where I sit I can see all but two rows of them in one glance over my cloth-covered fiberboard “wall.”
Sometimes I get tired of sitting and just have to stand up while I talk on the phone. From here I can look out over my wall and see the heads and faces of many of my new friends. New friends who, like me, are all making call after call to people we’ve never seen, who are working in companies we’ve never heard of who are living in cities we’ve never been in. (By the way… the secret is to complete a call successfully is to connect quickly—and authentically—in a way that feels to you and the person on the other end of the line like you’ve been old friends since high school.)
It’s a decent job. Hard to log more than 30 hours of straight phone calling in a week. Which is why most everyone is a Temp. “Transitional” workers, I guess we’re actually called. Meaning, we’re each in transition from our previous—now defunct—job, and looking for our next new job. But while in the transition—we’re here.
We all mean well. We’re honest. Hard working. Persistent. Mostly. But it’s also a job. Nobody’s kidding anyone. We give a certain number of hours from our week to our employer to help him help companies develop new business leads to which to market their product and services. In return we receive a paycheck that helps us keep a roof over our head, buy groceries, put gas in our car, and maybe buy a few beers.
It’s how many live, week after week, in city after city. On the one hand, it’s enough. But on the other hand… isn’t there more to life than this?