My First Day at the Office

Today was my first day of freelance employment for a local temp agency.  The assignment I was given was simple - go to x location and copy y amount of documents for a private client.  Seemed pretty standard.  The secretary on the job showed me the copier and how to properly use it.  There were about eight large stacks of documents and strange files that I was to copy through the machine.  It seemed like it was going to be a fairly easy task.  I basically was going to sit in a corner near this machine until all 1500 pages were processed.

My first issue came up when I put the papers in the wrong side up.  I "copied" about 50 before I actually looked at the output; they were all fucking blank.  Not a big problem, but when I told the lady what happened she seemed quite perturbed.  She had to take down how many I miscopied and subtract it from my total copy score for the end of the day.  I was relieved when she told me everything was fine.  Then, I started putting more into the machine, and, without thinking, I did it wrong again.  More blanks.  She came back, did the same process, and scowled heavily.  I began again, and only caught myself after I put another paper in; another mark off the copy count.  I was tripping out hard at this point about my failures, and decided not to tell her about it.

I finished my first stack after that, finally catching on about which side to put upward (god, I'm lacking brain cells).  When I was about halfway through the second stack, the machine jammed.  She came back, showed me how to fix it, and took her seat again across the way.  This is when things got a tad hairy.  Somehow, during the jam, I lost count or something, and all these files started getting mixed up.  I attempted to fix it by comparing my copies to the original, but things got more and more out of control, until I was on the verge of a total nuclear freak out.  I told her I was going to take a break, and went out and smoked a cigarette, choking down bile and feces.  When I got back inside, I fixed things up, showing the ladies what I'd done wrong; they spent about half an hour fixing my mistake while I sat in the corner and grimaced through copies.

It took me six hours in total to finish a job that the employer said would only span two, so... I feel like a winner for getting paid more.   Even if I suck at what I do.

Gotta have some fun while being insanely embarrassed, right?