Blogagaard As Temp

Many have written to inquire how Blogagaard is enjoying life after retiring from the eye clinic. Well, he's doing alright, for you see, he has a temp job. A glorious, glorious temp job!!

Imagine this: a steely blue office building that resembles some sort of obese Transformer and is located directly across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Paul. Blogagaard works on the 7th story, which seems much higher up than it sounds. Blogagaard's employer, via the temp agency, has rented out half this floor and the rest of the floor lies open and empty, reminding him daily of Fight Club. All the walls are glass and the view is a spectacular, panoramic layout of everything west and north of the office building, including of course the St. Paul skyline. It is seriously the best view of St. Paul I have ever seen, and the first day it sort of made me dizzy until I could get my bearings, like a looking out of an airplane window during takeoff.

I work with a hundred other souls. Many are shabbily dressed in faux business casual, many make awkward small talk among themselves. Most are friendly, good souls, and all of us have signed on for this two month project. The project? To grade over 40,000 essay papers for high school students from a southwestern state (some details withheld in this post, due to signing of confidentiality agreement. Seriously.) After a week of stunningly dull training, we have started scoring this week. We are divided into teams with team leaders and each team deals with a set of six essay responses, over and over again. All day long, with the clicking of the mouse and the scanning of essays and all the sloppy sixth grade handwriting you could want. We drink coffee and tea and instant hot chocolate and talk about things like agreement rates and scoring points. At 12 exactly I leave and drive home for a rapidly inhaled lunch/Internet session, and then I drive back again. At five, exactly, we punch out, and at 8:15, exactly, are we allowed to punch in again (via an Internet time clock program) and always there is another booklet to grade, always.

In other words, this temp job is exactly what I expected and in many ways wanted after all the hustle and bustle of eye clinic life. No more telling someone there bill is $600, or defusing an irate customer while line 2 rings and someone else is all up in your face, too. Just scan, click, and move on. Today I graded 300 booklets, which was the equivalent of 1,800 decisions that would effect someone else's life, however minutely.

This must be what the director of the CIA feels like!