Friday, November 19, 2004

Completely Awesome Temp Job Report, Part III

I now understand the Influx of the Undatable, a subspecies of humanity only seen in The Swamp and possibly one or two other convention-rich cities. Conferences like this just absolutely sewer them in from across the fruited plane. It takes enormous balls or enormous idiocy or both to hit on a person hurling a T-shirt at you; this did not stop the upstanding fifty-six-year-olds of the Athletic Business Conference from receiving, in addition to their complimentary pickle-vomit green T-shirts, an absolutely free “the only reason I’m letting you breathe in front of me is because I am being paid $10.50 an hour to do so” facial expression.

There were lulls in between registration waves, leaving time to stare at the ricecake-colored walls engaged in The Expression of the Temp (“I am so glad I put myself into crushing student debt for this.”) At one point my co-worker Mel and I managed to escape long enough to troll the trade show floor. The vendors greeted us cheerfully as we passed; we responded by stealing pens. Blue pens! Black pens! Pens with a coiled spring for a body! We took them all! Marketing, f-yeah!

Mel shoplifted a mint from a soccer ball distributor. And paid for it. “What th—“ he said, spitting it onto a display of basketball nets. I pointed, and laughed, for what did the man expect, actually putting into his mouth food obtained at a trade show for athletic equipment? The artificial turf samples probably tasted better.

(Favorite trade show vendor: As we approached, we saw just a world-endingly enormous ceiling fan suspended from the ceiling, and agreed that it was, in fact, a big ass fan. Imagine our delight when we got to the booth and found it occupied by a company entitled Big Ass Fans. They had bumper stickers. We took four.)

We wandered past a mammoth treadmill that clearly needed its own land permit and an exercise bike apparently capable of launching the space shuttle. Past the Treadmill That Ate Tampa was the answer to a ponderous life question that I didn’t even know I had: If you really needed to buy a scoreboard the size of Montana, where would you go? Mel and I found an entire catalogue of vendors: Pixilated, flat screen, retractable, four-color.

Mel stood before one that featured simulated crowd noise. “I’ve got one of those on my headboard at home,” he told me. Yes, but did it come with a pen?

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Completely Awesome Temp Job Report, Part II

This is an Authorized Businesspeople Convention, officially sanctioned by the Corporatespeak Bullcrap Society of America, as evidenced by the workshop entitled “Thinking Outside the Box”—8:15 AM Monday, top of the schedule. These people are not messing around. They have more clichés thrown into their Powerpoint presentations by 9 AM than most people see all day.

In all, the suckage factor on this assignment is fairly low, if you excuse the $74.50 Twix in the vending machines, but because my highly specialized skills are so desperately needed in the T-shirt distribution booth, I am unable to attend such fascinating conference sessions as the following:

“In this workshop, we will discuss proper construction of group activities concerning rules, officiating, and full participation, which will allow fun to occur.”

Hey! EVerybody DAAAAAAAAAAAAANCE!

Then there’s this one: “Exercise Programming for the Deconditioned Population.” Translation: “Getting Up and Sitting Down For the Terminally Fatassed.”

But this is my favorite-- “The Role of Recreation and Youth Sports in an Era of War and Terrorism: Recreation and youth sports are an important instrument for peace. In this session, you’ll learn how to implement strategies for promoting world peace into your organization and identify existing youth sports organizations that are including strategies for world peace in their programs.”

That’s really tremendous, because there’s not enough pressure on kids in sports already. “DAMMIT, BOBBY, THROW IT TO THIRD!! THE PALISTINIAN-ISRAELI PEACE ACCORDS DEPEND ON IT!”

I also served a tour in the registration booth, where I met Larry the Horrible. All Larry wanted out of life was to know if every person he had ever met in life was in attendance at the conference, none of whom, for obvious reasons, were.

“Is Amy Cassleton here? No? What about Tim Rosdower? Well, he was here last year. Reggie Hamlin? Not him either, huh? Is Bob here? I don’t remember his last name, but he was definitely at the August meeting, and he is a wizard. Can you just read off all the Bobs you have on the screen there? What about the guy who X-rayed my bags at the airport, has he checked in yet?”

Attendance at the convention is off thirty percent from the previous year, 29.999999% of which, I think, we can attribute directly to Larry. Four hurricanes in six weeks? Ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.

My very favorite registration moment came from the World’s Most Prim Asian Woman, who signed in with an email address of “FoxyThunder28,” closely followed by hearing a guest yell down the line, “Hey, look at that guy’s monkey!” And--yep--there was some guy wandering around the lobby, primate slung around his neck like a high-tea accessory. Because, come on, what’s an athletic business supply conference without your monkey in tow?

OK, I’m out of here. Off to play T-ball for the starving children in Ecuador.

checking the Bobs at blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Monday, November 15, 2004

Triple X

This week’s Horrible Crap Temp Job Hit Parade takes us to the Orange County Convention Center, which seems a nice enough place, free of elevator-riding engineers and sexually harassing mice.

The Convention Center is like all convention centers, which for some reason are very carefully designed to maximize confusion and general butt-ugliness. Ballrooms sprawl, meeting rooms number according to lunar phases, and the Grab Your Ankles And Take The Ticket parking lots are conveniently located in southern New Mexico. And yet, I think I need to take up residence here. The hallways? Are phenomenal. You could sail the Titantic through the main lobby. I want to turn handsprings and backflips all the way down the horrifying carpet, if I could do so without cracking off various vertebrae.

I have ascended from putting my MFA to work making copies to applying eighteen years of education in handing out T-shirts. This is an athletic business conference, which, disturbingly, is attended by a great many people who-- let's put it this way, good thing those hallways are so frickin' huge.

This has been an exercise in why the citizens of Orlando pretty much hate every single person who ever visits here. Never mind 99.999999999 of us would be wandering the streets without the tourism industry; we hate them. Largely for reasons such as this: Directly behind me rested a gigantic sign reading “T-SHIRT SIZES: LARGE AND EXTRA-LARGE,” which of course immediately forced the question, “What size T-shirts do you have?

“Large and extra-large,” I would say.

(Pause)

“Give me a small.”

Compensating for all this, however, was the five-foot-one man who asked if we had any triple extra-larges back there. Not sayin' a word...

get your T-shirt at blondechampagne@hotmail.com

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