DAVE'S PORTFOLIO
PLAYING HOUSE
WHEN DAVE MET ELSA
THE CATS
AD NAUSEAM
WAX TADPOLE AWARDS
That's my life the past six months. Oh, there've been a couple small freelance jobs. But mostly it's been aborted projects, regretful headhunters, and galling alumni newsletters informing me of less-gifted classmates just appointed to the Texas Supreme Court. So, to replenish our bank account while waiting out the ad slump, I joined America's polyester army--the United States Postal Service.
Please, Mister Postman
Maybe you see postal workers as lazy civil servants suckling at the public teat. As dull lower-class drones who prize job security above passion, excellence and creativity. Or simply as mousy time-bombs, seething with pent-up homicidal rage. Well, none of those is very far wrong.
Truth is, the Postal Service is like the French Foreign Legion--all kinds come here to forget. There are grizzled lifers with vacant thousand-yard stares, bristling unionists waging a proletarian jihad against authority, and useless bastards whose sole ambition is to stretch a half-day's work into overtime. Plus a few very smart people who seem happy to get away from some unspoken meltdown in the past.
Me, I'm a "casual employee"--a disposable, Kleenex-like temp. The hourly wage is better than most temporary jobs, and a good test score is about all they ask. Heck, I was just glad somebody actually called back. And "Casual" perfectly captures my approach.
I rarely interact with fulltime "career" workers who get benefits and near-papal job security, or even the "temporary" employees (TEs) who live to make Career. To them, I'm a scab filling a union job for less money. Worse, I use a computer ... and that definitely makes me an oddball.
Using bizarre procedures learned in the two-dozen training lessons required to become a certified "Data Conversion Operator," I type address corrections, separate out foreign or unaddressed pieces, and alert attendants when mail has been put in backwards or needs hand sorting.
So what is it like? Let's call it a brusque workplace, straight out of the Soviet school of labor relations.
I and four or five other casuals sit in an aluminum shed near the machines. Memos pinned to the walls tell us not to talk, not to play radios aloud (the Sony Walkman is a key part of every postal worker's gear) and not to bring in food or drink. But these rules are often flouted, as our supervisors rarely enter the room and really don't interact with us. Screw 'em.
Shacked up in our "Blue Room," we chat and gossip while typing like hell. My colleagues are nice folks--moonlighting housewives, students, people making ends meet with several jobs. The routine is punctuated by an occasional 5-minute break (no lunch) and a check outside in case everyone has finished and gone home without telling us.
The Whole Package
Really, my time in the USPS hasn't been bad. I don't take the work home, my blood pressure has dropped to 110/82, and I'm now a much faster typist. Best of all? If signs of an economic recovery are indeed true, I'll have my days free to interview for an actual copy job.
To help matters, I recently sent out a mailing to a dozen or so ad agencies and design bureaus in the area, giving them my card for the day when business picks up. (It's easy to compile a mailing list when you actually audit their mail.)
That leaves me only one task--trying to explain my recent work history. How does, "Handled copy and input duties for the world's #1 direct mail specialist" sound?
Okay, I'll keep working on it.