The history department is being incredibly nice to me and letting me work for them in the office. I mean I am an essential cog in the wheel of administration. Today I answered the phone and this girl said “I need the number of the police station?!” This is the first call I have answered in the history office although lord knows I have telephone experience. I wanted to make sure to do it right and so I turned to Ami, office expert, safety vest wearer, and security guard, and asked her for the number. It never occurred to me to ask this girl if she was all right. I just assumed if she called the history department instead of the police department she probably wasn’t dying. Ami said that perhaps she was bleeding out and the history department number was the last number she called and we were her only hope. I hope not, because we failed her.
Without me, there would be no one to operate the shredder. My main job is shredding.
Phone logs, receipts, old job candidate searches, purchase orders, weird things printed on green and white paper. Shredding the candidate searches has been eye opening. Some people are over qualified (I speak 5 languages and went to Yale and I write books while I sleep) and some people go by the name Wookie….(bad choice). Most of the shredding is not terribly interesting but I can’t help but wonder when I stumble on a receipt from a Casino with a room charge of $104 dollars. Either something juicy went down at a conference, or somebody spent a sad drunken night in their room raiding the mini bar.
The shredder and I are close. I oil up a piece of paper and feed it to the shredder and in return I get a box of little shreddlings that I drag out into the hall to the recycling bin. Today Robin joked not to breathe in the paper dust because it is a carcinogen. And it would just be sad to get lung cancer and have to admit “It was from my days as a shredder.” With all the shredding I have been doing, it looks like the history department is putting all their money in Swiss bank accounts and fleeing the country.
So this is the shredder all naked and exposed. Sometimes I get to get out the broom from the kitchen away and sweep out the shreddings. If you weren’t already envious, I get to spend lots of quality time with Robin. She takes me upstairs to the asbestos, moldy, dusty room of death. At one time this room was a janitor’s closet, but now houses our files. It has little holders where a mop should go and it looks like someone punched a hold through the wall. Concrete is falling out all over the place. That’s where we excavate the old files to shred. A dolley is involved. She offers me rides and I she never hits a corner dragging it down the hall. She’s got skills. After we bring the files down we discuss the interesting filmy feeling we have from visiting the death room.
But of all the summer jobs I have ever had (getting out my list) this one has the nicest people, the best hours, and I couldn’t ask for anything more. Well, except money. But then they would just have to take a little more from Ami, since that is standard practice for any financial issues. She basically lives under her desk with the recent budget cuts.
I’ll see you tomorrow awesome work people.