Remembering a failed temp job...and the Haiti earthquake.

When Main ex-Employer was hiring for Christmas Peak Season 2009, they used a temp agency to employ the seasonal workers. Most of the people on my shift and department were let go on December 30th. One of the guys from the temp agency talked to us individually, and told me that I was on a list for a special project coming up. I can't remember when I got the call, but I do remember starting on the 12th. My job was working night shift in the Returns department for Main ex-Employer for the Returns peak season. The Haiti earthquake also happened on the 12th. I can't remember when I first heard about the earthquake, it might have been that night after I got off work, or it might have been the following afternoon before I went in to work. I didn't think much of it at the time, probably because I was too concerned about getting used to the new job and making this money, after all, Returns was one of the few things I hadn't done when I worked there previously. It might have been around that time that I decided to look to see when the manager and lead person were hired on, since neither of them were familiar to me. Turns out that the manager just started at the end of the previous August, and the lead person was hired on just barely over a month before, at the end of November.

On the second night, me and three other guys were sent home since the manager felt that we weren't a good fit for the department. In other words, we were too slow for his liking. It really didn't help that the training we were given for the job, basically a five to ten minute tutorial, was inadequate. I went home that night feeling a sense of defeat. I sat down to watch The Rachel Maddow Show, which dealt entirely with the destruction in Haiti. I was horrified. While I had seen bits and pieces about it before, I didn't get a sense of how bad it really was until then. Since there were no job prospects, I would have totally went to Haiti to help with the relief effort given the chance. At the end of the show, Rachel said that if you want to help, the last thing you should do is hop on the first plane to Haiti since it's too dangerous, and that what you SHOULD do is give money to the organizations that are already over there helping out. I thought, "Well, I can't go over there, and I have no money to give. Poop."

It's been just over a year since the earthquake and my failed mission in Returns. Haiti still seems to be a hot mess. As for that Returns manager, numerous people that I talked to from work after he let us go said that that manager was a jerk, so I wasn't surprised to find out that he got canned. The girl who was the lead person is now an "intern" in the training department, or at least I believe it's the training department, they gave it some other goofy name. Weird.