I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I took a temp test today. I’ve never been a temp; it appeals to me as much as a shit sandwich, really. But I’m broke. I haven’t had a regular job since April and comical cartoon moths fly out of the pinch-top change purse I keep my dope and booze money in. So I sucked it up and went in (and was wildly late since I woke up AT the time I was supposed to be in the office—ruh-roh).

I took a Word test and a typing test. I’m a largely make-it-up-as-you-go typist, learned from the mean-streets of 17 years of message boards and chatting. I did, I think, pretty fucking well—55 WPM with 99 accuracy.

I did go back and change my typos as I went, slowing it down. I also got too invested in what I was typing, which was about how typerwriters used to be common in offices and now everyone has a personal computer, but really productivity hasn’t increased because of it. I ended up kind of getting lost in my thoughts about how I’d probably be a terrible secretary back in the 60s (the jury’s out on how bad a secretary I’m going to be in the modern age)... and then the test abruptly stopped after five minutes as I was in the middle of typing/daydreaming. Which was kind of sad. I like to see things through to the end.

There was also a Word test. I use Word for typing… only. I used MailMerge once and it was a disaster. I’ve made a few columns and tables in my time (for resumes, appropriately enough). The test was a lot of “click or do the keyboard shortcut for this function” and I was honestly guessing most of the time. I scored “expert” in a lot of the basic sections and “average” on tables, functions and shit like that. I got “needs training” on advanced things and ironically enough scored lowest on “graphics.” I suppose its because if I needed to make a graphic I sure as fuck wouldn’t be doing in in Word. Making squiggly yellow shapes and filling them with rainbow-colored squished type and clip art has never entered my skill set.

The day before I was supposed to go in for this tournament of debasement, we heard that we got our contract (after 11 months) to make new episodes of Cakey! for (some internet entity that I’m contractually obligated not to mention). I hope they don’t give me a typing test, too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Progress.