The End Of Work, Again

I told my temp liaison today that I love working there.  I did not tell him a caveat: Not this point in the project.

When I came in yesterday morning the senior members of our group took a quick inventory of the initial, biggest and most important step of our billing, entering the data for the packets.  We didn't have much left.  And because we are consistently being underrated at how fast we're going -- seriously, whenever I'm in a work situation, not just as a temp, I'm told more often than not that we're going faster than expected, which is bullshit because people in positions of authority can't be that naïve if it happens all the time -- we are just about done.

By the end of the day we had less than a box left.  That's it.  My boss's boss (my boss is on vacation till next week) came over, and after some of the other temps pointed out where we're at and, nervously, asked him what's next, he was, um, forthright with what happens next: Denials ... for only three of us.

That puts the pallor and slight tension of Tuesday in a more appropriate context.  There was that one girl, that testy, needy girl, who I could hear loudly turning the consent forms she was working on front-and-back, back-to-front.  At the time I thought she actually was trying to get attention.  I still kind of do -- honestly, she sucks and I don't mind not seeing her ever again -- but if she was upset at the end of her job, I could understand if she was whipping those papers loudly in frustration.  I could also understand the few times she got up out of her desk and disappeared for extended periods of time.

There's also the least tenured among us, a guy who's really nice but talks all the time and loudly, talking loud and more than usual yesterday.  Sometimes he annoys me and so I just put my headphones on and ignore him.  But he made a couple clever jokes yesterday, and I had to salute him.  Even though he really needs to shut up more often, I will miss him, mostly because he does good work.

Then there's the guy next to me, the sports fan who makes a lot of mistakes I have to clean up for him and who gets visibly frustrated from time to time.  I like the dude, but assuming that he's not going to make it to the next phase of the project, my emotions are torn.  Can't say that I'll miss his work temper, but he'd be a nice guy to hang out with.  Should make sure I get his contact info in case he goes ... which could be as soon as today.

And finally there's the quiet one, the one who initially worked every other day, and worked half-days on the days she was here.  Either she had class or she was sick, or both; regardless, she's managed to come in every day for the past two or three weeks.  Her work is clean and she's quiet.  I wouldn't mind having her around.  Unfortunately, the numbers say that is highly unlikely.

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Today is going to be tense.  With the long holiday coming up and work drying up very fast, there is no reason for these guys not to be let go at the end of the day.  That would suck too, being fired the day before Thanksgiving.  And we still have to get through the day, one where it's possible, very possible, that they might not have a hell of a lot to do.  I could be wrong, but I'm seeing the dwindling packets and can't think of how it could be otherwise.

And that puts me in a bind.  I'm sitting on two packets my boss wanted me to do.  I'm kind of controlling, and I want to do them.  But it's bad form to hog packets when the others could do them.  Besides, I have something I can do: Billing.  There's a lot of billing to do, and I might as well do that and let them have something to do at least for the day.

Then again, one of the most-tenured among us, the girl who's got her shit together, said before we left yesterday that she's going to help with the billing as well.  She's a nice woman, and she only wants to help.  Besides, she has nothing else to do now.  But she can blaze through her work; I'm a little more, uh, thorough.  (That helps because I can find mistakes.  For example, yesterday I got stuck doing a packet over because that mousy girl gave a person the code for the wrong insurance company.  Took me a half-hour to fix that, no joke.)  We have several boxes of invoicing, which really shouldn't have happened because we basically are lopsided along assembly line: We are done with data entry but have created bottlenecks in invoicing and scanning when a more even distribution of labor would have prevented that.  I think she sees that and will work fast, very fast ... which means that by the end of today, if not Monday, we could be done.  And that really fucking sucks, at least for me.

I was told by my temp liaison that they want to keep me around through the bitter end, even after the billing is done.  There's a lot of stuff to do with denials and shit.  How long after, I don't know.  And I have to talk myself down; there's still a chance I could be shitcanned.  Bottom line, all of a sudden I'm concerned with the end of my job, which I have to hope is weeks after the end of the line for many of the other guys who work there.

It's going to be a tough, uncertain day today.