My God, I never ever believed being a test scorer was going to be this goddamn stressful.
One of the many reasons I love this (seasonal) job is that it's fairly easy. All those people who say they want to get challenged at work? Fuck those fucking people! I don't need to be anxious eight hours out of my day. I want something where I can be productive and successful and happy. And being a test scorer gives me that joy and sense of accomplishment.
The project I'm working on now, however, is different. Much different. The tests in order to qualify for working the project are not rubber stamps, sadly. There are basically three hoops to jump through and a couple stipulations you have to exceed. If you fail any of those qualifications, you're basically fired.
Worse yet: This project involves essays, which is not my strong suit. I've done a lot of essays this year, and I found them both very time-consuming to evaluate and difficult to grade. I was lucky, however, that in previous essay project I never had to be tested in order to work on them. I do for this one. And it's absolutely difficult. Too difficult, in fact.
We have done the first two of the three tests. The first was awful. There was one maximum score, and I blew it. Worse yet, the score I gave this "perfect" paper was so low that if I do it again, I'm off the project. And it's really pissing me off because there is no goddamn motherfucking way that essay deserves the maximum score. It's a bunch of gibberish tossed together, and it might cost me a paycheck.
So I was shitting myself for the second test, which I heard my supervisor say was much worse than the first one. Well, I'm fucked, I thought. If I can't get the first one right, I'll get so many wrong on the next one that I might as well fucking pack up my creamers and leave and never come back. In fact, right after I agonized for an hour over these questions (something I have never done before on a qualie), I immediately dialed up my temp agency and told them to start looking for work for me starting on Thursday.
I usually am the first person to finish these qualification tests. They're so easy, and once I qualify, I usually don't have to re-qualify. So once I'm done shotgunning through the questions I just get up and take a piss. I have a feeling that the other people I work with have seen me do this too many times, so they must have been having one hell of a time seeing me sweat and go through the training essays in order to get this right. Karma's a bitch, they're thinking. Well, I will have them know that I gave it my all for every test, and I was grateful for every passing grade I got.
We finished the second test before leaving for the day. Like with the first one, I was so scared of learning my scores that I didn't even look at them. But my immediate supervisor gave me a slight grin and said that I did a lot better in this much tougher test.
Great. But I still have this third test to get through, and its scores are tabulated in my total score. I can feel my psyche not taking this test, which I get first thing in the morning, seriously because I was told this is the easiest of the three. Just my luck, though, that I would overestimate it and totally fail the fucking thing. And I would get tripped up in the easiest test, and I'll be out in my ass, all angry and bitter. But I have no idea how to study for it. I am subject to the whims of this capricious test, and I have to pray that I stay employed.
Why do I have to work this hard for it? Why do I have to be tested -- for anything? Why do I have to be judged like this? I don't want to be judged. I'm trying to live and make a living and have a little fucking-around money to be happy. But I might not be able to do that just because I miss a question. Fucking bullshit that my ability to live depends on that shit.
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