Moisture Is The Essence Of Wetness

It’s an odd feeling to see the national news talk about how bad the weather is where you are. We got some rain up in here yesterday. And some mudslides, some city streets opening up under cars, some major flooding, some 100 mile an hour winds on the coast. We remained pretty okay up on Capitol Hill, but it was, without a doubt, one of the wettest days I’ve ever witnessed.

*Insert “your mom” joke here.

I was reminded, as I watched the parking lot outside my work window turn into a white capped wading pool, of a temp job I had in San Francisco. It was during the winter of aught two and SF was getting a nice hit of wet winter itself. We were living in an apartment that had the fun little amenity of a bathroom sink that made like a geyser of cold, dirty water whenever it rained with some intensity. Combine this with a less than useful landlord who was upset that they couldn’t charge us $1500 for rent when they bought the place as we were already living there, and I had a lot of late nights, ankle deep in runoff, trying to mop up a bathroom.

But I digress. After being laid off, I scored a posh temp gig (and by posh I mean, well, not posh) at a self storage facility. Duties were to include: filing, answering phones, renting spaces and apparently calling renters whose units had been flooded when the biblical deluge hit 13th and Duboce.

Man, it was messy. This place started taking on water like it had hit an iceberg (and my heart did, in fact, go on). The owners, who I had never seen before this time, came rushing in to shout orders to poorly paid minions with wet/dry shop vacs. They decided it would be a good idea for someone to call the soon to be upset renters, with treasures so cherished they were locked away from home, and let them know that their belongings were probably now ruined. This would be a good job for the temp they decided.

This is probably a good place to mention that the day prior to this, I got the phone call informing me of a real job. This day, Wet Friday I like to call it, would be my last there at the self storage place.

So I started calling people. I got a lot of sad stories about record collections and files and grandma’s goose down quilt, I got to talk to some very upset people. And then one guy who was bat shit pissed. He screamed, he swore, he made vague and unpleasant accusations about my mother’s good standing in the community.

I have dreams, I do, about my final days at jobs I don’t like. Most of them involve telling off people that I’ve had to keep quiet to for too long. There was a customer I had to deal with at a company in Florida that was so awful that it made me want to throw up when I had to call her. I promised myself that on my last day at that job I would call her up and make liberal use of the C word until she either began crying or someone drug me away from the phone, cackling and shouting obscenities. But I never actually do or say the things that I dream of. But:

After listening to this guy rant at top pitch for a good five minutes, I quite calmly said to him, “Sir, I’m a temp here and it’s my last day. You are yelling at the wrong fucking guy.” I then hung up the phone, walked out to the swamp that was the bottom floor of the units and told the owners good luck and good bye.

It still feels good…