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Today was the second day of my new job. Data entry, a one-month temp gig. My boss’ name is Marty, and he’s a straight shooting kind of guy. During my interview, he asked me, “Are you an intelligent person?”  

“Well, yeah,” I said, trying to sound humble and vague. (It so happens I have been gifted with intelligence, but not athletic ability and a whole host of other things.).

“Because this job is mind-numbing to an intelligent person.” I nodded to indicate I would still take it. Marty also told me about the company dress code: “Please, no revealing girly stuff. I been married for a long time!” The idea of wearing hoochy maternity clothes made me giggle. Marty’s also fond of that uniquely Cincinnati expression, “JEEZLE PETES!”  

Here’s what I do: I take inventory (alphanumeric codes and descrīptions) from one computer screen to another. At the end of the day today, my back was stiff, and I was irritated with the computer program for being so not user-friendly. You see, I never took typing in school, much less a class in 10 key or alphanumeric, and I frequently hit the wrong key. But unlike Word, where you can go back and fix mistakes easily, this program requires that you hit the backslash, which erases the previous entry. Marty told me that accuracy is more important than speed, and I’m good at accurate. But I hope the other employees aren’t looking at me and thinking, “Man alive, she’s slower than molasses!” If they are, I don’t know what to tell them except that this is not my gift.

Like I said, I may be “smart,” but there’s a lot of things I’m not good at. I have the manual dexterity of a sloth. Which is one of the many reasons I want to make it for real in the writing business and get paid for ideas, not my typing ability. If this were permanent, I would go out of my mind. But it’s not. I have a freelance article in the pipe, and a screenplay, and ideas. And those are what keep me going through another day of HOFFMAN 36” X 42” X 16” NX4 PANEL.