8-08-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #172 (Working Temp in NYC, Getting the jobs)

All right. But before we describe those many wonderful clerical/secretarial tasks mentioned in the previous post, a few words about actually GETTING the work (in the pre-computer age):

First of all, I had to call around to find a temp agency that I could work with, a place that would appreciate and utilize my talents, experience, and work ethic. That wound up being Accurate Temporaries in downtown NYC. I had to go there, dress nice, interview, register, take a typing test. Once in, I was pretty much on (unspoken) probation. But then, once I started and completed about five assignments, the people in the temp office actually started remembering my name, my face.

So, to get the work, I’d call the office. For example:

“Hello, Accurate. This is Lauren Agnelli. Are there any jobs I could fill for you from now through August 31^st?”  Or I’d also ask, “Is Denise available for a minute?”  Denise was one of the counselors and the office manager and I liked her very down-to-earth, Working Girl manner, accent, and directness. 

Denise was tall, big boned, with hazel eyes and dark, straight hair that was longish and in a kind of flip. She was an attractive woman who was only about five years older than me, I thought. Then again, we might have been the same age, but as a very responsible office manager with the power to hire and fire, she seemed somehow older. I have to thank her time and again for keeping me working through those crazy eighties and even nuttier nineties.

But rather than calling on the phone, Accurate Temporaries preferred for their temps to actually wait around in the office and sit on chairs against the wall, huddled next to each other. That way, when the call came in for a temp worker, Accurate could just give one of the waiting workers the nod, scrawl down the information on a piece of paper, and send them out to work right away.

Of course, some people never got called to work, so those unlucky ones waited around for two, three hours in the office, then went home, empty handed and heavy hearted. . .

8-07-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #171 (Yuppie Culture in NYC, substance beyond style)

What kind of work was a young temp(orary secretary) in NYC in the 1980’s called upon to do?  First of all, we weren’t office administrators, we were secretaries. And really, I thought clerical work was terribly easy especially before technology arrived. I generally worked for Accurate Temporaries, but also did some work for Kelly Girls, I think.

The hardest thing about temping was dealing with new people, new personalities, constantly. Some were nice, some not so nice; some were assholes, some were evil. Regardless, you had to maintain good relationships with them AND remember names and faces.

With practice and necessity, I became pretty good at short term name recall and temporary relationships.

At work, we had any number of clerical tasks or duties. The main categories: 1. answering phones/reception; 2. Making phone calls for the bosses; 3. Taking dictation and/or transcribing taped memos with a Dictaphone; 4. Doing personal errands for the bosses; 5. Making photocopies on Xerox machines; 6. Sending faxes; 7. Filing; 8. Lastly,  perhaps one of my favorite tasks: Typing drafts from pages of handwritten notes, on a typewriter, usually on IBM Selectrics -- large, clunky, loud machines that had removable font balls and, if you were lucky, had white correction strips so you could cover your mistakes, cleanly and fast. 

Let’s explore each one of the previous clerical/secretarial tasks in more thrilling detail. . .

8-06-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #170 (Yuppie Culture in NYC, going beyond style. . .)

8-06-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #170 (Yuppie Culture in NYC, beyond style. . .)

Looking back, it would seem that yuppie fashion wasn’t meant to be sexy because that might threaten the balance of power and the status quo because, as a wise person was known to say, “Women have half the money is this world, and all the pussy.” Translated: if sex is power, and money is a given, the sex can be withheld as a bartering chip (a la Lysistrata) -- so sex IS the true power.

But, Power (with a capital P) always was and is sexy and so, the powerful players in the yuppie world didn’t have to dress sexily, no sirree. At times I’d look at outfits some of the women in offices wore and thought them quite deplorable. . . but then again, there will always be those who can’t help but choose unflattering clothes. Their talents are to be found elsewhere, in other ways. . . so who am I to talk?

I always strove to dress in very classic, unexciting ways, with preppy blouses or sweaters, jackets, skirts and shoes. . . I really liked a pair of 2-inch heeled loafers that I had, and classic black pumps with no more than 1 ½ or 2-inch heels. My hair was always in some sort of medium-length pageboy, as I feel most comfortable with hair that’s non-attention getting. Maybe it was because I had to get work in places where they needed people to not stand out and look sort of bland. Sure, I can play that part: bland girl in a glam office.

But then again, even though these palaces of power were well heeled, places where I worked weren’t in glamour fields: they were mostly investment firms (Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs), some architecture offices, and the large pharmaceutical firm, Bristol Myers-Squibb. I worked uptown and down, but preferred downtown.

The World Trade Centers -- and World Financial Center -- were cool places to be working in the ‘80’s. In the proximity of Wall Street and all that downtown Manhattan history, I couldn’t help but feel the excitement in the streets and on the subway.

But the things I had to do in most of these offices were so easy I used to laugh, inwardly, that they paid me to work. . . 

8-05-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #169 (Yuppie Culture in NYC, So let’s talk style). . .

Yes indeed, in Working Girl, yuppie style was explained and exhibited very well. . . from the running shoes that girls wore to work then changed into sexy heels at the office to the conservative jewelry, pearls and little tank watches and little gold hoops (hate to admit it but I am partial to that kind of subtle, ladylike jewelry. . . could it be the closet yuppie in me?).

Hairstyles were generally conservative, with excellent cuts, subtly coiffed unless you were one of the “working classes,” where a more extreme female or male hairstyle was tolerated. A true yuppie had short hair if a man, and very manageable hair, if female -- and frequently trimmed by expert, well paid, hairdressers.

Women wore shoulder padded suits and dresses, just like in the 1940’s, when fashion decreed that women could look more formidable, as they actually were given a little more power to achieve, just like in the 1980’s. Some of the suits looked downright mannish, in fact, kinda dowdy. The lines were boxy, not form fitting, and blouses resembled shirts, all buttoned down with little tie-like decorations.

Heels were kind of clunky and toes were squared or round-toed. . . but spikey high heels were also around, let’s not kid ourselves. I had a beautiful purple silk pants suit that I loved, and lots of black skirts. Sweaters weren’t so popular, but jackets and blazers were often worn.

For the men, conservative suits and starched shirts with semi-wide ties were worn, black or brown shiny lace-up wing tip shoes de rigeur. Unusual shirt colors like pink and lavender weren’t yet popular, with white being the uniform, mostly. Later on in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, dark blue shirts became the rage (and they look very nice, in general).

And even though this was all happening, I would wear my beret proudly on my head whenever the temperature dipped below 50. . . and a nice scarf around my neck. I have always had a thing for vintage silk scarves, like my mom.

Oh -- and red lipstick. Definitely red lipstick. So the eighties and yuppie fashion wasn’t ALL that bad. . . just looks dated, now.

8-04-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #168 (Yuppie Culture in NYC, Where will it all end for me, already?). . .

Let me repeat those coupla disclaimers, first:

** News flash to loyal readers: not feelin’ my usual healthy self since my CA trip. . . did Jet Blue poison me with their plentiful fun snacks and ”superhealthy” Snack Up box? Hope not! Anyhoo, pardon the (temporary) disappearance. I’ll get back up to speed so hang on & fasten your seatbelts: it’s gonna be a bumpy ride (kinda). . . pickin’ up old memories for me ain’t all roses and chocolates. . .

*** PS - I could use another real good survival job right now: any ideas?

Yuppies on the screen: All right, other than the aforementioned Afterhours by Martin Scorcese, various Yuppie portrayals on the screen helped form the image that we formed and projected of that sometimes scurrilous sociological species: Yuppie.

All right, so there was Michael in The Big Chill.  In the movie, he was called cold and manipulative, and wasn’t very sexy. Played by Jeff Goldblum in thick eyeglasses, he was also a funny Jewish yuppie. Of course, yuppies came in all sizes, ethnicities, and religions. But, on re-watching The Big Chill, it seemed insipid and unsatisfying. Other than seeing a really young and skinny William Hurt, Glenn Close, and the whole rest of the cast (wow -- well, it WAS almost 30 years ago), and having an all right soundtrack, I don’t like it.

Another funny -- and sweet -- yuppie on the screen: Alex in the television show Family Ties, as played by Michael J. Fox. His yuppieism seemed a reactionary move to his liberal hippie-ish parents, who despaired of him ever earning back the soul he sold to the devil of commerce. . . or tried/wanted to sell it.

But of course the greatest yuppie fairy tale of all came with two strong female characters -- played by Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith -- with one dreamy (at the time) romantic lead, a good guy played by Harrison Ford.

If you said Working Girl -- bingo! I’ve got to mention supporting actress Joan Cusack, too, and Alec Baldwin as the philandering Staten Island boyfriend of Melanie Griffith’s character. . . the movie’s premise, plot, characters, and music was all so well done I still kinda love it. . . “I’ve got a mind for business and a body for sin” is just one of the great lines. And how about, “. . . it’s not even lea-thuh!?”

Working Girl is a classic good yuppie/bad yuppie saga. . . and yuppie style was explained and exhibited very well. . .

8-03-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #167 (The Early Stirrings of Yuppie Culture in NYC, Where It All Started Pt. 5). . .

Coupla disclaimers, first:

** News flash to loyal readers: not feelin’ my usual healthy self since my CA trip. . . did Jet Blue poison me with their plentiful fun snacks and ”superhealthy” Snack Up box? Hope not! Anyhoo, pardon the (temporary) disappearance. I’ll get back up to speed so hang on & fasten your seatbelts: it’s gonna be a bumpy ride (kinda). . . pickin’ up old memories for me ain’t all roses and chocolates. . .

*** PS - I could use another real good survival job right now: any ideas?

Yuppies in photos:  Since I’ve mentioned him a whole lot, I’ll post some pics of my old friend Kris Skrinak (& some of our friends, most notably his brother, Kyle, Rick my old bf, and Kris’s former girlfriend, MaryAnn).

You can see from these photos that he had a real wacky sense of humor and was one of the jolliest guys ever at a party. . . here’s to you, Krissie Wissie (LOL).

8-02-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #166 (The Early Stirrings of Yuppie Culture in NYC, Where It All Started Pt. 4). . .

So. Thanks to my close personal Yuppie friend, Kris Skrinak, I was able to get into word processing as a temp. He'd invited me to join him at the Goldman Sachs office where he worked, afterhours, to try my hand at this program (on early PCs of course) called MultiMate. It was pretty primitive and involved a lot of F keys and shifting on the keyboard, etc. etc. A little laminated template on the keyboard was helpful because only if you used it all the time could you remember how to do everything necessary to create good looking, well formatted documents. I learned just enough to get my foot in the door and work jobs where I'd learn to do even more, on the job.

In the 1980s, when you worked in an office as an administrative assistant, we were called secretaries, still. And because I was on the road so much, I had to work, for years, as a temporary secretary (like the Paul McCartney song). My temp agency was called Accurate Temporaries (they're still around, on lower Broadway I think).  

Accurate had a little office in Two World Trade Center on the 21st floor. This was before the high security measures instituted after the first (in 1993?) and second, fatal, attacks on the World Trade Centers on 9/11/2001-- so getting around into almost any building was a breeze. Nobody was stopped on their way here and there -- we had so much more physical and mental freedom. Getting places was so much faster without all the mishigas of the security stops we experience post- 9/11, in 2012.

To get into Goldman Sachs after the workday, I thought, would be difficult -- but Kris figured it all out. I liked the scofflaw aspect of him having his boho writer-musician friend, me, come in and benefit from using the corporate equipment without their knowledge. I admired Kris for possibly putting his neck (and job) on the line to give me a helping hand. If I didn't learn word processing, I wouldn't be getting work in offices. I had to constantly learn and keep up with technology the whole time I did the part time office work gig.

And that's key: always keeping up with modern technology when you want to be useful. Again, I have to thank Kris S. for helping me get to the point where I could go to my temp agency and say to Denise at Accurate: "Yup, I know MultiMate -- I'm available to work for the next three weeks," and get work. Because from then on, it was all word processing -- typing into computers.

Don't recall the exact pay rate, but it was probably around $8 or $9 per hour in the mid '80's. . . and as my rent was between $300 and $400, it worked all right. Not great, but all right. . . .