8-28-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #192 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 5)

Besides asking me to frequently update his list of many and sundry possessions for insurance company updates, Raymond Joslin had a little side project going (besides spending time on reviewing his investments -- he’d get Wells Fargo Bank statements that I’d file for him, in the filing room behind “my” desk).

He was working on his memoirs: apparently, he was seeing a psychotherapist who told him it would be good for him to reminisce about his early life and write it down. So, being an old school kind of executive (who didn’t type), he’d dictate these reminiscences and have his assistant type them up. Since his usual assistant was away, he readily dumped those microcassettes on my desk and had me transcribe for him.

Admittedly, I like to transcribe, but I couldn’t help smirking at the stuff he was saying and having memorialized. I guess it was the tone of the memoir, not the content: he sounded very first person Dickensian-cum-Horatio Alger. You know, the poor little waif who, by dint of pluck, hard work, and luck, pulls himself up by his bootstraps and makes something of himself. A sour note of resentment ran through it, though. . . maybe his parents rejected him and his grandparents raised him, maybe the people in his church didn’t give enough of a helping hand. . . I just thought some of it sounded unbecoming.

I did hope that he was going to do a LOT of editing. Or, I hoped that he could change the way he was thinking about things from his past. As Epictetus was teaching me by reading my little book of the Stoic philosopher’s quotes, daily, he points out how we’re powerless to change anything in life but our attitudes towards it and things that happen in life. . .

If that’s not invaluable advice, nothing is.

8-27-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #191 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 4)

I’m getting a little fed up reading -- and writing -- about this temp job so I’ll recount two little anecdotes about that time and then (thankfully) move on.

Because Joslin was so connected and knew so many interesting people in entertainment and in syndication, one day his lunchtime visitor was a woman who wrote the “Heloise’s Hints” column. Only, the latter-day Heloise was the daughter of the original, who wrote about all kinds of household hints back in the sixties, and was syndicated by King Features (a member of Hearst Entertainment and Syndication Group).

When I met the woman -- a tall, slender, striking looking lady in her early forties who had flowing, straight, mostly white hair -- I got up from my desk and extended my hand: “I’m your biggest fan,” I enthused.

She reacted with mock horror. “I hope not!”

In a split second, I realized she was referencing the Steven King movie, Misery, where the Kathy Bates character tells the writer she idolizes that very same thing and kidnaps him, for starters -- then it all goes downhill from there.

“Uh, okay, well, not THAT big a fan.” We both had a laugh, shook hands, and I knew that this new Heloise was a very cool person. When her mother, the original Heloise, died in 1977, daughter Klah Marchelle Heloise took on the mantle and kept the column going. Now she has a website, of course: http://www.heloise.com/index.html

I was very excited to meet Heloise, just because, I mean, here’s a person who’s kept a very useful brand going for quite some time. . . she’s successful at doing something unusual AND she seems very happy. Hooray for Heloise!

http://www.heloise.com/watch_heloise_hints.html

8-26-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #190 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 3)

My first day there, I noticed some blunt yellow No. 2 pencils in the out box. “Clarice, what do we do with these?” I asked the other assistant. Mr. Joslin was out at a meeting at the time, and I was barely on speaking terms with the old grouch, anyway. He made it known that you only spoke to him when spoken to. . . 

“I dunno,” Clarice shrugged, going back to her work, which was mostly as a Portuguese/English interpreter, as far as I could tell. She fielded a considerable volume of phonecalls from Brazil for Mr. Joslin. He had some businesses going in South America as well as his work at Hearst, as far as I could tell. . .

I took those blunt yellow No. 2 pencils from his out box to my desk and sharpened them, one by one. I then placed the sharpened pencils in his in box, awaiting a reaction.

I also put a draft of some typing I did for him along with the pencils in his in box. Later on, when he came back from the meeting, I heard him say, “Sharp!” in his office, with a happy tone to his voice.

I never knew by that monosyllabic reaction if he meant, 1. The pencils were sharp, which pleased him, or, 2. That I was sharp, for sharpening the pencils, or, 3. That I was a “sharp” temp who could type well. Beats me. . . other than that, he was truly cranky and deserved every mean wrinkle on his wizened-apple face.

8-25-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #189 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 2)

So, I was sent to the corner of 57^th and 8^th, to the ultra plush offices of Raymond Joslin, President of Hearst Cable Network. I remember meeting him and feeling both scared and full of pity. He was about 5 foot 7, probably in his sixties, but his face had so many wrinkles. . . and they weren’t happy wrinkles by a long shot. His wizened-apple face had the angriest, nastiest look to it of anybody I’d ever seen up to then. I heard a distinct “Look out!” warning in my head.

This angry older man had the largest office of anybody I’d ever worked for, consisting of a large reception area with two separate desk spaces (and an impressive 8’ X 10’ filing room behind the desk where I sat), a waiting room to the side, and finally, Joslin’s “inner sanctum,” an office that resembled one for the president of a prosperous small country.

He had plaques all over celebrating his status as a “Cable TV Pioneer.” Wa hoo. He had weekly meetings with LifeTime, ESPN, and a variety of other cable channels, who all reported to HIM.

His impressive office reflected the life of a man who had it ALL: The wood paneling/plush carpeting/leather furniture/manly book and photographs-with-famous-Republicans in his inner office. The leather-bound in and out trays on his massive desk were all that we, the two assistants, were supposed to attend to. . .

8-24-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #188 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man)

As for the typing, there were different kinds of machines I’d work on. First, for a brief few years, on a typewriter like a large, clunky, loud IBM Selectric. Then came the in-between choice, an electric typewriter with memory that they called an early “word processor. . . “ the text showed up on a small screen above the keyboard and you could backspace and erase before hitting the “print” button.

Once actual personal computers with floppy disks did the work, using MultiMate or WordPerfect, soon enough Microsoft Office Suite took over and it was MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint. I’d say that was in the mid to late ‘90’s, though.

Right around that time, one of my tempjobs took me to work for Hearst. A super conglomerate communications corporation, Hearst at the time had several successful magazines and cable television companies that ran under its legendary umbrella.

(Hearst was the company whose founder, William Randolph Hearst, the Orson Welles movie classic, “Citizen Kane,” was based on. I used to walk the halls of the building I worked in whispering, “Rosebud. . . “)

When one of the Presidents of the Cable TV operations, Raymond Joslin, needed a temp because one of his two assistants had to take a few weeks leave, I was called to fill in. I was warned from the outset, “He’s a very demanding boss -- with a very short temper.”

Optimistic to a fault, and philosophical too (this was when I started reading Epictetus, the stoic Greek philosopher, and carried a tiny book of his quotations around with me for inspiration), I took the assignment, knowing it wouldn’t be a piece of cake but probably incredibly interesting. . . 

8-23-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #187 (Working Temp in NYC: What is so goshdurned great about TYPING, anyway? Pt. 2)

Maybe keyboarding reminds me of piano playing. . . how I long to be a boogie woogie piano player. . . I’ve always had a piano around, just hoping it’d beckon sufficiently for me to get good at it, but then, that keyboard on the computer beckons even more beguilingly and. . .

Anyway, when I worked tempjobs in offices, it was the last hurrah or the last gasp of the old school executives, the ones who’d bark, “Take a letter, Joan!” or whatever. Most of the older guys or the senior executive officers had no typing skills, so they’d write out drafts on yellow legal pads and just hand the writing to their assistants -- like me.

I’ll go into detail about him later, but probably the guy with the nicest handwriting -- or the easiest for me to decipher -- was Norman Mailer. But, he wasn’t an Accurate Temporaries client. That’s another story -- related, of course, but later for that.

Even though some men had horrendous handwriting, I am very good at deciphering handwritten script (it’s like a puzzle to me) so I did well at drafting copy for bosses who couldn’t -- or wouldn’t -- type their own.

Not so when it came to female executives; they’d invariably type their own stuff. The women bosses were few in number but towards the end of my temping in NYC they definitely were a force (maybe 1/3 of my jobs were with female bosses by the end of the ‘90’s.). And then, the younger generation of male executives (starting with guys MY age) were proficient on the computer; they didn’t need assistance with typing, either.

Now, when I first started the word processing/computer typing, I wasn’t so great at formatting (on WordPerfect, then MicroSoft Word, all versions). But after years, I got pretty good. . . also on Excel and PowerPoint. But then, I learned everything on the job and couldn’t have been happier to be working and learning. . .

But then, every job I’ve ever had has been a learning experience!

8-22-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #186 (Working Temp in NYC: What is so goshdurned great about TYPING, anyway?)

That’s the question I’m always asking: why do I like typing so much? Is it because, by an inexplicable (this is when science seems like voodoo to me -- might as well be, for all I can comprehend) muscle memory, a person can create words and punctuation, on a page? Is it because it seems like a miracle that it all makes sense and that we’re able to do this (when you REALLY think about it)?

Nowadays they have classes to teach “keyboarding” in school, but back when I learned to type by not looking at the keyboard, doing it by touch, it was called “touch typing.” It took me forever to get the hang of it and to not look down at the actual keyboard but. . . once it came to me, I loved typing. In fact, I must still love typing because I average thousands of words per (average) day.

Actually, typing isn’t writing, so strike the previous sentence. Here and now just for the record, when I worked temp and had to type for an employer, I didn’t mind all that much. Typing was preferable to phones, or filing, or photocopying. . . only transcribing was more fun, to me. I’m sure I’m in the minority, because in one sense it’s kind of a pain in the ass to have to type up other people’s thoughts and rough drafts (and make sense of their mumblings and meandering thoughts, taped on the DictaPhone).

I can’t say why I was so fond of it back then (wouldn’t be too crazy about typing up somebody else’s work now -- but probably would depend on the person and situation). But I do like “busy work” and respect the muscle memory of fingers flashing fast across a keyboard. . .