I worked my first 10 hour day at Satan’s Castle today, so I’m beat, but I just wanted to share this little survival trick I discovered; how to get what you really want from Satan. Here it is:

If you don’t like what you’re doing at The Great Satan, then just suck at that job and throw some attitude in there for good measure.

Don’t worry, you won’t get fired right away. See, Satan gives his minions about a week to get up to snuff on the job they are assigned to. If He doesn’t think you cut it there, he gets his servants to move you to another job within the department. All under the guise of “doing everything to help you succeed.”

Now, don’t go thinking that Satan’s being nice or anything. He just wants to get the most out of his pre-hire investment in you (i.e, drug test, criminal background check, and all-day orientation) before he kicks you off his team. You get about 2 weeks to prove you’re worthy.

In my case, I was probably a little too obvious in expressing my feelings about the poor way that my unit manager treated her underlings. She didn’t like that. She also didn’t like that fact that I really sucked at handling pallet jacks and lifting 30 pounds 100 times a day.  So today, I got the ax. Yeay!

But Satan’s giving me another chance. I got moved to a different job in Outbound Shipping, which I actually kind of enjoy. I box up single orders of books. I don’t get grimy and dirty, and my new manager doesn’t scream her workers on the hour. The work is fast paced, and the rythmic way you approach the task is similar to knitting, except it’s not relaxing.

The only pressure I’m under in this new job is “making the numbers.” This week I”m supposed to box up 160 single orders per hour. In two weeks, I have to be at almost twice that in order to keep my job for the duration. I ended my first day at 136 per hour. Don’t ask me how I’ll meet the post-Thanksgiving quota, it really does seem impossible.

But I’ll try. Because we’re here, this new job isn’t as bad as the last, and I’m a cheap bastardette who wants more money.

The things I’ll do for a buck.

Let’s get one thing straight; I am not afraid of hard work. In past lives I’ve been a waitress, a housekeeper, a barista, and even worked in a data-entry sweat shop. When I was a kid I cleaned my neighbor’s house, washed cars and sold avocados in the neighborhood, just to make extra money.

So when I took this job at the factory of the Great Satan*, I knew the work was going to be hard. And it has. Still, I really don’t mind the fact that this job involves working Lucy-style (sans cute uniforms) on a conveyor belt line, moving huge bins of cheap plastic crap around with my arms and pallet jacks. Every day is a physical wipeout, but I still ride my bike to work to energize me in the morning, and burn off steam at night.

But what’s really pissing me off about this gig is the lousy way the workers get treated by the temp agency that runs the show for Satan (in fact, almost everyone who works at the factory is a temp; Satan outsources just about every job). We are talked down to, lied to, given no consideration or respect whatsoever. Everyone lives in fear of individual job production quotas, and management reminds you on the hour if you’re meeting them or not.

In the early 90s when jobs were scarce, I played “The Temp” in offices around San Francisco. Back then, I thought I was treated like crap. But this recession is so much worse, and it seems that with so many out of work people, temp agencies are exploiting the situation like never before. At least this one is. I can’t ever recall being treated with such disrespect by an employer.

I keep telling myself; stick it out, this gig is only temporary. I thank Dog I have the resources to move on after 12/23.

*About “the Great Satan” . . . apparently I signed a Non Disclosure Agreement that bans me from badmouthing this certain company. Well, I’m not sure if I signed or not, there were so many forms when I got hired, so to play it safe, from here on out my new boss is going to be known as The Great Satan.

Working at The Great Satan for the past two days has given me a front row view of our economy. As a self-employed person without any co-workers, or mouths to feed, I’ve been so isolated from the realities of what people are faced with right now. It’s scary. People. Are. Hurting.

I work with a Mom who puts in a full day at the Great Satan, then walks over to HellMart to work, because she can’t feed her family on HellMart’s generous $8.25 an hour. Another woman I work with is an EMT in real life. A guy in my department took the job despite a 30 mile commute, because the hardware store he used to work for laid him off. Another gal I spoke with has been out of work since April of ’08, after getting laid off from CitiBank. There are people so overqualified for this work, it’s insane. I feel so humbled and fortunate to be there by choice.

Meanwhile, management plays shuffeboard with the worker bees’ lives. The group I was hired in with got our hours changed, and our job roles too. They told us on our first day; we could live with it, or leave. There’s a thousand more behind us.

Everyone is calling this a recession, but this is more like a depression. I look around that warehouse, and so many people appear exhausted.

As I stood there doing my job today, I saw thousands of expensive gadgets and gizmos pass before me. With each new order, I kept wondering; who’s buying this stuff?