About a month after the previous job ended I got an idea to actually run an ad in the newspaper myself. It was very short since I was trying to save the little money I had. It was listed in the "Job's Wanted" section and went something like this:

     Recent computer science grad looking for programming work. Resume/references available upon request. Jim 512-xxx-xxxx.

I placed the ad in the Statesman on a Monday, it appeared on Tuesday, and I started getting calls on Wednesday. Almost every one of them was a "great opportunity" for me to sell encyclopedias, Amway, Herbalife, used cars, real estate, etc. There were even a few rather questionable offerings as well but I really didn't want to spend time picking out a suitable porn name for myself. Out of all this were a few legitimate calls and one was from the boss of a training center.

We had a very pleasant conversation. The boss had a strong, powerful voice, and without a trace of a mumble. Yay! He briefly explained that they were a state-funded agency and their mission was to provide education to the municipal court judges in Texas. He needed someone good with computers to assist the girl he already had, and to help with the copying of a large book that was produced every year. This book, or manual, was about the size of a Sear's catalog and the majority of the work was concentrated on it.

They were located in downtown Austin and I went in for the interview on the same day he called. I was of course dressed up in my best suit and tie and I could tell he really liked that. There were about six main employees counting myself, some temps, and everyone was friendly and very professional. Not like the other job at all. The agency was in one of those neat old houses that had been converted to a small office building with several rooms, a meeting area, conference room, and copier room. The bosses' office was in the front, really large, and really nice. He explained what they did, the book, and a little about what each employee did. It was more of a job orientation than an interview and I was fine with that. When he got to the salary he said it paid $15K a year and that he wished it was more but that he was "constrained" by the rules. I did the math and figured $7 an hour was better than nothing, I liked the people and the building, and so took the job. He was delighted and began to show me around the place. I met everyone again and we eventually ended up in the back room. It was pretty large and had a fancy copier about the size of a Volkswagen in it. This thing, a Burroughs if memory serves, was really slick and had buttons, lights, and knobs all over the place. It also had two very large paper trays. In this room was a big giant file cabinet, and a large work table. Two people were putting small stacks of paper into spiral 3-ring binder notebooks and trying like hell to line up a blue separator sheet between them. After we looked around a bit more I commented to the boss that with such a fancy copier it would probably be possible to program it to put the blue sheets in automatically. He was ex-military with a large build, at least 6' 2", and I stand at 5' 11". He turned around to face me, looked down, and put his hand on my shoulder. With a big smile he said "Just do it our way, Jim". I didn't know it yet, but I will come to remember this one phrase for the rest of my life.

The job started out with me helping the administrative assistant (AA) on the computer. They had two very nice Compaq systems which were state-of-the-art in those days, each one costing at least $6K. Her main job was to type in some of the content that went into the big manual. She was not computer literate at all, had trouble with several of the commands (DOS), and was a horrible speller. Not a good choice for an AA or whatever she was supposed to be. I knew a lot more about DOS than she did but any effort to actually help her with the computer went absolutely nowhere. At one point she asked if I could help her line up some columns in a document. I tried to help by explaining the difference between monospaced and variable spaced fonts but I might as well have been speaking in Klingon for all the good it did. It went on like this until the end of the week.

On Monday I had a meeting with the boss and he said some changes were going to be made. They were going to dismiss one of the two people that worked in the back copier room, and I was now going to be in complete charge of making the books. I thought that was pretty cool, and never once questioned why this was happening. We went to the copier room where the staff secretary was working and he briefly explained to her what was going on and that I was now "in charge" of the books. She seemed fine with this and turned out to be a very capable employee. We were about the same age, were probably paid about the same, and got along well. I didn't think of myself as being "her boss" and always discussed things with her before making a change.

Speaking of getting paid, something rather amusing occurred but I certainly didn't think so at the time. I was hired in the third week of the month and received my first paycheck at the end of the month. Nothing unusual here. Two weeks later I was expecting my next check but it didn't arrive. When I asked the secretary if she had gotten hers she laughed and said "Jim, we get paid only once, at the end of the month. Didn't the boss tell you that?". I was not amused at all. I didn't exactly starve waiting two more weeks for my money to arrive but it wasn't pleasant either. Lesson learned, government agencies keep your money as long as they can.

For the next month things went pretty smoothly. I had been wanting to make some changes to how we did things in the copier room and asked the boss about it one day. He said it was now my operation, do what I think best, and when he got back from vacation he expected to see some "big changes". Be careful what you wish for. That Monday I told the secretary that I wanted to change some things and that I would like her help. First, we completely reorganized the big giant file cabinet. It had never been done correctly and a lot of time had been wasted by people not being able to find what they needed quickly (if at all). It was not labeled very well either and we took care of that too. Second, the boss had implemented an asinine policy of taking the copier paper out of the wrapper and stacking it on the shelf in an attempt to "save time". All it did was make the paper hard to handle and cause it to jam more often. It even says not to do this right on the package. Third, and this was the best one, I programmed the copier to put the blue sheets in automatically. This was really easy to do and saved a lot of time. We were not officially keeping track of how many books were being created in a day but according to the postage meter (which was my job to keep filled) we were producing about 50 more books a day. We made a few more common sense changes to the room as well.

The boss wasn't supposed to come back from vacation until Monday and so we were pleasantly surprised to see him stop by briefly on Friday for a few minutes. He was in "normal" street clothes and looked good. Everyone was up front in a meeting when he arrived and at one point one of the ladies told him to go see what we had done in the copier room. We all went back there and the look on his face was priceless. He said it didn't even feel like he was in the same building. This was really neat. The secretary showed him the big giant file cabinet, and he liked that as well. As he was about to leave the room he noticed how lined up all the book sections were on the shelf and commented it must have taken us hours to do that. I said "No, the copier does it automatically. We are now making about 50 extra books a day". Instead of being delighted, he looked as if I had hit him in the face with a 2 by 4. He didn't recover from this bullshit well, either. Maybe he was embarrassed, I am not sure, but all he had to do was be happy and no one would have thought a thing about it. In reality it was very awkward. The secretary and I knew what was going on but no one else did and that made it even worse. He eventually lightened up and got back to "normal", but it was a strange moment. He said great work everyone as he left the room, but he made it a point to NOT look at me as he left. I didn't realize he might be an asshole until this incident occurred.

One of the functions our agency provided was to attend training seminars for the judges. The next one was in Houston and it was fun packing up all of the expensive projectors and cameras and stuff into equally expensive travel containers. Remember, this was a state-funded agency, with a budget of $2.4 million a year. If we didn't spend it all every year the amount we got may have gone down. All of the "big" people would attend the event leaving just me and the secretary at the office. Near the end of the day two really nice (expensive) leased SUVs showed up and off they went to Houston. This was on a Friday so we did a few more chores and then left for the weekend. The plan was for us to show up on Sunday around 2 pm (overtime, yay!) to help unload the trucks.

The secretary and I were there by 2 pm and started wondering where they were when the phone rang at 2:45 pm. She took the call and immediately got a really strange look on her face. She didn't say much either, just "Yes, ma'am and no ma'am". When she hung up it took her a minute or two to say anything. I was horrified, did they all die in a crash or something? You definitely want to be on your game to even ATTEMPT to drive in Houston. When she could finally speak she said that there was a change in plans. They said for us to go home and come back normal time tomorrow. Also, if you have heard anything at all about what went on in Houston there is now an official "gag-order" in place. Do not speak to ANYONE, not your friends, not to the police, and certainly not to any lawyers. I thought that was rather amusing since our "second in command" was an attorney. While on this topic I will refer to her as "Girl 1" and the other as "Girl 2".

My first thought was, "What the fuck is a gag-order?". It's just amazing what they don't teach us in college and I had even taken a class in Business Law. Anyway, after the initial shock wore off we locked everything up and left the building. I came in early the next day because I really wanted to know what was going on, and couldn't sleep anyway. There were always books to create as well and the copier was kept going all the time. Eventually the other two girls showed up and the secretary and I joined them in the conference room for a meeting. Here's the short version of what happened: Apparently the boss and the AA had been having an affair for several months. I had always wondered why she was still employed there as she couldn't do anything right. Among other things she was never on time and her work always had errors, and so now I knew. This also gives new meaning to the title "Administrative Assistant". The seminar had gone well and so they had gone down to the fancy hotel bar to have some drinks. According to the girls, the boss had too many and had gone to the AA's room for a "visit". She would not let him in and so apparently he broke down the door (as I mentioned before he was a very big man). Hotel security and the police showed up soon after and the boss was arrested.

He was immediately forced to resign from our company and as far as I know never entered the building again. The AA also never showed up again and I never knew if she was okay or what she did next. Maybe she just lived off the money from the lawsuit that I am sure she filed against the company and/or boss. With him gone the girls took over and things went even more downhill in a hurry. Some people are leaders and some aren't, and these two were absolutely horrible.

One of the things the boss had always wanted to do was get a more modern phone system installed. He had started on this process but never completed it and so it got assigned it to me. I found and read up on the rules, and the main one was to get three bids. I was able to get two without any real issues, but the third company really dragged their heels on this. Also, I felt that all of the bids were way too high, just plain ridiculous. On a few occasions I was asked where we were on the new phones and I would say we were still waiting on the last bid.

With the boss gone I took over even more of the book making operation which included mailing them out. I found his rather clumsy list of who was sent a book and realized it was very hard to follow. I asked the girls about this but they had no information on it. I then called a few of the judges directly and determined that we were still several hundred books short. When I reported this to the girls they went ballistic! They blamed me, instead of the boss, and the discussion turned ugly very quickly. I started to just walk off the job but decided to get the copier going for the next person. They must have realized that I might leave, and they certainly didn't want to try and figure out how to make the books themselves, and so they came back to my area and attempted an apology. I of course swallowed it hook, line, and sinker and thought everything was okay again. Little did I know.

About a week after the boss left Girl 2 came back to my area and asked if I had done much with video cameras. I said a little, and she asked me to get one of them set up and to learn as much about it as possible. I thought that was great and started on it right away. However, to be clear, the books always took precedence over anything else I was doing. We ran the copier all day and only stopped it to change the chapter and/or add more paper. While on this topic it had been agreed that if anyone ever saw the copier was out of paper and I wasn't around (which was rare) they would refill it. Sounds easy, right? Not for these people. At least 10 reams of paper were wasted because the idiots here couldn't put the paper in with the holes lined up right. I had even put a big sign on the copier showing the correct orientation for all the good it did. Whenever this would happen I would report it, but no one would ever admit they did it nor did it ever stop. It's possible this was being done by one or more of them on purpose, but I don't want to think about that ever again.

One day I decided to pick up the hand-held video camera and practice with it in the office. I walked around, "filming" some of my co-workers, and everything seemed fine. However, a few minutes later Girl 2 came by and rudely demanded to know what I was doing. The camera was running when she came in and so I left it that way. I said I was practicing with the camera, just as she asked me to do. She wanted to know why I wasn't making the books, and so I just stared at the copier which was running of course. She was apparently angry about something else and I guess needed to take it out on someone. Didn't work. I kept the camera on her the whole time, which of course was very rude but she started it. I later showed this video to some of my friends and they all wanted to know who this bitch was. They also wanted to know why I still worked there.

I was very tired of the bullshit by now and so started looking for another job. Again. My three month review was coming up soon and I could tell it was not going to be pleasant. About two days before the review Girl 1 came into the back and handed me a document that she demanded I sign immediately. She said I could read it later. It was basically about ten sentences outlining all of the things they claimed I had done wrong. Out of the ten, only one was even close to being accurate (my delay on the phones), however, I was expecting something like this. I was curious why a lawyer would demand a person sign something they hadn't even read. I sat down and proceeded to read it thoroughly and this REALLY pissed her off. I sure know how to pick crappy managers and jobs don't I?

On the day of the review I handed the girls my Letter of Resignation and they were delighted. We were now all best friends (uh huh) and Girl 2 asked me a question. She had always wanted to know why I had picked such a bizarre title. I told her I didn't have anything to do with it. When the inserts showed up one day (these were put into the side binding of each book) that's just what my title was. Ready for this? The last entry on the insert, since I was the lowest employee, was "Jim Lewis, Reproductions Specialist". Girl 1 said that the boss bragged that he was able to pay me less because he had given me a "great" title. Yeah right, idiot. With a title like that maybe I should have taken the porn job.