What is the strangest temporary position you were ever assigned to by a placement agency?
Counting money in a money-warehouse.I am a believer in temp agencies, because they make it much easier to move to a new city just because you want to give it a try, without having a job lined-up in advance, and quickly get some income while you look for permanent work.In fall 1977, after I had graduated from MIT in architecture, there was a recession on, building construction was down, I wasnu2019t too good at applying for jobs, in short I didnu2019t have an entry-level architecture job, even though I had an undergrad average of A. My plan had been to spend a year in practice before going back to the MIT master of architecture program, into which I had already been accepted - silly me, I didnu2019t realize that this meant to employers that as soon as I was about to get valuable to them (after a yearu2019s experience) I would be leaving- so why should any of them take me on?Ignorant of this basic problem with my plan, I figured, Los Angeles has good weather year-round, maybe the construction industry is doing better there - and thus the architecture profession maybe needed more entry-level architects. So I flew from Washington D.C. to LA with nothing but the names of a few architecture firms to visit (without having called ahead to any of them) to look for work.I quickly found a tiny apartment with a bed that pulled down from the wall, dropped off a resume at the American Institute of Architects, and then thought that since I needed income right away, to sign-up with a few temp agencies.Oh, by the way, I didnu2019t have a car, and the apartment was in the first block from the ocean at Venice Beach.One of the temp jobs I got required taking a Santa Monica bus before sunrise from Venice into downtown LA, then transferring to an LA bus to East Los Angeles - a district of nothing but big blank warehouses.The place I was supposed to go to was a blank-sided windowless warehouse filling an entire block. The only visible object on it was a projecting booth on the second floor, over the doorway. There was no logo of any company, nothing at all to indicate what this building was or who owned it or operated within it.As I walked along the warehouse to the doorway, I saw that within this glass-walled booth was a rifle-armed uniformed guard, watching me, who was the only visible human anywhere on that street.I buzzed the intercom, identified myself, and a buzz unlocked the street door.I found myself in a long straight narrow hall, windowless on both sides, ending in a windowed door. Through that window I could see that this door led into a small entry chamber, with windows on all sides, and beyond the other side window was a uniformed guard sitting at a control desk. I reached that door, and another buzz indicated it was now unlocked, so in I went. To my left was the only other door, also containing a window into a larger room.Once that door closed behind me and locked, the guard buzzed the next door, and in I went - to the money-counting room.The orientation person, smiling, met me, and explained what happened here. Banks from all over, especially Latin America, sent worn-out U.S. bills here, to be exchanged for new fresh bills. The cash we collected would then be destroyed. It was all a part of a standard part of the banking business and the money supply, to deal with the fact that paper money wears out, but the holder of a worn-out bill canu2019t be treated like u201csorry, you lose, you got stuck with the bill when it was too worn out to keep using.u201dThe room was simplicity itself, just an open-plan office, each desk having low walls about head-height, painted in pastels. There were maybe ten money-counting stations. Music played over the sound-system, but I noticed every so often that it had stopped some time earlier, then I would notice, hey, the music was playing again.I had taken psychology courses when I was at Pomona College (before transferring to study architecture at MIT) and I recognized that this room used all the principles I had studied about industrial interior design, including the use of music - and as the week progressed, I realized that those principles actually worked to keep a repetitive job from becoming intolerably boring and tedious. I filed this away in mind as something I could use in architecture, if I ever got a job as an architect.A temp learns quickly not to start conversations, and nobody started conversations with me, and the desks were far enough apart that it would not be convenient to chat across desks anyway. I took my assigned seat, at the desk was an automatic bill-counting machine to be used for ones and fives, some printed forms for us to enter information, and a nondescript pen.I took my seat and the process began. Someone entered pushing a four-wheeled platform hand truck, piled with burlap bags. He gave me one of the bags and continued.Each bag had a wire wrapped around the top end to keep it closed, and on the wire was a tag, with a number hand-written on it in pen. This was the amount of money the bag was supposed to contain. We wrote that down on our sheet. We emptied out the bag of money on the desk, machine-counted the ones and fives, and hand counted all the rest. Then we wrote down the number - mine always checked, so I donu2019t recall what we were supposed to do if the number didnu2019t check. I also donu2019t remember whether we were supposed to put the money back into the same bag, or to put it somewhere else. Probably back into the same bag. Once counted, somebody took the money and the bag away, and I got another.Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars passed through my hands each day, perhaps a million dollars a day. Just like people say, this can pretty tedious to do for 8 hours a day, day after day. Itu2019s not like you are counting your own money, after all.Every so often I noticed someone going by with a two-wheel hand truck, bearing a big block of brand-new bills, shrink-wrapped. If you watch a video of how the Treasury prints and packages new money, you will know what these look like. It was actually more impressive to see someone wheeling a huge package of brand-new 20u2019s along, than it was to face another huge pile of old bills on your desk to count.We didnu2019t go out for lunch, instead we brought our own, and ate inside.Me being in LA, after about three days of this I began to wonder, whether I could write a screen-play of a bank heist from the money-warehouse. How would a person like me, just a temp walking in, figure out how to slip out some of the money, and get away with it?One of the things I had noticed was that they appeared to have no system for recording which person counted a particular bag. I was not assigned any number for them use for tracking purposes, and my desk had no number. Thus, if a bag came up short, they couldnu2019t tell which counter had counted it. Later on, however, I thought: maybe each counter has a somewhat different ink-pen, and they can tell who counted the bag by the ink on the recording sheet.Another weakness in their system occurred to me, which was: they used handwritten numbers on the incoming tags on the bags. The numbers werenu2019t machine-printed. And the handwriting was pretty sloppy.What if, I thought, a bag came in, and the ink used to write the number on the tag was the same as the ink in my pen?What if, in addition, the sloppy way the number was written meant that a deft stroke of my pen could change the number?And what if, in addition, the sloppy way the number was written meant that I could doctor the number down?In such a situation, it would be possible to low-count the bag, without there being any difference between the newly-lower number on the tag, and the number I recorded on my sheet.My budding screenwriter brain started to whirr. If this happened, how could I get the amount of cash I had u201cfreed upu201d by making the number change, out of this guarded triple-door locked room?Ah, I thought: take advantage of an aspect of male clothing: the pants zipper. Go to the menu2019s room, u201cforgetu201d to zip my fly, go back to the desk, and quickly slip just the right amount of cash off the desk and into my pants.Video cameras? There might be some - I never spotted any, and 1977 technology of video surveillance was a lot more primitive that today - but both doctoring the tag, and slipping-in the cash, could be done close to the edge of the desk, with my body hunching over to block the view.Needless to say, these imaginings, and my thoughts of writing a quick-buck caper screenplay started making this money-counting job a lot more interesting.Now: presuming our young man had gotten all this far, and was out of the building with the cash in his pants, how to quickly u201claunderu201d the cash, so as not to be caught with it in his possession?Answer: Las Vegas, of course. Quickly catch a bus to Las Vegas, use all the money to buy chips, do a little gambling, then cash-in all the chips. Presto, new cash for old.I had all this figured out when, on Friday, to my amazement, a bag plopped down onto my desk where I actually could try to do this.The number on the tag was $170,000. But the u201c7u201d was so sloppily written, that one quick upstroke on the left end of the horizontal would make it read $140,000.And the ink used to write number happened to be exactly the same as my nondescript pen.My screenplay was coming true!But then came the thought: would I dare to actually try this? To steal $30,000 from the money-counting warehouse on a Friday, catch a bus to Las Vegas, and do the chip-swapping ruse to launder the money?Because it looked like it would work.I learned something about myself that day - because although I actually thought about this for about a minute, I decided, no: no way.I left the tag-number at $170,000, counted-out $170,000, and sent that money on its way.Bye-bye, $30,000. Sad to see you go.And then I learned what a disaster it would have been, had I tried this: because for the first time in five days, a guy came around with a checklist, on which were written the money-numbers on each tag on the incoming bags. He matched the incoming and outgoing numbers on my record sheet with the incoming numbers on the bags that he had on his list.If I had tried my scam, I would have been instantly caught, because his list of incoming bags would have $170,000, and my list of incoming bags would have $140,000 - a mis-match. Instead of a promising young A-average MIT architecture graduate, I would have been a convicted felon, caught with $30,000 cash in my pants. My whole life would have been totally ruined.I was almost trembling with relief that I had not tried to execute my screenplay caper in my real life.But I also have to admit: I was looking forward to coming back next week to continue the money-counting job - which had been scheduled for two or three weeks - to see if I could work-out the defects in my sneaky plan.But: at the end of that Friday, the boss came up to me and said, u201cWe are really happy with your work. But we heard from our insurance company that since you are not bonded, we cannot have you back. Weu2019ll give you an excellent recommendation to the temp agency, but this has been your last day here.u201dOut I went from the money-counting warehouse, never to return. But it had been a very important experience for me: never, never, give in to the temptation to commit any crimes.Who would have thought that this would be a lesson learned from taking temp jobs?
