Assignment 8: Commercial Property Company ... again
		The following week, my agency contact me and mentioned those wonderful words, “PPP [not their real name!] need a temp for three months, are you interested?”  Was I!  It was in the Ratings department and I snatched up the assignment in an instant.  The Ratings department, I discovered, was on the ground floor, behind the reception area, right at the back.  The Forgotten Zone, I called it.  I was working for a Ratings Officer who had been there since the beginning of time and who had never grasped modern technology - consequently, he didn’t know how to use a computer or the ratings software and was Very Bad Tempered about it.  He used to bawl and moan at everyone, especially me, his secretary, and he never once smiled.  His favourite trick was coming over to my desk and barking, “Where’s that piece of paper/file I just put on your desk?”  I’d do a search of my desk, and eventually the missing item was found on his desk or on top of a filing cabinet somewhere else in the office.  He did this so often I eventually stopped searching my desk altogether and automatically searched elsewhere, meticulously tracing his steps.  I once came into work and found my desk ‘turned over’ – drawers were left open and piles of papers and files toppled.  I was furious.  “It’s not acceptable” I cried to the other secretaries.  It wasn’t, but eventually I got used to him and even ended up liking him in a Mad Professor type way.  He retired not long after I started (nothing to do with me, I’m sure), and his leaving picture, with all the staff standing round him, is one of a man who has Genuinely Had Enough. My job in Ratings was basically data inputting - it doesn’t get more exciting than data inputting!  It was the time of the year when they have all the Ratings Appeals back, and there was MASSES of paperwork to be filed.  This, I soon realised, was to be my primary objective - to file 10,000 pieces of paper in 10,000 separate files (I exaggerate not).  The other secretary wasn’t that keen on filing (who is!) and did everything she could to get out of doing it.  So it was basically left down to me.  I sorted through the reams of sheets, put them in alphabetical order, put them in date order, and banded them into piles that didn’t seem so daunting.  And then I began.  It took a full month to file all the papers, but I did it.  At the end of it, the office manager (The Big Ratings Bloke) came over to my desk.  Did he thank me for doing such a good job?  Did he offer me a permanent position?  Did he tell me he’d never known such an efficient secretary and they didn’t want to lose me?  No.  He said, “We don’t need you any more, you’ll be leaving on Friday.” !!!!!!!!  Surprisingly, I got a small leaving present on my last day - which is more than the other secretary (who’d been there years) got when she decamped a few weeks later (no doubt having totally forgotten how to file).  When I left that last Friday, the doorman said, “See you again soon, Deb.”  “No,” I told him, “I’m not coming back here again.”  And I didn’t.  After three assignments with them, they hadn't recognised my 'potential' and had 'let me go' ... again. A couple of years later, I did phone after a vacancy they’d advertised in the paper.  It wasn’t in the Ratings department, which was good, but the salary was on the lower end of what they pay secretaries in the city centre.