My other job

I work at a copy shop - only about 3 times a year for about a month at a time - and only in their busy season, which revolves around Northwestern University's academic calendar. My job there (for which I am fairly well paid and not taxed; shh!) is to make what is known by college students the world over as "Course Packs" or "Readers" - those black-plastic-spiral-bound, color-cardstock-covered books of badly copied pages from textbooks that cost about as much as any book but are way less user-friendly. What I do at the copy shop is to make the reader "masters" - I clean up what the professors bring in, sometimes copying pages from books themselves (imagine a box filled with 15 books and scrawly post-it notes), and then I number the pages, count, set up tables of contents, check for missing articles, wrong-facing pages, or whatever is needed to get it ready for production. It's actually not terrible work. There are some annoying things about the job, like the fact that I never really know when they'll call me in to work, because it's not always busy until the last minute, and the fact that the woman who is in charge of the readers during the day is really unorganized and also fairly unpleasant to deal with, so there are always miscommunications, rude notes and lost things, etc. The owners, who hired me, are great, and I just try to deal with them. Plus, the communication is easier - see, the rest of the people who work there are Romanian. I don't really know how it happened, but there are about 8 people who work there regularly and 4 of them are from Romania. There is Diana, mentioned above, who is in her 20s and is not very pleasant and who does yoga, Vic, the newly named manager of the place, who's been there longest, works at night and pretty much hates everyone and will talk your ear off about it, there's Vic's wife Krina who is really great and funny as hell but barely speaks English, and Rosie, the friendly nighttime guy who wears too much cologne and used to work in a granite-cutting plant before this.

The mistakes that happen at a printing shop where English is not the first language are sorta funny, but there are far less than you might think. Mainly I just get asked, "Sarah, what is 'lilac'?" or have to correct mistyped things like "The South After Deconstruction," etc., when I am there.

I work from 8 or 9pm until about 1am, sometimes later. I bring my dog with me 50% of the time, and I think she hates it but it makes me feel less guilty about leaving her all day AND all night. Plus I think it's good for her to be around more than just me.

The funniest person at the place has to be Vic. He is this big balding guy, early 30s, wearing soccer sandals and swilling diet coke after diet coke. He wears the same entire outfit day after day until it gets visibly, smellably dirty. Before his wife came to the US (a few years ago), he would save up all of his dirty laundry and take it BACK TO ROMANIA when he goes, once a year, so his MOTHER could do it for him. He works from about 1 to 9pm, and has a hand in firing at least 25 people in the last couple of years. He just really can't stand people without a work ethic. It's kind of refreshing, actually, but I do feel that he could turn on anyone, including me, at anytime. To hear him go off on people is a great time-passer though, especially since I don't really work with the daytime people at all so don't know or care if he is telling the truth about them. He's also SUPER-racist, and sexist (he thinks all women should be hot and that his looks do not matter because he is a man), and anti-semetic, and conservative, and oh my god, do not get him started on "the fucking gypsies," because everything bad in his country -- in the world! -- is their fault. Also, his real name is Catalin, which to me sounds like a girl's name in any language. Must be why he goes by Vic. Krina's real name is Augustina, and Rosie's real name is Rezvan.

Rosie is the one I work with most often now because of my hours. He feeds my dog people food, which I am totally against, but no matter how many times I ask, yell, and beg him not to, a few days will pass and I'll notice she's got tomato sauce on her nose or something. Last time it was chinese food. Jesus! Also, Rosie is lonely and often talks about finding a girlfriend, which is a little uncomfortable. I wish I could tell him he wears too much cologne and seems too desperate, but that would be like someone telling me I am fat and have zits, wouldn't it? See, although I would probably just say "So?" I still can't do it.

I really need the money, so I keep this crazy job. Sometimes it makes me literally sick from the lack of sleep. I usually get home about 2 and go to sleep about 3 and then have to be up by 8 to get to work the next day. One year I got pneumonia after the winter rush - that was bad. This year I am trying to contain it by only working 3 days a week, which annoys Diana. I've been trying to figure out how long I've been working there and I think it's been 3 years. When I started, I thought I'd just do it for that one round, until I got a raise at my day job or got a new job, which I thought was around the corner. Ha!