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By Root 567 0

The fourth of us was a young white girl, no older than me. She bit at her lip in concentration, pen in one hand while the other gently rocked a baby carrier in the next seat. I turned in the forms and was given a second clipboard, along with a small, solar-powered calculator. This was a rudimentary problem set of arithmetic and basic geometry I sped through without the help of the calculator. Clipped behind that was an alphabetization quiz. I worked rapidly, impatient to secure some sort of labor. I was ushered into a back room where I sat at a computer and typed a passage as quickly and accurately as I could, something about a woman named Sandra and sales projections. I was sent back into the waiting room. I found huge satisfaction in this evaluation; the whole sequence of movement and tasks was just what I needed. After a short wait, I was led through a door, down a short hallway and shown into an even smaller room with one desk, a ficus, and two framed pictures hanging on colorless walls. The first showed a long bone-white beach, electric-blue ocean rippling onto the shore, Acapulco!! bright red in the sky. The other was puppies crawling out of a picnic basket in a field.

A short beefy man with a very big nose stood behind the desk and gestured for me to sit. I crossed my legs professorially and interlocked my fingers over my knee. I could feel my face bright with accomplishment. The nameplate on his desk said Alex Doggerty.

“Potter Mays.”

“Here I am,” I said.

“Well, great. Let's get right at it, shall we? I've got your test scores here, Mr. Mays. Tell me, what sort of work were you looking for?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “That's why I came here.”

“Good, Potter. We're glad you did. No need to panic whatsoever. At ProTemps we pride ourselves on the ability to find work for everyone, from the highest skilled down to those we call ‘legs’ or ‘hands.’ So you have nothing to worry about. Now before we begin, is there any chance at all that you might have, accidentally or on purpose, either way, any chance that you shall we say embellished your educational background?”

“None chance,” I said, and he made a note, looked at me, and made another note.

“Okay then. That's terrific. Let's have a look.” He opened and spun the file so I could read it. “We'll begin with the math. Not your strongest suit, but I'm sure you knew that by now. Incorrect answers are marked in red.”

The paper looked like it had been mauled. Nearly every problem was marked incorrect, blood-red lines scrawled from top to bottom. And worse, upon further review they actually were incorrect. Long division, multiplication, simple subtraction; I had failed awesomely.

“Also, there are a few hiccups with the alphabetization,” he said, and I'll give him this much, the word alphabetization caused him no trouble at all. “Here you've got Peterson in front of Parvenik? And here, on the one-through-ten sequencing. You put the four next to Kennison, the five next to Jacobs, and the six next to Harris.”

The puppies in the grass tussled with their gleeful little puppy snouts. I was almost sure Alex's tie was a clip-on. He tapped his pen on the desk and held a steady grin.

“But typing, my goodness. Seventy words per. That's something, I should say. Something.” His voice went flat.

“I wrote,” I said, “a lot of papers in college.”

Ah yes. Of course.” Holding his pen like some brand-new and intimidating piece of technology, he scribbled a note on the pad of paper in front of him. “We're going to find you work, Mr. Mays. You might not believe it now, but I promise. And though basic knowledge of arithmetic and the alphabet is crucial to most office work we staff, that doesn't mean we won't succeed in placing you in a just great job. So keep that head up, alright, hoss?”

I remembered something.

“I believe hoss, Alex, came into usage as a bastardization of horse.”

“That's great!” He stood and extended a hand. “Thank you for choosing ProTemps. We'll be in touch just as soon as something comes up.”

I shook as firmly as I could, then turned and carefully left his office.