Straining against the onslaught of gale-force wind, I squinted up the hill ahead of me. The monstrous building towering over me was obviously my stationing for the day.

My first temp assignment in two months, and I’m duly sent out on the wettest and windiest day in ages. Still, one can’t complain. Cash flow and whatnot.

Licking my lips at the wondrous prospect of a day jam-packed with data entry madness, I marched onwards determinedly. My umbrella was worryingly teetering halfway between inside-out and not-inside-out, sighing and floundering like a giant wayward diaphragm. Finally coming to a decision, it gave in and raised itself skywards. At this very moment, the water falling from the sky elected to begin raining horizontally, smacking me rudely in the face.

Muttering under my breath, I shook myself off in the foyer of the building. A clunking old metal elevator struggled to make its way to the ground floor, then grudgingly opened its doors to allow myself and a frazzled woman to embark.

Amazingly, the elevator had muzak. I couldn’t help smiling and bopping to the cheesy tune - in fact, it was reminding me of an old Beck song, ‘Pay No Mind’. The tune was certainly very similar.

‘Give the finger to the rock and roll singer,’ I sang under my breath, sounding immensely similar to Beck in my head. The woman in the elevator with me cast a slightly concerned gaze back at me.

‘Like a giant dildo crushing the sun, ohhhh ohhhh, pay no mind,’ I continued, suddenly realising the slightly abstract lyrics may sound a little unusual to those not familiar with Beck’s work. As the elevator stopped to let the woman off at her floor, she ran more than walked into her office.

Indulging in a little air guitar as I continued towards my destination, I arrived at the company I was working at for the day, only to be confronted by a set of locked glass doors. Waving frantically at the receptionist enclosed within the giant fishbowl-esque reception, she responded only with a satisfied smirk and frustratingly vague hand motion.

I waved my hands back in a similarly meaningless fashion, which nonetheless interpreted into my urgency to navigate past the obstacle in front of me. Her response was disturbingly similar to a masturbatory hand motion.

Rattling the handle again for good measure, I attempted to draw attention to the fact that I. Could. Not. Open. The. Fucking. Doors.

Again, she glared at me.

In frustration, I pushed against the door - and it opened wide with one smooth motion. Slinking a little ashamedly up to the receptionist’s desk, I informed her that I was working here for the day. I didn’t need to mention that I was “the temp”, because this was probably screaming out at her given my entry performance.

After sitting on what I’m sure was a deliberately uncomfortable chair and mindlessly thumbing through a business magazine of some sort, I was collected by a frustrated-looking mousy woman whose eyebrows were permanently fixated in a ‘Are you challenging and/or threatening me?’ pose. She marched me through a maze of corridors as I began wondering if dropping breadcrumbs behind me would not necessarily be an unintelligent proposition.

Shoving me in front of a computer, she thrust a mammoth computer printout at me and ordered me to ‘type this in to the database’. Groaning inwardly, I scanned over all the grainy printed figures - they were all numbers. Dear Lord, I’d been given the worst kind of data entry - numerical.

As I tapped away obediently at the keyboard, I noticed that every other employee around me religiously avoided greeting me or engaging in conversation. Such is the unwritten office rule with “the temp”, and yet another reason why I’m not the greatest fan of such a non-permanent work arrangement.

The clock on the other side of the room struggled to move forward, so I began inputting numerals even more urgently and powerfully. On and on, I powered ahead through a world of endless invoice numbers and order codes, completely meaningless and hypnotising in their continuity.

Actually, they were bloody hypnotic, now that I thought about it. I looked up from my keyboard, blinked in a confused manner, and checked the clock again. I’d just been typing for half an hour and my mind had been in a completely different postcode area. Imagine doing this crap all day! Rising up from my seat, I decided to employ an old trick from my call centre years: the extended toilet break as means of escapism.

Upon entering the toilet, all but one of the four cubicles were occupied. Naturally, the urinal tray is completely out of the question if you’re having a toilet bludge - you need to sit down and have a mindless ponder about what you’re going to do on your lunch break, or when you escape the building to leave home. What you’re going to do on the weekend. Perhaps your blinding commitment to your job.

Carefully locking the cubicle door behind me, I wished I’d been lucky enough to secure reading material of some sort. At one of my past jobs, someone always left a copy of the newspaper in the toilets. It took a lot of mental harnessing to put the hygiene issues at stake to one side, though.

Holding my breath, I noticed the toilets were deadly silent. Usually there’s a deliberately loud ventilation system, or constantly flushing urinal system to noisewash any embarrassing emissions or splashes. A loud parp and subdued groan from a cubicle to my left highlighted the need for such smothering background noises.

If this wasn’t enough, the shiny floors had been overpolished to provide me with a partial view of the action in the cubicle next to me. Immediately diverting my gaze before I could see any of the gruesome details, I decided that I wasn’t going to frequent this toilet for anything other than procrastination. After not being able to bear the silence any further, I slid out of the toilets and back to my desk.

Regressing into a trance-like state as I threw myself back into the mindless world of typing numbers, I began to feel a little woozy at the monotony of it all. When the mousy woman slunk up to my desk and pouted expectantly, I looked up with a slightly dazed look in my eyes. The numbers had truly given me a battering.

‘Haven’t you HAD lunch yet?’ she demanded.

‘I’m sorry,’ I responded. ‘Nobody told me when to.’

‘Go now then,’ she sighed, and shooed me away from the computer; taking my seat and poring over my inputted details - doubtlessly because it’s well known that temps have a universally low work ethic and attention to detail.

As I approached the door to the elevators, I rattled them urgently but they weren’t opening. Casting my mind back to earlier in the day, I vainly attempted to recall the method I’d used to open them then. Behind her desk, the receptionist smirked in appreciation at my repeat performance of Obstacle-Door.

Eventually only able to navigate past by rushing headlong at the doors using my shoulder as a battering ram, I emerged with an extremely sore shoulder and only ribboned strips of my dignity. As I reached up to press the elevator button, I winced at the crackling pain shooting down from my shoulder along my arm.

Struggling into the lobby, I noted with relief that a cafe wasn’t too far away. I entered the small eatery and glanced briefly at the menu, before deciding that I couldn’t really go wrong with a cheese-and-chicken sandwich.

‘Is it okay if I have that here?’ I asked the lady who served me, who - given her current facial expression - appeared to have just ceased masticating on an extremely tart kiwi fruit.

‘Ugh,’ she grunted, and I hoped this meant I could. ‘Chicken and cheese!’ she bellowed to a woman behind a chopping board, frantically constructing sandwiches at the speed of light. Her unrelenting, robotic concentration and dedication seemed to converge into a form of luncheon martial art. If only my brain-dulling numerical data entry could reach such heights.

The lady building the sandwiches began placing my sandwich into a bags. I began panicking and wondered if I’d look like a complete dolt for asking if it was actually my sandwich, Because I Asked If I Could Have It Here Thank You Very Much. Biting my lip, I weighed up the dignity issues at stake, and realised the alternative would be to cower in the rain outside and push pieces of poultry between soggy bits of bread down my throat whilst being barraged with a cavalcade of wind-whipping rain.

‘Are those my sandwiches?’ I called out urgently. Frowning, she looked down at them. ‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘Is it okay if I have those here?’ I pleaded.

‘Meh,’ she acknowledged, and retrieved the sandwich from its bag, then cut it in half again, so I was now faced with four patronising infantile bite-sized pieces of minisandwich. The insult was in the cut of the knife.

Hovering over my food in a fashion that ensured the other cafe customers with their adult salads and meaty pasta dishes couldn’t observe my childish luncheon, I consumed the meal at speed then zoomed back into the foyer to resume my numerical entry, feeling recharged and refreshed and ready to continue typing invoice numbers for my day’s wages.

As I flung myself around to the area housing four elevators which serviced the building, I caught the elevator closest to me slyly closing its doors shut. Oh No You Don’t, I hissed at it, and thrust my hand outward to force a reopening of the elevator doors.

I’d always been under the impression that there was some sort of code of practice, a code of ethics, a common bond of goddamn everyday SAFETY which all elevators shared. This belief immediately crashed down around me like Microsoft software running on a Mac, as the metal elevator doors clamped down around my wrist.

‘Sheeeyaaaak!’ I screamed in agony, having expected a slight rubbery resistance, followed by a springing reaction to courteously open the doors. Kicking the door in pain, I was forced to slowly drag my wrist out from between the elevator doors, blinking tears of pain away from my eyes as the doors began reopening and closing on my fingers as if hungrily chomping away on my digits.

Eventually managing to retrieve my limb, I cradled it to my chest like one in a million whilst pain glimmered and fizzed in the air all around me. I noticed I had some small cuts on my hand - knowing my luck, I’d likely contracted some infection… what was it called? That infection poisoning, thing. Which when you contract the Thing, you need a Thing Injection to get rid of the Thing.

Sullenly raising my battered, war-torn wrist up for view to my mousy supervisor when I returned to my desk, she frowned and immediately departed in a remarkably swift motion, likely paying homage to the supposedly ‘friendly’ and ’supportive’ working environment she was a part of. Wincing as I began typing, I regretted using my right hand to challenge the elevator: this was also my numeric entry hand, and depressing any numbers on the right side of the keyboard would require painkillers to continue.

After sitting in agony for a few moments, I decided to visit the toilet again and sulk there instead. As I entered, I noticed that the two middle cubicles were occupied once again. Strange, I observed; as toilet etiquette dictates that the furthermost cubicles are occupied first. As I locked myself into a cubicle and tried not to ponder too much on the fact that one of Russell Crowe’s pubic hairs could probably garner more money than I’d ever earn in the next ten years, I noted with glee that someone had left an admittedly droll technology magazine on the ground. Eagerly grabbing it and idly thumbing through the contents, I put it away in a safe place for an inevitable later visit.

Deciding that fifteen minutes was probably stretching a toilet break - possible erratic bowel movements or no - I was hastily driven back to my desk by the mousy woman’s laserbeam eyes upon exiting the toilet.

After I slowly pecked away at the keys for around ten minutes, she began hovering around me and frowning some more.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked her.

‘You were typing faster before you left for lunch,’ she cooed. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Oh,’ I held my bloodied wrist up. ‘The elevator jammed my hand on my way back up here. It’s my numbers-typing hand,’ I shrugged.

From maple syrup to battery acid in the bat of an eyelid, she immediately snapped and informed me that she hoped I knew my temp contract didn’t cover medical insurance of any sort, and anyway if I made a coffee I’d probably feel better wouldn’t I?

Randomly popping my head around corners in a number of corridors, I eventually located an area with a kettle and sink, flooded to overflowing with grubby mugs. A number of permanent employees regarded me with suspicion as I began opening and closing random cupboards in hope of locating any coffee at all. The clear signal that I should leave the room arrived in the form of a stubborn overhead cupboard which at first refused to open, eventually giving way but smacking me in the forehead in the process.

Slinking outside like the mere serf I was, I realised I could use this as another toilet bludging opportunity - besides, there was that magazine to be read.

Entering the toilet breathlessly in grating uncomfort of the eternally soundless room, I noticed with curiosity that the two middle cubicles were STILL occupied. This was become somewhat of a mystery. Hastily locking myself into the end cubicle, I thumbed idly through the magazine, then decided to listen carefully to the cubicles on my right. Surely the mystery long-term occupants would have to reveal some aspect of their identity by means of a wayward cough at the very least.

After holding my breath and listening intently for a number of minutes, I slowly and carefully lowered my head downwards towards the gap between the wall and the floor. Praying to the dear sweet Lord that I wasn’t caught in a moment of unexplainable embarrassment, I was greeted with the unexpected sight of NO FEET AT ALL.

The two cubicles were locked AND unoccupied, and had been the whole day long; and here I’d been carefully tiptoeing around to make sure I didn’t make any embarrassing noises at all and give away the whole bathroom charade.

Exhaling with some sort of satisfaction in having made this discovery, I settled back into the comfort of my magazine; wondering if there was any significance to the fact that I’d learnt the most and achieved the most productivity during the course of the day perched on a toilet bowl.

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