My First Student Job : Data Entry

The Job Hunt
We were all fresh school-leavers then, and had some months to fill between high school and entering college. Most of us were seeking for temporary jobs to kill time, gain working experience and earn some extra allowance.

My best friend, *Tracy had secured herself a temporary position with a government body through a recruitment agency. She introduced the position to me since there were still vacancies to fill, so I thought, "Why not?". I didn't know what else to look out for, and had thought it would be cool to work for a government body. Furthermore, it might be fun to work together with my best friend. I imagined us sitting behind the glass counters in chic outfits helping the applicants do register, and we would be all professional, polite and grown-up.

The First Day of Work

Prior to the start of our new jobs, *Tracy found another retail position closer to home; and as an avid shoes lover, she took up that job offer instead. So I referred two other high school friends to the positions.

On the first day of work, we were welcomed by the fuddy-duddy ladies who worked in that office. The supevisors then assigned us our desks, and it turned out that we would not be manning the counter. Instead, our jobscope was mainly data entry.

Before the electronic age, all the information of the persons registered were recorded in thick volumes of leather-bound books. We were employed to key in the information accordingly into the system. I was fine with that, since I prided myself on having fast typing skills.

So the work became a routine in which we would report at nine in the mornings, work till noon for lunch break and then continue keying in the records till six, when we knocked off.

More temporary staff joined us, so we constantly had more new companions for lunch.

Halfway Through Work

One of the friends I had referred in was named *Sharmaine. She was a wholesome, sweet and pretty girl who was everyone's sweetheart back in high school.

Needless to say, same went for here. The male interns or temporary staff (thankfully the full-time males in this office were all elderly men who were happily married) fancied her. They would ask her out for dates over the weekends, and she would be nice enough to invite me and *Llana, the other girl I had referred in, along for the dates.

I was jealous as I had been looking forward to meeting my Prince Charming after high school graduation. We were from an all-girls school, you see, hence our exposure to males were limited to weekends and after-school hours, where curfews were aplenty back then.

As though that was not enough to embitter me, two of the female supervisors were showing rather obvious favoritism towards *Sharmaine.They would put *Sharmaine in charge of watching over us when they had internal meetings. They groomed her to perform frontline duties that included registering the applicants - the exact role I had thought I would be doing.

Granted, *Sharmaine was more personable and pleasant compared to the rest of us, who were quieter. She looked better, and was from a better family. But no matter what I was the one who had recommended her the job role, and I had expected that she would take initiative to suggest that we be included in these trainings as well. It was not as though she typed faster than us or was more accurate than us in her records keeping anyway.

Things Turned Nasty

I began to feel very demoralized working there; the mundane tasks of squinting my eyes to read the tiny prints and fading ink, typing away on the keyboard and operating the records system had turned even more unbearable.

Out of spite and mischief, I began to tamper with some of the entries. It was nothing serious, basically I just edited some of the entries and keyed in some funny names to replace the ones already being saved in the system. It amused me, but did nothing to improve the work situation. I would edit a few entries on a daily basis; this went on for about a week.

Then one day, one of the supervisors came across one of the strange entries.
At that point in time, technology was not advanced at all, and there was no CCTV. I had not been stupid enough to tamper with the records entered by me. Therefore, all they could do was to conduct internal investigations and interview us.

The head of the department was vicious enough to hand the case over the the police for further investigation. Some of the more sympathetic elderly women working there tried to stop her, but to no avail.

The most maddening part was that they only submitted a couple of names to the police - Llana's and mine. So we dutifully went down to the police station to have our statement recorded.

There was no conclusion to the investigation as there was no evidence pointing to either of us. I had also tried to implicate one of the supervisors because she had actually laughed aloud at one of the entries she came across. *Llana and I decided to preserve our dignity by resigning on our own accord.

The End

Eventually, both of us moved on from that place and the bad memories there. I had never confessed my deeds to her, even though I was sorry that I had indirectly dragged her down through my acts. I had acted every bit as innocent as the rest of them.

It had also not occurred to me to ask her whether she had also felt the same anguish that I had, about the biased treatment shown towards *Sharmaine.
A month later, there was a dinner gathering with *Sharmaine and a couple of interns / temporary staff still working there. The latest update was that the office could not find the real culprit, and eventually they had decided to terminate all the temporary staff and stop employing them to do any data entry work at all.

I didn't mind that certainly. If anything, I was secretly feeling gleeful - they had it coming to them, for showing favoritism.

There goes the story of my first ever job, a decade and a half ago, whew!