Part-Time Work

On Friday night, I started a new part-time job. This is the first new job that I've begun in too many years now. For tax reasons, I'm an "independent contractor", working for the television station that my brother works for. He's the one that got me the job. They have a state-wide high school football wrap-up show on Friday nights. My job is to scan various internet sites, find final scores from high school football games, and enter them into their system so that the scores will scroll across the bottom of viewers' screens.

Part of me wonders how much more automated this system can become. What would it take to read scores from a file or other internet sites, and transfer them into the system without having to type the numbers in myself? This is an interesting question and I'm not sure if there's a good solution. But, such concerns are really beyond the scope of my assignment.

There was always the feeling of being under pressure. What if I enter the wrong scores? What if I say the wrong team won? I joked that the job would have been a lot easier if their system already had the winning team on the top for each game. Also, they handed me the phone a few times when people called in to the station. I quickly learned that the caller sometimes giveth, and the caller sometimes taketh away. One caller quickly gave me a final I didn't have and hung up. (How very nice and efficient!) Another asked me for some scores. Finally, a third caller tried to give me a score, but I kind of lost him when he was saying, "I think they scored 23. Or maybe it was 25. Something like that." Could it be that the regular employees don't like taking calls? (Why else would they give the phone to the new guy on his first day on the job with no training?)

While I am getting paid, the amount will add about 3% (before taxes) to my income. (Of course I'll work a lot fewer hours at the TV station.) So why am I bothering?

• As Geddy said, "Ten bucks is ten bucks, eh".
• It allow me to keep an eye on my brother.
• It keeps me off the streets.
• It's kind of fun.
• Who know? Maybe a whole new career could spring up. I certainly don't expect anything of that sort. But, there are so little in the way of new opportunities in my current job, and also so little in the way of job security, that it couldn't hurt to try something new and meet some new people.