I am currently temping for the company I’ll be working permanently for in a month. This company is unique: calm atmosphere, fun environment, first-class tools, bosses that care. People who know what they’re doing. It’s so foreign to me.

This company assists individual investors with their full-service investment needs. I’ll be an Investment Representative in February (well, okay, studying to be one) but right now I work in one of the departments in Operations. This department processes all outgoing cash. I think they wire $5 to $10 million a day. I know myself that I stop payment on checks totalling nearly $100k each day. The amount of money gets to be like playing Monopoly. It just doesn’t matter anymore.

My job, as one of the four temps in the department, is to receive in each document (Letter of Authorization) that comes through from the Micrographics department, who scans them. Receiving them is a matter of scanning the barcode into the computer, and researching the ones with problems. I then process the LOAs by approving the pending transactions in the computer system, and kicking out the LOAs with problems. On a slow day, I get to help research the problems as well.

Certain LOAs for immediate wires need to go to the Sector Reps. These reps handle five different areas of the United States. These immediate-wire LOAs must be received in hourly, processed quickly, and then disbursed.

Today was a particularly busy day. Each group of LOAs is grouped into 100-sheet bundles and wrapped by a rubber band. I know from the amount of rubber bands on my desk that I processed around 1,400 LOAs by the end of the day. This meant tons of trips around the department, handing out immediate LOAs. As I was walking around for the sixth or seventh time today, handing out LOAs, I came to the Sector 5 paperwork. To get to the Sector 5 rep, I have to walk around the entire department, and her desk is on the opposite side of the office as mine.

And my thought? “Oh well, look at the exercise I’ll get!”

And I stopped. Where did that thought come from? Was that actually positive?

Shhh… don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to jinx it.

One day at a time,


mich