Liam in My Head, Chapter 3: In Which I Miss Human Resources

Liam in My Head a novel-in-progress. Sometimes the only thing keeping you from losing your mind is a voice only you can hear. 

Chapter 3: In Which I Miss Human Resources 

<!--break--> Beijing. I hate Beijing. I hate everyone in Beijing. If I weren’t such a freak, I wouldn’t have to give a thought to Beijing. If I weren’t such a freak, I could get a real job again and not have to freelance for agencies that work with creeps in Beijing.

The pay is shit. So is the pay from other agencies I’ve found since. And it’s always, “We’ve invoiced Beijing and we’re waiting for their payment.” Yeah, and then when we receive payment from Beijing, we’ll take a week or two to “process” that payment, and then, maybe, we’ll get around to depositing some money in your account.

“It’s midnight in Beijing, girl,” Liam said. “Nobody’s paying your agency’s invoice at midnight in Beijing. They’re all in bed in Beijing,” he said. It’s 10 a.m. here, though, and I want my money. I check my bank account, hoping there’s a deposit. I check my account again, hoping there’s a deposit. I check again and again. Doesn’t anybody in Beijing know the rule about clearing your desk before you leave for the day? Why didn’t they pay the invoice before they left for the day? I emailed Heather five times this morning. She said they haven’t received payment from Beijing on their invoice yet. The fifth reply I got from Heather, she said there was no point in me emailing again today. She said, again, that it’s morning where I am, but midnight in Beijing, as if a time difference construct might be news to me. Liam said I shouldn’t email her again today. He said when people say there’s no point in emailing again today, they mean there’s no point in emailing them again today and you’re just wasting their time and yours. “After all,” Liam said. “It IS midnight in Beijing. And you can’t afford to get up the nose of this Heather. Companies that’ll pay you without seeing you first because you got the willies about leavin’ the house are like hen’s teeth, right?” He’s right, of course. Most places want to meet you, at least at a coffee shop.

I got these people this way. I followed a Writers Wanted lead I found on Monster. An email address. The reply to my email asked for writing samples of “various and the most variety” and gave the URL of a Dropbox folder. Then I got an email from a person who said her name was Heather and that she represented an agency that had overseas clients in need of freelance writing. I wasn’t going to follow up on it because it was so weird. But Liam pointed out that all my writing clips were all published anyway, so there’s nothing to steal that they couldn’t have stolen on their own. “Besides, girl,” he said. “You have to get money coming in to keep the house. Beggars can’t be choosers.” I guess they liked my writing clips because they sent me a contract via AuthentiSign. I never had an interview or talked to anyone. I have Heather’s email address. She emails me assignments. Blogs, articles, newsletters, fact sheets, social media posts. I write a lot of content about nutritional supplements. Sell copy for area rugs. Warnings about excessive hydration. Full page ads for avocado-based treatments for sexually transmitted diseases. I upload the finished assignments to a Dropbox folder. That’s that. I’ve never met Heather or talked on the phone to her, or even Skyped. Based on the type of English she writes, I highly doubt her name is Heather.

I get some other work here or there, writing content for websites or ghostwriting people’s term papers. If they pay by snail mail it’s a hassle. My bank doesn’t have a check app. I’d like to switch to another local bank that does, but I’d have to go in to make arrangements. I can’t go in. I can’t even go through the drive-through. When I get a paper check, I have to wait until night and drive across town to the one branch of my bank that has an ATM that is not located under a drive-through roof. Bank drive-through roofs are so low, and if they fell on you, what with the tube machinery being right there next to you, you’d have no way of getting out the car before that roof smashed your car flat as a pancake. I try to go at off hours – never on Friday or Saturday nights – but sometimes someone pulls up behind me to use the same ATM. I try not to throw up.

I miss getting a paycheck every two weeks. I miss having a human resources department to complain to. I miss assuming that when someone says her name is Heather, it really is Heather.