Temporary

Proceed through a day, any day, each day the same as the last, repetitive down to the very core, the faces change occasionally as the job changes as does the drive but then again, I’m in Indiana, how much different could the drive be and the job, they’re all so non descript and meaningless that when I try to lay out my work history on my resume I usually have to make things up because “data entry,” “office work” and “manual labor” leave a little too much up to the imagination. They demand creative licensing to separate each job from the last.
So each day I hit snooze as many times as I possible can, each night I set the alarm earlier in hopes that I will fool myself into rising sooner and avoid the hassle of the rush to get ready and to work on time, but I fool no one and if anything only get up later then the day before. I rush around the bathroom, from the toilet to the shower to the sink to the cabinet back to my room and my closet, I fish out clothes and shoes depending on the two main categories; office and labor of course also depending on the season, although a jacket is really the only change. Sometimes I want to spice it up and wear a tie, although this is not a good idea during the “labor” type jobs. (Picture me with hardhat, vest, jeans, work boots and a tie, being laughed at, “I felt like a more feminine version of Avril Lavgine”).
So baring any incidence involving the discovery of stains on shirts or missing toothbrushes I’m usually out the door about ten minutes before I need to be at the job which leads to incessant speeding and the unwillingness to conform to the traffic laws which are ridiculous anyway. I have always proposed driving tests to allow skilled drivers their own lane where they can speed, like the carpool lane, it’s for special people.
I never ride in the carpool lane because I don’t know anyone who would ride with me on one of these intense, speed fueled rages down the road. Occasionally I get a ticket but usually I swear and gesture at any driver who dares enter into my car’s personal space bubble which engulfs my entire field of vision, which is much smaller field when I forget my contacts, but that only happened once and I promised the judge it would never happen again.
So at some point I make it to work, dash through the parking lot and into the lobby. Every job has a lobby, even if their not all called lobbies. Sometimes it’s just that field that the workers meet in, or sometimes it’s a grandiose thing with security and key card accessed elevators and security guards who stare at you through beedy eyes even though they’ve seen you every week day for two months, but whatever it is it is usually the place where as a temp I am required to sign in or out for security measures. You know like if a coffee cup came up missing in the brake room or if the entire computer system crashed they would know if I was in the building at the time of the crime which is especially important with being a temporary employee because you no doubt are the scum of the earth and deal stolen office supplies out of the back of your van, a much more lucrative business then drug dealing although just as dangerous what with the turf wars.
At some point here I drop my lunch in the fridge in the break room or lunch room or coffee room or where ever they hide the fridge. Then it’s on to my desk or workstation or half dug whole in the ground, where ever it is that I am to begin and usually end my day. The place where I spend eight hours or more at twelve bucks an hour or less, typing or testing, filing, digging, or reading or just starring at the wall. If I’m lucky as I am with this current job I get to sit at a computer which allows me to check my email, this can be a valuable time waster as well as a reprieve from the sheer boredom of the job, of course it also is just one more chance for you to stare at the eye blistering screen in front of you, reading tiny black text off a white sun back ground. Can you feel the burn?
But soon whatever work that is done here must begin. Most places are not paying me to check my email or take naps although some seem hell bent on wasting their money on just that, others sometimes actually have you there for a reason, sometimes it’s actually to do something necessary. Currently I’m doing a mixture of data entry and general office work so I have the email but I also have constant eye strain and sometimes my fingers get numb, I’m waiting for the repetitive motion injury fairy that has been set aside just for me. Studies say that over excretion is actually the number one cause of workplace injury, I find this funny because I imagine a bunch of fat asses (especially with this being Indiana, one of the fattest states in the US, which is the fattest country in the world) I imagine these fatties keeling over while walking up a flight of stairs because the elevator was out do to the fire drill and I wonder how much less healthcare would be in this country if states like Indiana were annexed to Canada. “Hey Canada, you know what, we’ve been dicks before, so how about we just let you have this one, here you go.” Laughing all the way to the bank.
So at some point I start working, sometimes the word “work” fits better but this is just what I call it. The simple fact is I have two choices as a temp, I can fulfill everyone’s expectations of a temp and be a lazy, ignorant, worthless, asshole or I can exceed their expectations and actually do the jobs that they have hired me for. I have never heard more sincere compliments then when I actually do what I am asked to do. But to gain the amount of respect to actually be treated like a normal human being, you have to exceed human limitations and do twice as much work as someone who is actually employed full time by a company. This of course is a double edged sword, if you work the way they expect you to they will no doubt dismiss you quickly but if you work really hard and actually make them want to keep you around, you’ll shoot yourself in the foot because you get all the work done too quickly and they have nothing left for you to do but send you back to the temp services.
Any good temp knows that a delicate balance must be created in which you surprise them with your abilities at the same time dragging out your work to get as many days as you can, it’s tough and it requires more acting then a day time soap but less then a Jim Carrey movie, meaning you don’t want to over act, you need to stay under the radar. The best temps actually become invisible, the work gets, done, no questions are asked, and he becomes so good that the company forgets that they even have a temp on the payroll, employees just assume you have been hired on permanently, bosses forget you even exist, I hate to brag but I have on occasion reached this state of temp work nirvana but it took years of over doing and under doing it before I mastered this tedious medium.
One of my favorite tactics is to speed through my work and then hide somewhere else. The lunch room, bathroom and my car are favorites at my current job as this is such a large firm that you can come and go with very little notice. My time cards never read my actual hours but no one notices because I always get my work done and more but never send up red flags because I never have questions or get over time. I go out to my car and listen to the radio or rest my eyes, when coming back in I walk back in behind a group of smokers who for some reason are allowed to waste company time. I check email and search the internet but the key is to always look busy and frustrated, laughing or looking at all relaxed are things to avoid when trying to sell browsing for working.
Other times I just head to the restroom but sorry I won’t go into any details other then sometimes I become dazed and wake up a half hour later with numb legs that leads to painful tingling. (imagine me standing up and then screaming in pain before falling back over against the stall as my legs give out.) Sometimes I’m not even doing anything, I leave my pants on and just stare at the wall, I’ve even known people who take naps, although I have never been able to sleep to that particular smell.
Another one of my favorites is the water bottle, I always have a 20 oz bottle of water at my desk that I drink which almost without change always makes me have to pee at which point I can take the slow walk to the restroom and then stop at the water fountain to refill my drink. You might say that it would be easier to have a larger bottle of water but then you would cut down on the trips and the trip is everything.
I know the process of becoming a superior temp seems difficult but practice makes perfect and in time it will all become easy, but don’t construe easy for fun, because it is anything but. This is all so routine it’s ridiculous, I use the restroom for my rest at the same time everyday, I drink the same amount of water, I eat lunch at the same time, I beg myself to wait until ten before I start searching the internet as I’ve run out of interesting websites to browse.
So I’ve taken a load off and wound up with sleepy legs and now it’s a half an hour of work and then lunch at one o’clock. Now some places won’t tolerate you going to lunch this late, because for whatever reason many people believe that noon is the only reasonable time to eat lunch and eating later then that means you wont get your work done so you have to obey the rules but currently as I said I am in a low visibility job with low accountability so I go to lunch around one or later if I can keep my stomach from devouring it self. This is so that when you get back from a late lunch you have very little time left in your day and as it is the only thing to look forward to, you save it until you can’t stand the wait any longer and then you take your lunch and hopefully this short satisfaction and rest and nourishment will hold over your boredom until five when it’s time to leave.
I find myself at lunch eating the same things everyday: turkey sandwiches, pretzels, fruit, yogurt and water to wash it down. I take around nine capsules everyday which range from vitamins and supplements to mood enhancers and hair thickeners. I’ve given up the many distractions that make life worth living. I don’t drink pop or eat sugar or fast food nearly as much as I did in my youth and I take supplements and drink eight glasses of water a day. I even quit smoking and switched to ultra light beer. You might say I’m still young but these depressing jobs and this ridiculous state have caused me irreparable damage. The stress of not having a steady job has started to make my hair thin and my face break out, Indiana sedentary life mixed with office work has caused me to slump forward and begin to grow a spare tire around my mid section, my muscles have atrophied, my eyes get worse everyday and if depression was a special Olympic sport I would come in second place every year behind a quadriplegic girl from Siberia who writes gothic poetry by dipping her tongue in tar and licking cement walls.
So to try and compensate I eat right and take vitamins. It might be helping my physical appearance but my insides are still rotting away. Sure to look at me I still look young and happy and some people, hopefully mostly girls, find me to be attractive but nothing works better then telling a girl that you’re a temp to send her screaming in the other direction.
So this is why I always come back to my career or lack there of as the reason for my growing pain. I graduated college with all the dreams in the world. I knew my graphic arts degree would set me up comfortably in that young single successful crowd and I loved what I did. It started well. I found a great little starter job in Denver, Colorado, assisting a photographer and an art director for a sporting goods catalog. It was fun and I learned a lot, I knew this experience would lead me to something greater, like designing movie posters or shooting photo’s for Maxim, that’s hot (all rights reserved, Paris Hilton). But it wasn’t five months before I was laid off in the wake of 9/11, the planes crashing, not the Michael more movie. Business took a hit and advertising took the brunt of it as the first thing to go. Now years later I still can’t find a job in advertising. I’m too old to be the new guy but don’t have the experience to be the old guy and to make matters worse I’m competing against every other Tom, Dick and Jane that lost their job or who just came out of college with their graphic design degree. The markets flooded to the point that even if I did get a job I wouldn’t make as much as I do with these temp jobs.
I guess I’m just disenfranchised by the whole business world; I want a job that doesn’t measure everything by the bottom dollar. Where did creativity and imagination go?
So here I am, stuck in the only thing that I’m good at, living the line between being a horrible temp or too good. Leaping from one small break to the next in my day desperately hoping for the night when I can go home and flip on a movie and drink a six pack or smoke some gange.
You might say that I should be out with my friends, which would make it all better because that’s what you do. Well I’m anti social by nature and also stemming from my latest break up with the woman that I thought I was suppose to marry. A college sweet heart that I got back together with after my failed attempts at conquering Denver’s advertising world. I loved Denver but I could no longer afford it, so unable to find another job I moved home for awhile and eventually got back together with her. We decided to move to a larger city and so moved to Indianapolis together but eventually my depression drove her away and she left me here alone. So I’m friendless and it’s not that easy to make friends when you’re just a temp and usually only have a month tops to get to know anyone from work before your moved on to the next job. Don’t get me wrong, I have acquaintances, people I can go out with if I desperately crave human interaction but really they are nothing more then a distraction, just like movies and alcohol and weed. And personally beer and weed don’t get offended by me nearly as much as people do, and the Star Wars Trilogy never tries to tell me what’s wrong with my life or what I need to do to get out of this rut. Then you might say I need to just move back home or to where some of my friends live, well home isn’t an option as my parents packed up and are traveling the country in an RV in some sort of empty nest syndrome riot and my friends are mostly in Denver or are married and the last thing I want to do right now is be the third wheel to a happily married couple.
I hate where I am but I get by. I have a lease on an apartment, I pay my bills and I keep working even if it’s crappy temp jobs. The temp agency people love me because I’m making them money because I don’t usually quit jobs or get fired like most temps, I stay on as long as possible and when I do end up leaving the companies have nothing but wonderful things to say about me, so really this is the best place I’ve found for me right now, even if it’s the most miserable place in time and space.


I know this dosn't really go anywhere yet, it's the opening of a story about a life long Temporary Employee that eventually finds a way to make his days more entertaining but in the end more dangerous. Please let me know if this rings true with anyone else!

---I need to turn this into a conversation with a girl that he goes on a date with, she eventually leaves him after saying something like “what’s wrong with you? What penance are you paying? And who was this girl that destroyed you so well?”
Something like that.

Then I can say; "she would have left anyway when she found out I was a temp, when you read “temp” I was actually saying “business analyst’ to her, yes I think I have taken to lying."
and that will lead into his biggest lie and the real fun.