Allow me to talk to you, my fellow temps.

[elionwyr]

(You know who you are.)

Six years or so of working as a temp has taught me a few hard lessons.

The biggest? That as a temp you will, as a general rule, be treated like a second class citizen. You will, for office political reasons, be excluded from $WINTERHOLIDAY celebrations. Full time staff will wait until after your apparently unworthy self has left the office before pulling out the birthday cake purchased for the few, the proud, the people worthy of receiving benefits. Your agencies will seduce you with promises of 'temp-to-hire' positions, and you'll believe them because THIS time might be different..THIS time, after a year of working sans benefits, or holiday pay, or sick days..THIS time, your employer is going to hire you.

Only that never quite happens, and so you chase the next sparkling promise of full time employment.

It's discouraging.

It can be heart-breaking.

But ya know what really sucks?

What SUCKS, my fellow temporaries, is when you are told by your prospective employer of the behavior of past temp workers. The ones that talked on their celphones all day. The ones that had no bloody idea how to use Excel, or Word, or a friggin' fax machine. The ones that dressed in torn shirts and jeans and were surprised to hear this wasn't considered 'office casual.'

Now, sure. These incredibly incompetent people make those of us with skills and common sense (shhhh I do too have some!) look like friggin' rock stars. HOWEVER. It also means we have to work much much harder to convince our employers that we are, in fact, rock starts, and that we're not going to slack off as soon as we get hired.

Being a bad temp is like being a bad renter-with-pets. You make it harder for everyone who comes along after you to convince the People In Power that you were the exception, not the rule.

Take your job seriously. Or, hey, if you don't want the job? Don't take it. There are a ton of us that *do* in fact want to be employed. And your antics are unappreciated.

Comments

[horrorvenus.livejournal.com]

Preach it sister!

[ysobelle.livejournal.com]

See, it never bothered me cos I always knew I was fantastic, and I knew they new folks were gonna see that straight off the bat. If I had to beat them with a hammer.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

Six years of hearing about other temps and knowing their bad behavior makes us office goddesses look bad wears on a person.

[zhent.livejournal.com]

And being a Rock Star without benefits wears on a person. The promises of "we'd hire you if we could" start to sound hollow. Eventually the realization dawns that no matter how much ass you kick, no matter how many letters of praise you get, the slacker who got lucky back when full time employment was being offered and has the job can act the fool, come in late, leave early, make personal calls on company time, and generally be bad for the morale of everyone around them and nothing will be done about it because they're a permanent employee.

I hereby wish new permanent jobs with awesome benefits upon us all!

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes, this.

The vaguely psychotic coworker who was hired before me at the insurance job..the one who actually had the gall to ask me, "Do you ever forget which letter comes next in the alphabet? I do.." and who spent HOURS on the phone for a week begging people for money to fix a personal crisis..using a phone we really had no reason or business using...seeing her go from temp to full time was a bit, um, demoralizing, shall we say.

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

To be fair, some of the people who start out as temps, probably never had a clue what appropriate dress is and what appropriate work behavior is in an office environment simply because they were never told what was expected. And this is as much a failure of temp agencies as it is of the people themselves. The temp agencies need to ensure that the temp understands the expectations of the prospective employer and that they are representing themselves and the agency at this position. Given that, the temps that don't perform to expectations, need to be given a warning by the temp agency for this. Often these two things don't happen. The second especially. The first perhaps happens more often.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

The idea that one could think wearing torn clothing to work in an office is something I can't comprehend.

But yes. Temp agencies are getting worse about communicating or working with their temps. It makes no sense to me..having a staff of temps that make employers happy means longer assignments and better references for the agency. My last agency put admins into what should be sales jobs and told me point blank they couldn't take me out of a position until and unless the employer fired me. It's counter-intuitive and it's not the way things used to work. I get that some people must have abused the system in the past, but now you are forcing people to have a very negative experience on both sides of the fence rather than being proactive in trying to find someone that's a better fit.

[k2rider78.livejournal.com]

:(
(hugs)