Temping Certainly Does Suck
Posted by erin at May 19, 2004 12:46 PMI had hoped by now there would be more work on the Barbie movies for me. Alas, nothing yet, and my savings has dwindled, so I've had to take some temp jobs.
Because I already work part-time, I can really only temp three days a week, which means the I have to keep calling in to say I'm available the next day, and the kind of temp jobs I get are typically only one or two days long.
This year I've temped at L'Oriel, Thomas Pink (a shirt store), Telemundo, and a Biotech company. The shirt store was the worst - I had to tie ribbons around packages. 200 ribbons to be exact, for some corporate gift order.
I have found that in the typical temp job, if you show up exactly on time it is to your disadvantage, because inevitably, the person you're working for won't be ready for you yet, or sometimes they're not even in yet. Then, once the person who knows what you're doing turns up, it takes another half hour for them to get you set up before you can do anything at all.
So far the best temp job I've worked was Telemundo, since I actually got to do something that required some kind of skill. I had to help with a mail merge. I also got some free food. But Telemundo was still annoying in that it took them an hour to set me up at a computer. During that hour I read a lot of marketing pamphlets about C-NBC (the C-NBC department being next door to Telemundo). Did you know that half of all C-NBC viewers are millionaires? 35% of C-NBC viewers own summer homes! The pamphlet used a lot of humorous synonyms for "f*cking loaded" such as "well-to-do" and "enjoying the good life."
Comments Individual Archive Index
May 20, 2004 02:20 AM, Halifax said:
Maybe if you pathologically carried a book around with you you'd have something to do while waiting for them to "set you up."
May 20, 2004 08:50 AM, Erin said:
It's very rare that I don't have a book on me.
I hesitate to start reading a novel at any given temp job because I'm not familiar with the office I'm in. I know that some offices are OK with employees reading during downtime, but other offices, such as N.'s, won't let you read any books at work.
My fear is always that I'll get someone in trouble with their boss if I start really reading a book at work. The company president might walk by, see me reading and not working, and ask who hired this temp, and how much this is costing the company for me not to work, etc.,etc. If I'm reading material the company itself has laying around my hope is that it is obvious that I'm waiting for someone.
May 21, 2004 03:40 AM, Halifax said:
You hide the small paperback book inside the large company brochure.
Weren't you ever in seventh grade?
May 21, 2004 08:34 AM, RIck said:
At my job, I'm (presumably) not supposed to read during planning time, so instead of bringing a book, I print books out from the internet (which I shouldn't be doing on the work computers) and hide the loose papers in my lesson plans when I read them.
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