Temping in the Wilderness

I could easily write a book on Temping

It's like being a waitress- a book that would write itself.

Temp jobs are not fabulous opportunities that by some terrible trick of Fate have gone overlooked by the sleek and skilled set. They're jobs no one else wants. In fact, someone else has likely walked off the job. That's why the employer has been caught flat-footed and had to call a temp agency.

However, the employer has learned nothing from the walkout. Whatever factors caused the original person or persons to refuse to stay there- even for money- still exist. Add indignant anger to a backlog of undone work. Cue the hapless temp.

Today, for example. I'm Day Two at a place I'll be at for 14 days, and I'm now counting the remaining days. Yesterday's lunch conversation by two other workers ran a gamut of Mole Surgeries That Had to Be Redone and the Deep Stitches That Had to Be Gone In and Dug Out (both persons able to contribute their own detailed stories) to The High Price of Mac and Cheese In a Supposedly Nice Restaurant, to The Stuff I'm Coughing Up Right Now With This New Flu Bug That's Going Around.

If this fell into a story I was writing, I'd toss it out in the first draft as the very dullest stereotyping. What to do when it's a factual account? I survived by thinking about what an interesting adventure into primitive society I was having. The mind as cultural machete, searching for footholds in a brackish, sucking ooze...

Today I was considered very witty, as they thought I made up the phrase "carbon footprint." Funny as when it came out of my mouth, I wondered if the saying had itself jumped the shark. Not with this crowd. They drive in from Vancouver and hadn't heard it before.

PS Illustration is apparently owned by these guys. A different Web address hops to this site.