Temping Anecdote

It was suggested to me that I should start writing about working as a temp, funny stories, what goes wrong, you know the usual junk. I actually had to think long and hard about my past temp work since September and I've come to a total of seven jobs, two of which I backed out of because I didn't feel they were the right placement for me. Here's a little summary:

My first temp job was as a receptionist at an architectural firm. It was a great job, really nice co-receptionist, it was close to where I live and I thoroughly enjoyed working there. I had just moved into my new flat the day before and was trying to sort things out with my life so it was a nice foray into the ever so glamorous world of temping. The next job however, was not. It was to be a much longer job, one that could have lasted several weeks, possibly months, so I was excited at the prospect of settling in somwhere. Fortunately for me though, it wasn't quite the place I needed it to be and because of that, I called the agency and demanded to be placed somwhere else and ended up at my perfect job for about four months.

Here's what happened at the hell job. I was supposed to be working in an office at a school that dealt with the continuing education of it's students. I arrived on time, but was met with an empty office. I had to wait around for about 20 minutes before anyone even showed up. The girl who arrived was, to be completely honest, very spacey. She just didn't seem to be 'with it' if you know what I mean. She sat me down at a desk and said I'd have to wait until the boss, let's just call her O, showed up. When O finally arrived, she didn't have anything for me to do yet, so I offered to help her label the envelopes she was rushing to fill. She asked me to write the word confidential in the upper left hand corner, which I did in capital letters. After doing this to three envelopes, she saw what I was writing, grabbed them out of my hands and furiously ripped up them in front of my face while exclaiming I was doing it all wrong. I completely froze. This was the moment I knew staying at this office would be a big mistake. She then finished the job and I was pretty much left sitting on my hands as the spacey girl and other female employee exchanged knowing glances. O then explained to me that I'd be doing data entry involving incoming course forms. No prob. However, as I didn't have a computer account of my own, I'd have to use O's account. She then proceeded to explain to me that I wasn't to read any of her personal documents, emails and stick to data entry. Hmmh. Here's the thing; she was quite rude when preaching to me about the dos and don'ts of computer etiquette, and her tone, assuming that I was a complete moron, was insulting. I was shocked that she would just assume that I was that unprofessional and that I'd actually read her mail! I had already had serious doubts about this temping job so I just filed it away under THINGS TO TALK TO AGENCY ABOUT AT LUNCH and continued with my work. Turns out she then needed me to open forms sent to her email, which then prompted O to AGAIN remind me not to read any other email as I was in her account. This of course caused much more annoyance on my part. Ok lady, you're seriously starting to piss me off now, that's it!

Lunch rolled around and instead of following along with spacey and new girl, I lingered behind and hastily dialled the agency. I explained clearly and under no circumstances was I ever going back to that job. I tried to explain as best I could the way I being treated and told the woman on the phone that I was doing the agency a favour by finishing out the day. I was very angry. At the time I was 26 years old, new to a country, had an honours university degree, was intelligent, articulate and not in the mood to be treated so harshly or to sell myself short. I'd had enough.

After lunch O left for the day and I was left to open course forms sent into her email account and do more data entry. As I was going through the emails concerning the course forms, I noticed that there was one from my recruitment agency, subject: my name. Well, after being treated like a snooping, unprofessional criminal, I decided why not? I might as well open it. I read the email and it was just a suck up letter to O letting her know politely that I decided my placement wasn't right for me. Of couse I printed a copy for myself and then clicked on the email and selected Unread. Maybe O would find out, maybe not, but I wasn't going to allow some overweight, middle aged hag try to belittle me and accuse me of things I hadn't (yet) done.

So thus ends chapter one in my temping saga. Stay tuned for chapter two, when I was placed in the mortgage department of a bank. Ooooo scary!