Ef You See Kay Temping

That's it. I've made a decision. I am putting off Temp Work for as long as possible, hopefully forever.
I don't think that I will make a whole lot of valuable connections for networking, I don't think I will find a job this way that truly interests me, and I am not that desperate for money.
It's great that this option is available to me. And having that knowledge is enough right now.

Thank you Donna Summer, may you rest in peace!

The Female Temp Worker's Hymn

 It never goes out of style.

Kept

So what is this strange situation I find myself in? Don't people generally have to work for a living? Don't they usually kind of freak out when the paycheques run dry and somewhat jump at the first opportunity that presents itself?

Well, yes, generally speaking.
But then there's that other breed.







And then there is me. I consider myself being somewhere in between those two extremes, on a flexible sliding scale, depending on the season, time of day, weekday, the general mood, my sexiness, savings in my account, work around the house, demands put on me, and the grace of my sponsor.

What I can attest is that is is ordinarily not a very clear-cut situation. Some days I feel like Ms. Kept above, on others I feel like a Rosie who will work 12+ hour shifts soon, to recompense for all that I have taken so carefreely. Very much a luxury problem, I am sure. Or is it?

In any case. I would like to maintain an acceptable level of dignity, accountability, self-care, and self-determination and overcome those dreadful tendencies kept women oftentimes display: laziness, spoiledness, a sense of entitlement, and the idea that they are just too precious to pull their own weight financially. They often get quite dull over time, too!
I've learned, however, that these women aren't always to blame to the fullest extend for their nonchalant lifestyles. Oftentimes factors like culture, family obligations, a husband's expectations, opportunities, education, access to meaningful employment, - in short issues around women's rights play a major role. Not all women are strong enough and willing to put up a terrific fight to overcome these inequalities and decide to settle for the existence of a semi-dependent lap dog. I am sure some women don't decide at all. It never even occurs to them that they have a say in the matter. But I know that the consequences of such compliance are felt very much in that population and a whole lot of suppression and denial is necessary to maintain the status quo.

Another coping strategy is becoming a calculating bitch: I have you by the balls, honey!  I am going to take you to the cleaners if you decide to get rid of me. You should have thought of prenups when you had the chance, sucker! And if I hang in there long enough, all this is going to be mine and mine alone!!

Both these blueprints don't really work for me. They are extremely bad Karma and nothing good can ever come of them in the long run.

So what's a decent, free, and emancipated woman to do who happens to have encountered a longish  struggle with gainful employment? That's right. She'll stop concerning herself so much with her husband's - or her family's - monetary assets and will eventually get a grip on her situation. All on her own.

P.S.: Oooh, oooh:  I am so excited!  My new, 100% "sponsored" smart phone will arrive in the mail today! The question is: should I wait at home for the mail man or pick it up at the post office after I've been wined and dined later today...? Will I even have the time before I go to the movies...?
Oh, the decisions to make! It's a tough life.

Working for your Friend

I have this chronically disorganized, frazzled friend. She once hired a professional organizer and paid her good money to redo her closets.
I have to admit, I find the notion quite odd and subscribe to a different philosophy: you've created the chaos, you clean it up. Same philosophy goes for the dirty bathroom, BTW. It's about self-reliance and being an adult!

Now she's laid her eyes on my very organized, sane, minimalistic self. She asked me if I could help her come up with systems to get organized. At first I thought it'd be fun to give her some tips and cheerfully agreed to her proposition. She even wanted to pay me. I ignored that part of the deal. It seemed somewhat condescending.

So we met for lunch last week. She started telling me about all her problem areas (there are a lot) and I threw in some suggestions e.g.: lose one of the four credit cards, no matter how great a deal they have attached to them, have all your emails forwarded to one account, go paperless, sign up for pre-authorized monthly bill payments, decide for one wireless device and just stick with it,  scratch off those meaningless tasks from your to do list, have only one day planner if you really need one, colour code, and you don't have to buy more supplies in order to get organized... Just common sense suggestions.
She had quite a few objections and we had to discuss in detail. How dull. I'd rather hear her new juicy dating stories or tell her about all my grievances as an unemployed shmuck. But no! We had to weigh the pros and cons of PDFs vs. paper. Snore.

It started to look a lot like she just wants me to make it all go away for her. At one point she proclaimed: "That's why people hire assistants!" Aaaaha! That's when it became crystal clear: she is hoping for a single serving personal assistant (because she wouldn't be able to afford one on a regular basis)!
Oooh no, princess. We're not going there. So I turned the whole project upside down into a counseling session, because I am good at that. I started to speak about "discipline" and  "self-management", "like brushing teeth" and "taking care of yourself".
Of course she wasn't too, too pleased; neither was I.
It was an awkward get-together and I sure hope she'll just forget about the whole thing. If not, she will receive free counseling sessions from me because I am too chicken to do anything else.

*Sigh...*

Within the Realms of Possibility

Amazing! Located a great opportunity on no other but  - Craigslist!
I know for a fact that this ad is legitimate and that the company is congenial, because I know them personally. So I sent off my resume.

Two reasons why they might end up picking someone else over me, even though I make such a fresh, chipper, flexible and talented employee:

▪ I have only about 80% of the skills they are looking for. So I have to rely a bit on a "will train the right individual" attitude of the hiring manager.

▪ Uhm. This is a big one. My reputation. When I was working in that building, my company ended up in a huge kerfuffle with the government. People split up in camps and I found myself caught in the middle.  I ended up sympathizing with the fiery rebellious side and gossip travels fast in that vicinity so even the very biggest cheese of the entire community suddenly knew my face and my name. I caught him checking me out with deep distrust once: who is this unassuming nobody I've never noticed really?

I know I did the right thing by standing up for my beliefs. It was a matter of moral courage. Some of the staff of the company I just applied to congratulated the fiery rebellious ones, so there definitely was consensus. It's just that the big cheese wasn't having it and I might thus be flagged as "must never rehire".
The government doesn't declare an organization an "enemy of state" for nothing!

I'll give it another week exactly before calling that Temp Agency. 

Volunteering - You're doing it wrong

A little while ago I hooked up with a great friend who is the Director of a great organization. She needed free help and I was happy to deliver.
So she gave me all these tasks to do at home and I started working away. Until I had a few questions, which was pretty much right off the bat.
"Hey friend" I emailed, "What do you mean by 'sliding scale'? What - like some colour coded option people can pick from? What is this?"
She never replied.
Hmmm... I put my work on hold.
I emailed her again a few days later: "Hey friend, so do you want to get together to talk about volunteering? I have a few questions..."
No response.
I waited, did no work, and emailed her a week later: "Hey friend, do you want to meet this awesome woman I know who can give you advice about the stuff you're having trouble with?"
Dead silence from her end.

The diva that I am I got really miffed. here I am. Offering her all this cool help, giving her free office chairs, using my contacts for her to network and now she's ignoring me? Not cool. Not cool at all.

I emailed her, because that's what I'm good at: "Hey friend. I am very busy. Can't help you right now. Maybe later. Email me if you need anything."
Zilch for an answer.
I left it at that for a a while - until I felt that it was just too awkward. "Hey friend" I emailed, 'cause it's what I do "Are you alive? Did you die? Am I volunteering or not? Jesus, let a woman know! Can you do that, please?" 

So great friend finally left a voice message yesterday. Nice as ever, chipper, fun and happy. If I'd care to come in today to "rock out" (synonymous for "working" in her world. She's fun that way.)  Rock out? ROCK OUT?! The nerve of that one! She just wants me to drop everything to rock out with her, doesn't she!  Yeah, I don't think so, lady!!! I ignored her message.
Until I realized that she'd mentioned something about "hope you got my emails..." Wait, what?

Turns out that the filter I applied to her messages in my Gmail account disables the new message alert for those emails in T-Bird. The folder doesn't even show the number of new great friend messages in brackets in bold, like I am used to from Outlook rules.
When I clicked on said folder yesterday - brrrrrrrrrrrrt - would you look at that...  A long list of emails from great friend, answering patiently all my questions, being understanding about my made-up-diva-busyness, calling me "sis" and thanking me for all that I do.

I am such
an asshole sometimes.

Craigslist Creeps

I am weird. Career Websites have never worked for me. None the jobs advertised there interest me. Just to prove my point a little sample of today's offerings:




▪ Temp Agency advertising a bogus job
▪ Another Temp Agency advertising another bogus job
▪ Working for a bank, yay!
▪ Another bank
▪ A Mining Co.
▪ Some "automotive" people - what does that even mean?
▪ There's that bank again, different job
▪ An Insurance Co.
and the list goes on and on.

I just can't be employed by big corporations to do soul-crushing work nobody gives a damn about. And that's what these career Websites seem to be all about. That's why I don't bother looking anymore.
What's left, besides some small specialty job sites, is Craigslist! My go-to for all things concerning life.
People seem to get quite disenchanted with the job section on Craigslist as of late. There is a lot of complaining - and rightfully so. Shady agencies posting bogus jobs (those are even worse than the ones on the career sites because no one's ever heard of these organizations), those extremely successful business people who reply to your email and just happen to be out of the country currently - but you're hired, most definitely - and if you could just forward your SIN, your credit card info, DOB, mother's maiden name, and home address, that would be swell. Also: if you could go ahead and order the following supplies, please. You will be reimbursed! Of course you will!

Then there's the slave driver type: must have a Ph.D. in Psychology, know everything about IT,  not squirm at those janitorial duties, be available 24/7, 20+ years of relevant experience in plastic molding please, and be the funnest and most chipper MOFO on the face of the earth, 'cause we like to have a good laugh. We're offering competitive base pay (another word for minimum wage I found out the hard way) and if you don't get your application right -  dude, we're tossing you in a snap! You won't even feel it. So don't waste our time with your crap.

So yeah, job seekers are unhappy and posting a lot of "This is bullshit" statements on there. (I think it's awesome.) I was one to try and keep job hunter's spirits up: Don't give up hope, y'all! There's real jobs on here! I'm not shitting you!

Well, there is.
So far I had the pleasure of securing three legit offers of employment with a decent salary from Craigslist.
The one guy was a complete plonker. I mean he was so dense! I really think he wasn't well and needed help. To illustrate my point: he asked me to write a little "about me" type thing for the company Website. So I did. I used the job ad as a guide and told him so. When it was done he was all like: "That is so great! Because, yeah! You actually will be the backbone of the company!"

Ok, stuff like this happens, he was a stressed out, very busy man. But when these things  happen on a daily basis, you start worrying. We had you don't say moments every time we spoke. I felt mostly sorry for him and was hoping I could prevent him from harm. Helper syndrome. Silly me. He fired me after 6 weeks because he really couldn't afford me. I knew. Instead of giving it to me straight he decided to be a weasel about it and claimed that I was too stupid to do the job. ORLY? Definitely projecting there, my man. I was pretty angry with dunce for a day. But I know that he will punish himself sufficiently in due time - I kinda told him that before I hung up on him forever.

Then there was that "marketing firm". Hey! Cool! They were super-duper-excited about me and my very special skill-set (which I do have, it's true). So I asked them sitting at this enormous black natural marble table in this office at a weird address (not the one from their Website, first I feared human trafficking and was hesitant to go) that was heavily under construction: who are your clients? What products do you market? What is it that you do (their Website wouldn't disclose)? There were a lot of aaahs und uhmms and one was funny: "You're gonna have to ask the boss, I really don't deal with clients. All I can tell you is that we are in the business of making a lot of money. Oh and there is that guy with a warehouse full of brochures. He is our client. He is making a lot of money, too, you know! Isn't that mind-boggling?" Yes. Mind-boggling indeed. Another one was pretty funny. When I asked who my supervisor would be, they told me that "Mickey is the one who signs the cheques around here." Oh wow. They were actually super-friendly and personable so I, having a duncy moment of my own, was actually considering going to work for those fellows! It took me a good 24 hours to see the light and blow the whole thing off. Wow.

Then there was another guy similar to plonker above. But wait. He hired someone else! I'm sure it's for the best.

Legit they were! That they were...

Sooo, is Craigslist out, then? What's left for me to do? Temping?
 

I'm no Rookie!

It's not like I've never temped before. I have! I fulfilled a number of assignments one summer some 5, 6 years ago.
One I was never given the chance to complete, though.

I was doing work for the government. Binding reports with some kind of torture machine. Heavy, noisy, dangerous, hard to handle. It was in a very high security setting, I needed a special designated ID card with bar code to enter the building. After about half an hour into my bone crushing task, my manager took me aside, apologized profusely, and informed me that I was relieved from my duties. I had no security clearance as my lovely agency had misplaced my criminal record check, thankyouverymuch.

Just for the kicks of it I yelled throughout the open plan office:"But I didn't do anything!!" - "I know, I know...", my manager nervously tried to calm me down, "it's just that our policy..."
To add a bit of drama I continued:"I am not a criminal, you know?!" She looked very unhappy and escorted me swiftly out the door.

Ah, what the hey. I hit the art gallery instead. Hated that gig anyway. Made my arms hurt.
Fun times!

To Temp or not to Temp?

I am booooored!
I'd like to go out again! Do stuff! Meet new people! See new things! Have experiences! Make myself useful! Unemployment does suck occasionally - actually increasingly so. 

I remember a time when I was scoffing at them ladies who got themselves a job just for the hell of it because all they were required to do was sit on the couch and eat bonbons. I always told myself that I would never - never! - not know what to do with my time when I have that luxury.

But look at me now. These semi-luxurious bonbons are getting mighty stale. (I do need to work again eventually, but I could take my sweet time until that managerial position finally becomes available, indeed.)
Is temping really a good idea?
Of course I am above such means of employment. I mean, seriously, who isn't?
But could it possibly be mostly a fun social experiment? Might I be able to not get caught up in that chopped liver feel that goes with temping? Could I perhaps secretly scoff at the absurdity of it?

Many things to ponder. I am still debating with myself. To temp or not to temp?

Until then I shall keep looking for work conventionally and examine my strange desire for temporary employment opportunities at this very location. Thank you.