A little story about my last temp job

Many thanks to Accurate Recruiting in Chicago, for inspiring this story. Needless to say, never use my name as a reference if you apply for work with them.

The supervisor at my last temp job took me aside my final day and slyly asked me if I would write a poem about their office. I politely declined but she kept insisting. "Oh, come on. It'll be funny!" In deference to her, here is a little story about that office.

Your department is the most inefficient, backwards corporate environment I have ever seen. Documents that should take one edit take seven, and projects that could last a couple of days end up taking weeks. The people in charge of your department don't know their asses from holes in the ground, and they have reached their middle-management authority not by virtue of their skills but rather the amount of years they could keep their tongue up the anus of the person above them without vomiting.

The daily mantra of your department is not "How do we make this office more productive?" but "This is how we've done it for the last twenty years and this is how we'll do it until the end of time." If computers were people your office would be filled with racists. You not only fear technology, you loathe it. And anytime someone attempts in the least to show you how to use computers to eliminate repetetive tasks, you put your hands over your ears and scream, "I'M NOT LISTENING! I'M NOT LISTENING! I'M NOT LISTENING!"

You treat your employees like robots. When they unexpectedly finish the work they have been assigned to do, you give them soul-killing tedium that takes days and sometimes weeks to complete. When there is no work to be done at all, you expect them to complacently stare at a blank wall until they are needed, like C-3PO powering down during expository scenes in Star Wars. You are the people Kafka was talking about in his novels, and not only do you not understand that, you become hostile when an intellectual name such as "Kafka" is even brought up in conversation.

Does this feel like a personal attack? You're damn right it is. I was attacked in your office daily from the moment I arrived to the moment I left. Your subordinates eyed me with suspicion and mistrust each time my back was turned. They are so incompetent at their own job they feel it their duty to inspect all new employees for the same half-ass work ethic. When they found that my skills were higher than theirs, they sent secret emails to people more powerful than yourself, gossiping and outright lying about my poor performance. In typical fashion, your bosses never bothered to see if these reports were true but instead simply called my agency and terminated my assignment three hours before I was secretly about to quit in the first place.

Does this story sound righteous? You're damn right it is. Make no mistake about it: I AM BETTER THAN YOU. I am smarter, better educated, more intuitive, and posess both better crisis-management skills and computer skills than anyone in your department. I could do any of your jobs with one hand tied behind my back, and the only reason I don't is because I know that my job security would be determined by someone even more incompetent and back-biting than yourself. There are millions of people who could do your job better who choose not to for the same reasons, and it is people like you who are making America's once world-leading economic position slowly slip away into obscurity.

Are you offended by my story? You should ask if I give a shit. I was offended by you for a month and a half, and offended by people just like you for the last five years.

I resent the fact that I must rely on people like you so I can eat.

I resent the fact that my temp agency were a bunch of spineless weasels who wouldn't defend me.

I resent the fact that three of my paychecks were lost and that I was blamed for the problem.

I resent the fact that I was punished for producing the documents proving my innocence.

I resent the fact that I am forced to write such a paranoia-laced, Bernard-Goetz-like justification of my actions.

I resent the fact that I still feel like I did something wrong.

I resent the fact that a million other artists have told this exact story a million other times and you still don't get it.

I resent the fact that I have to go find a new agency that will be just as bad, so they can send me on a new assignment that will be even worse.

I resent the fact that I cannot get away from you people.

You have offended me since the age of eight and you will continue to offend me until the age of 80. If you feel abused by this story, rest assured that it is only a small sampling of the constant 24-hour abuse I must take from people like you every day of my entire adult life. I am fucking sick of you people and I refuse anymore to mask my feelings of disgust and contempt for you.

There's your poem. Next time, think twice before insisting on hearing a temp's opinion of their job.

Copyright 1999, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.