Temping Gig

After my temping gig of the past month, I'm reminded of Sylvia Plath's account in "Bell Jar" (taken from real life) in which she'd failed an honors science course and had to re-take the credit as a "regular" science course---only to find out that the course for "regular" students was actually a lot tougher and required more work.

I was not born privileged but, with my last job of the past 5 years, I'd worked my way up to a $50K per year job of privilege: Basically, I was paid well not for grunt work but for THINKING. Organization and logic. Which I'm well qualified for.

I still do not regret quitting that job in October; my boss was decidedly NOT a thinker, nor organized, nor logical. I could no longer be around that crazy.

But doing temp work again reminded me of what was so horrible about THAT: Not just the two bosses but also the temp co-workers.

The bosses: The main boss, a woman, tried to pretend she wasn't uptight, but she was extremely uptight. No talking, no water bottles on the tables, don't leave your pencils on your table at the end of the day, wipe down your work area at the end of the day. Her anality transferred to her underling boss. He was a nice guy on days when she wasn't there (bringing in candy, playing music), but he also warned us on those days: "Don't ask for help lifting boxes because X. wouldn't like it"; "Don't pick up your own assignment sheets because X. wouldn't like it." (As it turned out, said X. didn't mind if we asked for help with boxes or picked up our own assignment sheets; but she'd terrorized the poor underling so much that he was afraid to make any simple decisions on his own.)

The temp co-workers: I was the only professional person there at the end. (The one other professional, a 30-something librarian by profession, was there at the beginning but didn't come back after Christmas break because he'd found a library job.) The others, some of whom I've mentioned in previous posts: The lazy left-wing dyke who bragged about how smart she was (she spoke five languages) but only lasted a couple of days. The 50-something black woman (very nice) who worked only at seasonal jobs like the post office, IRS, etc., and didn't come back after Christmas break. A 40-something Hispanic guy who claimed to be working on a novel, and who claimed to have "three gigs." (Turned out the "gigs" were: This one, Saturdays at a golf course, and occasional catering.) This guy's shoulder bothered him, so he was out almost every other day. The Hispanic 30-ish daughter of a university retiree whom I bonded with re our violent past family lives, but who had barely held any other jobs before this and who barely did any work here, spending most of her time looking at her phone. A December 2019 college grad who had her phone sitting next to her the whole time and who spent 75% of her time either texting or staring off into space (wish the anal boss had called her on this slackerdom).

Oh, and halfway through, they brought in a lady in her late 50s who wasn't supposed to be our boss but who started bossing us around because she'd worked on such projects before. I was fine with her telling the two Millennials on their phones what to do, but I balked when she started trying to boss ME around! (For instance, the actual #2 guy boss at one point put me in charge of loading up carts to move boxes to the next room, and assigned this woman to another task --- but she immediately jumped up and started telling me how to load the carts! I had to, uncomfortably, tell her that the guy had put ME in charge, etc.) This woman was now retired and just did these temp jobs as a hobby of sorts, and she had an annoyingly self-righteous attitude (like I said: Apply that attitude to the Millennials who might need your guidance, but I certainly don't).

Sigh. So you see, there was a lot going on. I, like Plath, just wanted to be let alone to do my thing.

As a final note, I looked up my two bosses' salaries on the state site: The anal main boss = $43K per year; her subordinate = $26.9K. I don't mind doing grunt work, but... don't condescend to me while I'm doing it, especially if you're only earning what I made 20 years ago.