Comments on: Friday Happy Hour: Temp Jobs

By: kittymama

kittymama — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 05:33:20 +0000

I temped when I first moved to New York in 1985 (and other times). One job was typing addresses of people in Japan onto Christmas card envelopes. Typing several lines of multisyllabic name and address information in a language I don’t know, over and over, was really, really tiring.

By: Mahtayla

Mahtayla — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:29:10 +0000

When I was a teenager still living at my parent’s house, their next door neighbor asked me if I’d like to do some AP/AR work for her boyfriend’s business. The pay was great, about 10/hour and I was working from his house in the hills. It sounded perfect.
I showed up and met her boyfriend who proceeded to explain that his business was internet based and they did some filming inside the house…Hmmm. I thought it sounded strange, but this was 1999 and it was plausible.
It was an internet porn site. “Real” girls pretending they lived inside his house and doing whatever it was naked girls did on camera.
I sat in the next room, but there was no door and I could hear the guys telling them what to do around the corner.
I tried to block it out, after all this was my neighbor’s boyfriend and I was making good money, but when they said I could make even more money… I split.
After I left, he tried to say I had used one of his credit cards, because there was a charge he didn’t authorize on it. Even though this guy had between five and ten people walking around his house at any given time and none of his financial stuff was kept locked. To this day I have no idea what the charge was or who did it but I know it wasn’t me.
The neighbor still lives next door to my parents and she seems nice, but it was weird knowing what her boyfriend did for money. He bought her a new Mercedes and all I could think was, “Some girl took her clothes off for you to get that car.”

By: T.R.

T.R. — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 09:05:56 +0000

That’s a tough question… Was it the bus boy job, the moving agency job or the telemarketing job…? I would have to say it was the telemarketing job. I didn’t last long.

I was selling city coupon books – you know the ones, $1500 coupons for only $50. What a bargain!

Anyway, the Supervisor gave me this lame script that I was supposed to follow without fail, regardless of who answered the phone. “Mr (or Mrs) Public, allow me to tell you about this great deal I am selling.” On many occasions, children would answer the phone. I knew they were kids and it seemed pretty ridiculous to start my sales pitch with them, so I departed the text. I would ask if their mom or dad were home. As it turns out, this is a no-no in the telemarketing world. Don’t ask me why. The supervisor heard me do this on several occasions and warned me to stop. I didn’t. The next time, she took me out into the hall and told me that she thought this job just wasn’t for me. I agreed and happily left. I think I lasted about three hours.

By: tami

tami — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:38:47 +0000

i took a temp job during college doing “accounts payable” work (the quotation marks will make sense later), which i had done a lot of in the past. when i got to the job i discovered my supervisor would be a particularly odd smelling middle aged man (i found out later he wore diapers). he was constantly eating something guaranteed to leave a smudge on paperwork and especially liked to partially lick his fingertip cheeto mess before sticking his finger onto something on my desk, leaving the dreaded orange slime. now, i’m a pretty intelligent girl, so when he asked me “do you know how to alphabetize?” i felt pretty confident saying “yes, i did it at my old job frequently.” apparently my supervisor was not satisfied and proceeded to explain to me how the alphabet works and how you follow it to alphabetize. he then sat with me to watch me alphabetize using my handy alphabet sorter just to make sure i wouldn’t screw it up. next, i found out that was my entire job, sort invoices alphabetically, put them in a tray and occasionally take them to data entry. i stayed at the job for 2-3 weeks, but only because my mom’s friend worked there. when i quit, another employee told me she was happy i was “getting out”.

By: Witty Nickname

Witty Nickname — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 03:49:56 +0000

In College I spent an entire summer “Preparing Documents for imaging” which means removing all metal (including staples) from boxes upon boxes of forms. 8 hrs a day 5 days a week. Yuck.

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:41:15 +0000

I’ve held my share of demeaning temp jobs, but this was by far the worst. I was filling in for a secretary at an oral surgeon/dentist’s office. My day started with the dentist’s hygienist sitting her fat ass on my desk and trying to gossip about the number of lawsuits this guy had against him. I passed the time by listening to patients crying and screaming in the back room. The cherry on top of my day was when I was asked to sit on top of a girl and hold her arms and legs down while he pulled out her wisdom teeth. For a while after that loveloy temp job, I was convinced I had committed some sort of crime and that it was only a matter of time before I was summoned to court and jailed. Luckily, it hasn’t caught up with me yet.

By: Sweet Pea

Sweet Pea — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:00:34 +0000

*********
My worst(yet best)job was cage cleaner at a not-for-profit shelter.
Getting poop in my hair when I’d have to clean the dog cages was much more delightful than having to stick my hands in the cages of newly aquired cats with questionable temperments.
Being violated by a 120lb rottweiler during a walk was also a trip.
But it was the best job because no matter how tiring or gross…it was all for the animals and to get them healthy and adopted.
And it also directed me to a new career path. I’m back in school to become a Veterinary Technician.
**********

By: Trevor

Trevor — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:36:44 +0000

I moved from a small town to a big city when I was 19. I was very tech savvy, I knew a lot about computers, but I was very naive about most of the world. I applied for a “computer sales” position where to my surprise, all the applicants were interviewed together around a restaurant table. I got a call back and “hung out” with the boss for about a week. I went to his house for dinner, fixed his personal computer, sat in his car while he did errands… etc. Then he finally brought me to the “office”. It was an old house and inside was an amazing array of computer equipment. Turns out they were illegally copying software, packaging it, and shipping it all over the world. I was told I could work on any part I wanted, but the boss had an excellent idea for a website he thought I’d be perfect for… a place where people could buy their groceries online and have it shipped to their door… “an excellent front operation.” That night I called the boss and nervously told him I had found another job and wouldn’t be returning. I was never paid for my time.

By: Christina

Christina — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:32:27 +0000

One summer as I was in between jobs in college I worked as a temp for the city at the water treatment facility in the admin. office. The city had just imposed watering restrictions because of an ongoing drought, and my job was to answer the “hotline” phone that people would call to report those who were violating the terms of the watering restrictions. Usually it was really boring, but I did get a call where a woman threatened to kill her neighbor who had just put in new sod. I kid you not. Threatened to kill someone over watering their lawn. My supervisor called the police, and I had to be deposed. Good times.

By: caitlen315

caitlen315 — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:05:08 +0000

It wasn’t exactly a temp job, but I only worked there for a couple of months so maybe it counts. About 10 years ago I worked as a telemarketer, trying to get people to sign up for credit cards. It was a small company – they had two shifts of about 15 people each. We had lists of people with bad credit, and the card we were hawking was aimed at them, to help them improve their credit score. It wasn’t a secure card, but there was about $300 in random fees, and we had to get their CHECKING ACCOUNT INFORMATION over the phone. I was amazed at how many people were willing to do this. We were supposed to really pressure people into signing up and if someone was hesitating, one of the supervisors would get on the phone and many times they’d harass the people into submission. I was terrible at high-pressure sales, so I let people blow me off pretty easily.

I never really felt good about the job. Every once in a while we’d get someone on the phone who would be livid, telling us that they’d already signed up with us and we had taken their money, but they never received a card. We had an 800 number for “customer service” that we were supposed to give to them, but the only answer you ever got on that number was a machine.

Only a few weeks after I was gone, the place got raided by the FBI because it was a complete and total scam. None of the workers knew it (but we all had a pretty good gut feeling), but I’m not sure about the management. The owners were never on site, so they could have been running the whole thing from the Cayman Islands or something for all I know. None of the workers were prosecuted and I never found out about the managers, or if they even caught the owners.