My friends and I are in an on-again/off-again writing club where the rules are simple. Every two weeks you have to submit three short stories that it took you 20 minutes or less to write. These are the results.

Temping Temparment

So there I was a victim of my own resistance….again.

Standing looking over the shoulder of today’s boss at temp job number 28, I space out questioning my purpose in life.  Each day, each job, each paycheck reaffirms the fact that I should be doing something different. 

Temping affords me the opportunity to sit behind a desk anonymous in different corporations each day, so i can secretly compare myself to them and judge them. This is a great pleasure of mine.      

Another pleasure is categorizing the workers.  There is the A squad, they wear suits everyday and the B squad who wear dowdy business casual attire who seek approval and try to make the A squad look good.  The B squad assistants tend to be dumpy and don’t really give a shit about their hair, it is usually tied back into a greasy ponytail that says, I am overworked and underpaid, I am just doing this job to have a little bit of joy on the weekends and to save up for that “dream” vacation to the Bahamas.  I imagine them going home at night miserable, there only solace watching Dancing With Stars and being able whenever they want, instead of at 10:15, 12 and 3:30, hence the reason for the dumpy bottom with a permanent wedgie.

There are many tricks you can use when you are temping to get out of actually doing 50%  of the stuff they want you to.  My favorite line is “I am just the temp, I have no idea.”  If that doesn’t get them off my case i usually just take a long time doing it until they get so annoyed waiting that they just leave and ask somebody else.   

When its 5:00 exactly i am running out the door with the other permanent assistants.  In the ride down in the elevator is when i feel the most human because like so many around me I just want to free.