Wednesday, September 9, 2009

My day as an office temp (a one-day stand)

Quite unexpectedly today, I received a phone call from an editorial placement agency I’ve been listed with for months that has never yet found me any work. They asked if I could do two days of proofreading – starting this afternoon. With a little childcare assistance from my parents, who kindly said they were available to meet the bus and take the kids home both days, I realized the timing was actually pretty good; I didn’t have any major writing assignments pending and it was the perfect time to accept a two-day office gig.

This was the first time I’d ever taken a traditional temp assignment. When I started at my last full-time job, it was temp-to-perm, so I went in as a temp but with the fervent hope that it would turn into a permanent position. And it did, inasmuch as you can call two years permanent. Back then, I wrote an essay about how working as a contractor when you want to be a regular employee is like living together when you want to get married: you keep wondering why the company would buy the cow – and give the cow health insurance and IRA contributions – when it can get the milk for free.

If that temp-to-perm role was like living together, then today’s situation was like a one-night stand, or really a two-day stand, since I’m expected back tomorrow. All I needed to do was perform the work effectively. I didn’t need to remember names, learn the office culture, develop an interest in the company’s mission, or get to know people. Just come in, do the job for the prescribed time period, and you’re done. It’s so different from the long-term jobs I’ve held in the past, but it’s also kind of a thrill to feel so utterly unfettered.

Usually the first day of work is not only exhausting and stressful but so daunting: you mean I have to do this over and over again every day for the rest of my life? Or at least the foreseeable future? Today was exhausting and stressful in that I kept worrying about the working-mom issues that I’ve been mercifully free of for the past year – how will I have time between dinner and bedtime tonight to pack lunches and oversee homework and prep tomorrow night’s dinner and help with baths and make sure everyone has their permission slips and library books – but it wasn’t daunting, because there’s no serious commitment involved. I’d love to get more work like this – though realistically, I’d be even better off with another full-time salaried position – but it was just so delightfully carefree to experience a different side of work life.

It was also simply amusing to be in this office. Following proper temp protocol, I dressed conventionally in a suit with nylons and pumps, but the assignment was at an advertising agency with genuine exposed brick walls, and all the employees were dressed quite casually. Not even ad-agency hip or casual chic, just extremely relaxed wardrobes. There was a big shaggy dog lying in the middle of the wide-open work space near my desk, and at one point the account rep came out of her office and lay down on the floor to cuddle him. Fun to watch the goings-on; even more fun to know it’s not my employer and I don’t have to learn to be one of them. I just have to help them out with a couple of days of editing to fill in for a sick proofreader, which led me to the realization that swine flu could be quite a boon for the temp placement industry.

Meanwhile, it's Day 760 of my running streak, and I squeezed in a 1.4 mile run up to the soccer fields and back before changing clothes and heading in to work. Tomorrow I'll try to go at dawn instead, which I haven't done in months, but that's the reality of a 9-to-5 workday, even if it's for just one day.

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