Here's some stories from places I've temped at in the past:
Farm Supply Place
One of the first places I ever temped at was a farm and landscaping supply company down in Enfield. They had told the agency they needed someone to work with their customer files online and in the database they had to track them. The lady who currently did it was leaving on maternity leave, and I was to cover for her for a little while. This sounded right up my alley, so I agreed to go down there. By the time I walked out roughly three weeks later I would have actually touched a keyboard maybe three times total.
Anyone who has seen a large invoice printer is probably familiar with the paper that comes out; it has running up each side those perforated strips that have the holes in them, sort of like paper that you can put in a 3-ring binder, except with a ton more holes running up each side. My first day there I was charged with ripping off those strips from all the invoices they printed out. For eight hours. The next day I got more responsibility in the form of getting to read the invoices (most of which were one line) and check for errors, before ripping off the side strips. For eight hours. This continued for my entire first week. I sheepishly called the agency after my first Friday there, and they insisted that I?d be doing computer work soon, so I persevered.
I should take this moment to point out that I worked with what was probably the most disgusting coworker I ever had. I don?t mean she was a bad person, I mean her oral hygiene was awful. The first day I met her, I thought she was playing a prank on me since I was the new guy. She starts talking to me, and there?s these GIGANTIC chunks of dark brown stuff between her teeth, sometimes almost completely covering her teeth. I thought it was chewing tobacco, maybe it was, but I will say this. When the first wave of her breath hit me for the first time I literally gagged. I gagged, no lie. I tried my best to cover it with a cough, but my goodness, it smelt like feces, raw unfiltered feces. Over the next couple weeks I would be able to tell if she was in my cubicle while I ate lunch (she had to get at files I had in there sometimes). I could tell because her stench of her breath hung in the air.
So things carry on exactly the same for my second week there, doing nothing but tearing the side strips off of thousands of invoices for eight hours. So I call the temp agency AGAIN that Friday; they tell me that they?ve had people in this position before, and that I should be doing about 90% of my work on a computer, in the capacity they mentioned.
The third week they decide to give me more ?challenging? work. I got to file thousands of invoices after someone tore the strips off the sides of them. I asked if I would be using a computer any time soon and they said that I would indeed be using one for about a half hour every day starting fairly soon. I don?t know who the hell my temp agency was talking to, and why they had the impression that I?d be doing customer database work. At the end of work on Friday I walked out, called the temp agency and told them I?d rather chew glass then ever go back there again. They were apologetic about what happened, and actually later in the year would give me what would become my best temp assignment I had, one at a community center which let me network a ton for my consulting business. In a final bit of irony, I asked about how my replacement was doing down at the farm supply place. They said she was happy, she enjoyed the job because it was all based on the computer.
Farm Supply Place
One of the first places I ever temped at was a farm and landscaping supply company down in Enfield. They had told the agency they needed someone to work with their customer files online and in the database they had to track them. The lady who currently did it was leaving on maternity leave, and I was to cover for her for a little while. This sounded right up my alley, so I agreed to go down there. By the time I walked out roughly three weeks later I would have actually touched a keyboard maybe three times total.
Anyone who has seen a large invoice printer is probably familiar with the paper that comes out; it has running up each side those perforated strips that have the holes in them, sort of like paper that you can put in a 3-ring binder, except with a ton more holes running up each side. My first day there I was charged with ripping off those strips from all the invoices they printed out. For eight hours. The next day I got more responsibility in the form of getting to read the invoices (most of which were one line) and check for errors, before ripping off the side strips. For eight hours. This continued for my entire first week. I sheepishly called the agency after my first Friday there, and they insisted that I?d be doing computer work soon, so I persevered.
I should take this moment to point out that I worked with what was probably the most disgusting coworker I ever had. I don?t mean she was a bad person, I mean her oral hygiene was awful. The first day I met her, I thought she was playing a prank on me since I was the new guy. She starts talking to me, and there?s these GIGANTIC chunks of dark brown stuff between her teeth, sometimes almost completely covering her teeth. I thought it was chewing tobacco, maybe it was, but I will say this. When the first wave of her breath hit me for the first time I literally gagged. I gagged, no lie. I tried my best to cover it with a cough, but my goodness, it smelt like feces, raw unfiltered feces. Over the next couple weeks I would be able to tell if she was in my cubicle while I ate lunch (she had to get at files I had in there sometimes). I could tell because her stench of her breath hung in the air.
So things carry on exactly the same for my second week there, doing nothing but tearing the side strips off of thousands of invoices for eight hours. So I call the temp agency AGAIN that Friday; they tell me that they?ve had people in this position before, and that I should be doing about 90% of my work on a computer, in the capacity they mentioned.
The third week they decide to give me more ?challenging? work. I got to file thousands of invoices after someone tore the strips off the sides of them. I asked if I would be using a computer any time soon and they said that I would indeed be using one for about a half hour every day starting fairly soon. I don?t know who the hell my temp agency was talking to, and why they had the impression that I?d be doing customer database work. At the end of work on Friday I walked out, called the temp agency and told them I?d rather chew glass then ever go back there again. They were apologetic about what happened, and actually later in the year would give me what would become my best temp assignment I had, one at a community center which let me network a ton for my consulting business. In a final bit of irony, I asked about how my replacement was doing down at the farm supply place. They said she was happy, she enjoyed the job because it was all based on the computer.