Hashtag Temp Life
Greetings, future temporary receptionists and administrative assistants. Welcome to entertainment temp work. You are here because you possess none, or very little of the following:
1. Real world skills
2. An ability to present yourself well in cover letters, resumes, and/or job interviews
3. A future in this industry
The assignments you will embark on will be exhausting, not in a hard-labor, or even mentally-taxing kind of way, more in an emotionally exhausting kind of way, as a result of the inane and monotonous nature of your daily existence. Luckily, because no will ever want to eat with you anyway, lunch breaks are a great time for naps in the backseat of your car.
For those of you who thought you were at the bottom of the barrel as a Hollywood intern, please revise your assumption. Because your boss no longer cares if you “learn” anything, and is under no sort of college-in-exchange-for-free labor agreement, we're now not even sure where the barrel is. Sure, you get paid now, but only as long as you don't fuck up a single thing. Your employer and/or your existential dread will always be there to remind you that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other young people with stronger resumes and better connections than you, trying to replace you--permanently.
Sometimes, your temp agent will dangle a carrot in front of your face called “temp-to-hire,” meaning that if you take this assignment and manage to impress someone enough, you could start calling work your “job” and not your “temp thing.” The commute will mostly likely be horrendous, to a company just barely on the fringes of entertainment, as distantly related to your long-term goal as physically possible while still technically “in the industry.” After taxes and the agency commission, it will pay less than a job at Applebee’s but you are ~following your dreams~, and you are in no position to turn down a paycheck, any paycheck, ever. Your temp agent will convince you with such stunningly persuasive prose as, “you should take it, they’re nice,” and “it’s work” and in comparison to your current state of non-work, you will accept, the hope of job security and maybe even benefits glimmering in your eye.
Depending on your assignment, being a temp can offer many advantages and opportunities for you, if you know how to spot them. These are including but not limited to:
1. A lack of meaningful or lasting human connection between you and your boss/coworkers, offering long hours of contemplative solitude. Also, lonely lunch breaks in which the only thing you have to think about is the number of calories you’re stuffing into your mouth to negate the loneliness. On particularly mind-numbingly boring jobs, you may be forced into such a deep, existential mind trap that you’ll start to ponder life’s most eternal questions like “is there a God?” and “how tall is Taylor Swift?” (note: don't ever review your work computer Google Search History). With great boredom comes great philosophical responsibility.
2. An escape route. The nature of the job itself allows for this! You never signed a contract or bonded with anyone in HR; if you truly loathe your assignment, you are 100% allowed to quit. If your boss has made you lose your faith in humanity entirely, you (hopefully) never have to see them again. You assume that nothing can ever be worse than this assignment.* Quitting through a temp agency means minimal fire damage on that burnt bridge. It is, however, more likely that you’ll feel too guilty to just up and quit, having complained about being unemployed for the last several months, and now that you actually (kinda) have a job, you will instead subconsciously get a little sloppy in your message taking, become less “peppy” in your phone answering, and the misery that has been embedded deep within your soul will start to shine through your lifeless, drooping eyes. Then you’ll get the call from your temp agent on Friday afternoon that “they don’t need you back next week,” and the problem is solved for you. Send us your timecard, and are you available next week?
*This assumption will later prove to be false.
3. A lesson in humility. As a temp, you are the most expendable thing in the world. You can be replaced with one phone call and likely have zero future with the company, so people are allowed to treat you however they damn well please. Fortunately, around ten to twenty people in Los Angeles are decent human beings, so there is a small chance that you might work for one of them. If not, you are constantly reminded that you are an inherently inferior, replaceable temp-bot, ensuring you to be a truly humble, groveling employee like the undeserving, untalented piece of shit you were born to be. Most of your coworkers will automatically hate you because you are young and therefore societally-speaking more beautiful, and it is legal in all 50 states to hate people younger and more beautiful than you.
Your boss’s stunningly low expectations of you will also drive the humility point home. Because they will assume you are an idiot. He/she may ask you to prove you know how to print a Word document, most likely because the temp that preceded you did not know how to print a Word document. It is not your fault that many temps are indeed idiots, but you will still have to spend the next few days/weeks proving to your boss you are a fully-functioning human who knows Microsoft Office. You will probably be unsuccessful, because your boss will expect you to inherently know things about the office that the person you replaced did, and the person who trained was too busy or didn’t care enough about you to actually tell you everything you need to know. Which makes you then internalize what everyone else already thinks about you (IMSUCHAGODDAMNIDIOT).
Lastly, your boss will expect you to be a privileged, spoiled, technology dependent millennial who thinks he/she is above this job in every possible way. Paradoxically, that “dead” look in your eyes from the lack of intellectual stimulation the job provides with be misread as you being “over it” or “bored.” Your boss might make sweeping generalizations about “your generation” and if you do anything that slightly adheres to their wildly low expectations, they will solidify their resolve as you cower further into the Gen Y pigeonhole. Unfortunately, many temp jobs involve a great deal of downtime, and when a superior catches you stalking the Instagram of one of the girls on Dance Moms under your desk out of the purest boredom you’ve ever experienced, you will have proven their point. Millennials are lazy, money-grabbing, whiny human-shaped blobs. Think about this on your hour-long commute back to your shitty apartment.
So, Godspeed, my temporary employees. I urge you not to view your work validating parking tickets, doing the office dishes, dictating emails to washed up actresses, organizing your boss’s ailing mother’s grocery receipts in chronological order, setting up interviews with people that will eventually replace you, getting yelled at by a 65 year old about what a hashtag is, and researching French Oak flooring companies for an executive’s trophy wife’s Beverly Hills mansion renovation as “demeaning.” Because without you, yes you, and also all of the other temps, and also the Hollywood interns, and also the real assistants, the Hollywood complex would collapse in on itself. And WHAT WOULD WE DO without Iron Man 4? Just remember, you’re special, and if you quit your temp job, there are only like five thousand recent grads just like you waiting to take your place.
Your loyal temp overlord,
The Fallen Angel Satan
