21st Century Slavers...

Temp services are sort of a mixed bag especially in today's economic climate. True they do put in a good deal of effort to find work for other people. People that are desperate, exhausted or otherwise sick of the rat race that is looking for work.

I am unfortunately one of those people. I have been looking for a steady job that isn't soul-crushing, mind-numbing or ridiculously outside of my skill set and pays well enough for me to get ahead. The market is so bad that a college educated, articulate, hard-working, quick-study with a wide variety of skills like customer service, computer repair, carpentry and a whole bunch of other useful trades can't find a decent job. The point here is that I am qualified, ready, willing and able to do just about anything outside of flipping burgers or manually masturbating caged animals. Hell for the right money I might even do that. It is by way of me being exhausted and frustrated that I have fallen into the "temp worker trap."

Since I have become a bonafide employee of a temp service I have been assigned to a few jobs and been contacted (and passed over) for a few more (an example of one I didn't get: euthanizing sick and dying pets.) At first my response was more like actually getting hired. After a while though, and certainly after the assignment, it started to feel more like getting screwed from both ends. You go to work, you do your job, you learn things, get to know people, get into a routine and then one day all of that is gone. Then you wait, wonder and hope. One good thing is that in the mean time you have a chance to look for a real job or make plans to go back to school. In my case I keep getting screwed because I have had just about enough time to get back into the routine of planning and looking for a real job when they call with some other open-ended bullshit assignment. It's like flipping a coin. Will they send me to some hot factory to lift heavy shit and work with nasty chemicals or will I be riding around in a van all day checking meters and filling out paper work or will I be cleaning up shit (literally shit) all day. And then you get to ask yourself all the other questions like, "how long will this last?", "should I even get invested by getting chummy with my coworkers?", "how much effort do I really care to put into my work knowing that at the end of the week the employer can just tell me 'thanks for the work, now get the fuck on'?" Of course you don't want to be a complete boob because you get rated but then again is it really worth it to be all gung-ho about something that is purposely designed to expire? It's a fucking tight-rope.

In any case my overall point here is that temp agencies are the modern day equivalent to slave traders. And I will explain why I think that. They trade you around like a baseball card. You have no real sense of security (of course actual slaves always had job security but in this case I am equating security with the whip of being employed at whimsy which is sort of scary.) They pay you below scale in comparison to other permanent employees of a given company and that's how they make money. And that really is it, they rent you out as cheap labor and reap the rewards for the work that you do. So in essence you are a slave, rented out like I would rent a floor sander for an hour, a day, a week. And the real kick in the teeth for both temp and business is that if you work out and they want to take you on as a permanent full-time employee the business that is renting you has to pay the agency to buy you from them which I am told is quite expensive. And also you are prevented from actually jumping ship of your own accord which sucks because if you do happen to find a good fit the renter is contractually barred from hiring you for an arbitrary length of time. In effect you are the property of the agency, your free will is stifled by contracts and you feel like some odd brand of semi-chattel to be bought, sold and traded at the discretion of some corporate jerk face.

So do I feel good about this arrangement? Not really. I don't like the insecurity, I don't like the diminished pay that enriches my masters, and I don't like the lack of free will inherent in these sorts of arrangements. Granted I am still free to quit and find work on my own. And there is a slim chance of actually landing a permanent position. But overall the experience is a little disconcerting. Too bad the economy sucks so bad that I can't seem to leverage my talents on my own but have to rent myself out to a trader in human flesh.

Also, there is the ineptitude of the agents themselves but that is just getting away from the big picture. And at this point would only make this post spiral into baseless ranting.