All Temps Are Not Created Equally

Jack the Temp is leaving us, and I’m kind of sad about it. Some people would look down upon the temps that they are forced to endure in their workplace. They’re usually under-skilled, fleeting, socially deprived individuals that working folk won’t allow into their tight knit office cliques. In Vietnam, guys grunting through the second half of their tours wouldn’t even talk to the fellows freshly in country. They even had a name for them: FNG’s. They didn’t want to get to know them because there was a good chance the new guy wasn’t going to last very long out in the bush, so why bother? This is kind of the way I feel about temps.

Rambo probably wouldn't even talk to a temp.

The City of Santa Barbara has got to be one of the slowest operating bureaucracies around. It can take months to process a request for a list of viable candidates to fill even the most menial of clerical positions (such as mine). One of the lowest positions on the municipal ladder, yet one of the most imperative, is the Administrative Specialist. I am going to estimate that there are probably 50 AS professionals working for the city. They fill myriad roles for each of the 12 departments and are filtered through a hiring process that includes testing, list placement, and multiple interviews. My own effort at securing the position I hold took nearly five months. For this reason, the city utilizes several temporary employees to fill gaps when AS people move up or out of their roles. Jack the Temp is one of those guys. He’s been here for six months.

We all knew that Jack the Temp was only going to be here temporarily, yet I think none of us thought about what life would be like at work without Jack the Temp. On this his last day, I am forced to think of a future without my favorite prank pulling partner. Yes we liked to play jokes on our unsuspecting colleagues. Jack the Temp spearheaded the effort to steal all of the (flowers that are) pens from the other side of our lobby. The plan checkers could never figure out where the heck their pens were going. They painstakingly turned their ball point pens into flowers and potted them on the counter to try to keep the public from stealing or otherwise walking off with them. It works; that is until Jack the Temp came along. They were so confounded over there and it was hilarious when we’d hear them asking each other “where the heck did all the pens go?”

Jack also figured out how by using just a couple of keystrokes he could turn a person’s desktop display upside down. I forget what keystrokes he used, but I had never heard of it and when he turned my screen upside down I couldn’t figure out how to turn it right side up again. A great trick!

Jack always laughed at me when I would reply to an open chat window on an unsuspecting co-workers workstation with something like “My butt hurts” or “That burrito is giving me the worst farts!” Not a lot of people would laugh with me on those, but Jack did.

While he never got to go to the meetings that our division is forced to endure, I think people really thought of Jack the Temp as their colleague, and not just a temp. In fact I know that a certain fraction of our division was jealous that he didn’t have to go to the meetings. I know I was. But that is another matter. This post is about Jack the Temp. Don’t get me off topic.

Some of the things that I’ve learned about Jack the Temp since we’ve worked together:

• He likes to practice his left handed penmanship, even though he is right handed.
• He eats very healthy foods and even runs an Ethiopian catering service. I tease him about it by pretending to order “fried housefly” and then he calls me an asshole. He’s right, of course.
• Jack usually wears all black. He’s into the whole fashion thing, and he wears some pretty hip stuff, but I never figured out why fashionistas always wear the least expressive color. It’s okay, it’s his thing not mine.
• Jack likes to sing out “I like pizza, YAY!” but I’ve never seen him eat a slice.
• He’s prone to studying the names of world capitals when he’s not busy, and in fact will be visiting some during his European Oddyssey beginning next week. I think he’s hitting something like ten countries in three months, which is impressive.
• Jack has an affinity for the homeless lady that hangs out around our building. She’s a total regular in this neighborhood, and she showers in the sink of our ladies room. He likes her so much we started calling her “Jack’s Girlfriend” and that lasted for a little while until one time someone referred to her as “Jack’s Girlfriend” and he refuted that statement saying that in fact she was his long lost Mother. Now she’s known as “Jack’s Mother” and he spins intricately detailed falsehoods about what they did for dinner last night or how she reacted during his acting up period during his upbringing. Jack is hilarious when he is ad-libbing. Larry David would be proud of him.
  

So I wanted to memorialize my co-worker Jack the Temp, who is leaving us today, by saying that he is the tip-top of the list of the temporary toilers, and I will miss him. Au revoir, Auf wiedersehen, and Adios my friend.