#supertemp

Sometimes I wished I had picked one career and just gone with it. Something a little more practical, like submarine screen door salesman. Mosquito repellent fragrance designer. Professional dog groomer on permanent sabbatical in North Korea. Anything but temp worker, which on the list of great career decisions falls somewhere between philandering politician and snake oil salesman, as far as my mother is concerned.

It’s not that I don’t have interests or goals. I’ve been an ambitious little snot ever since I learned in the first grade I could make the kid in the next seat over pay me a quarter if I threatened to tell the teacher I saw him carving his initials into his desk. The problem is that my ambitions don’t get along with each other.

I didn’t get along with Becki, either, and that was also a problem, because she was the liaison officer holding my future in her perfectly manicured hands at Day One Temp Agency. It was a Wednesday afternoon in March and the white telephone on Becki’s desk rang and rang and rang unanswered. My employment folder was stuffed so full of paperwork that Becki had to wrestle it from its own cubbyhole in the filing cabinet.

“Serial Sally strikes again?” she asked sweetly, her husky voice making it sound like a child’s sing-song chant. “Really, what are we going to do with you, girlfriend? I’m soooo sorry it didn’t work out. Again.”

“So am I,” I said, and that acting class I took last semester must have done something good for me after all, because I managed to sound halfway sincere. But she had already dumped the folder on her desk and finally grabbed the phone, and in best Becki fashion, had temporarily blotted out my existence with such ease and so thoroughly that Schroedinger, if he’d seen it, would have gone back to the drawing board.

I waited in front of her desk in my uncomfortable high heels, clutching the one purse I owned. The monstrous mahogany desk from which Becki presided over her domain dominated the sickly yellow office, a corporate throne fit for an usurping queen that looked oddly out of place in the quaint old building. It was decorated with photos of family vacations to DisneyWorld and the little toys you get out of McDonalds’ Happy Meals. Becki had an obsession with Tinkerbell that made my childhood love of Grimm’s Fairy Tales want to shrivel up and die. Fairies just aren't supposed to be covered in that much glitter.

I stared out the dirty window behind her desk. It overlooked the river, and not the nice part of it. I really regretted wearing the heels. I never wore them unless I had an appointment with Becki, because if I didn't, she'd hound me like Cerberus himself about dressing nicely for my jobs. 

I was never happy to visit Day One, mostly because of Becki, but days like that one were even more miserable than most. I like starting projects a lot more than I like having to end them.

Becki chatted a minute and then hung up the phone. She looked back up at me, blue eyes going wide as she decided that I existed again. She flipped the folder open and let the pages of pink and yellow copy paper spill out over her desk. Each form was a contract for a job I’d worked in the last two years since I moved to the bustling metropolis of Maconville.

“Thirty-four jobs in a little over twenty months,” she clucked sadly, her pearly pink mouth forming a little moue of disappointment. “Really, Sally, it’s like I keep telling you. Get yourself a boyfriend and go out once in a while. Have a life outside work, it makes it easier to handle the little stresses during the day.”

“Will Mr. Barstow be back soon?” I asked, glancing at the closed door to her boss’ office. Mostly so she couldn’t see the murderous look in my eyes. People think I’m very sweet-tempered, not because it’s true, but because I’ve gotten good at hiding anger.

Becki frowned with her beesting lips. “I don’t think we need to bother Mr. Barstow. I can get a new job lined up for you. We haven’t tried the animal processing industry yet, have we?”

Mr. Barstow was, supposedly, the one in charge of Day One Temp Agency. In the time I’d been with Day One, I’d seen him precisely once, and that was when I’d accidentally walked in on him and Becki smooching passionately against the color copier in the dim hallway.

“That’s kind of you,” I said politely, “But I’d really like to speak with him personally. Also I’m a vegetarian.”

“Right,” she sighed dramatically. “That was why you quit the fast food jobs. And the job at the zoo. And the one at the wharf.”

“I’m moving back home, so I won't need your services any more,” I announced, realizing I probably should have just said that to start with. My throat went dry as I realized I hadn't said it earlier because I hadn't meant to say it at all. “And I quit the zoo job because a guy with a big gun tried to rob me behind the warthog enclosure,” I added.

She sighed dramatically and said “I’m sure, if I put in the extra effort, that I can get something else suitable for you. Maybe if you put in the same effort -- ” Then she realized that what I’d said had not been “believe in yourself and all your dreams will come true” or whatever Tinkerbell is preaching at people these days.

The fact was, I wasn’t happy. I paid Day One Temp Agency to find jobs for me. They skimmed a blasphemous amount of money off the top of my pittance every week, every two weeks, every month, whatever the pay period was. And that had always been fine with me, because I’m not one for monotony. Variety is the spice of life, that’s my motto. But lately my life had, shall we say, lacked salt.

You’re probably wondering, among other things, why on earth I didn’t get a job and stick to it. Especially in such a terrible economy. That makes three of us wondering the same thing – you, me, and my mother. My only other surviving family member didn’t much care where the money came from as long as I was home in time to provide dinner. And my dad had been dead for nearly ten years. He’d never been much for believing or dreams. He’d liked hard work and lots of it, and he always finished what he started. Eventually it repaid the favor and finished him.

But at least Dad had always known what he liked. He was a carnivore, chasing down goals one by one. I was a cow. I browsed among my options, and it's hard to move forward when you're busy going from side to side.

At least I didn’t have any self delusions about it. Some people are destined for glory and grandeur. I figured I’d lost any shot I had at greatness back in kindergarten when I got an Unsatisfactory on my report card in the subject of using scissors. Chimpanzees can use scissors. They can also beat you to death with one hand tied behind their backs. Those were two interesting facts I’d learned during my stint as a zoo custodian. What I’ve never found out is whether anyone has ever managed to tie an chimpanzee's hand behind his back to prove it, or if that had actually precipitated the discovery in the first place.

I turned my attention back to Becki, who was obviously trying to decide whether letting me see the mysterious Mr. Barstow would be preferable to letting one of the agency’s few clients walk out the door for good. For all she fretted, fussed and freaking annoyed me, she knew she needed me even more than I needed Day One Temp Agency. They didn't get many willing clients in a place like this. And I was apparently leaving. Becki looked nearly as surprised as I was to discover it.

“I’ll miss you,” I lied.

Becki’s eyes went wide and she started to stutter something as I casually leaned over and signed the job completion form already laid out on her desk. I tore off my white copy, leaving the yellow and pink copies behind for my ever-growing file. Aloha, job number 35.

“Did you get a job somewhere else?” my liaison officer squawked, flapping her delicate hands with their long claw-like nails. Each was painted with a different Disney character.

“No,” I said. That one wasn't a lie.

I had only decided on the subway ride over to the agency that I wanted to move back home. That I had had enough of this sprawling city with its tall buildings, high crime rate and thriving cockroach population. I hadn’t really thought so far as to ponder what would happen when I showed up on my mother’s doorstep with all of my stuff and even less self confidence than I’d had when I’d left for the big city two years before. I hadn’t thought what I’d say to Dr. Rammstein at Triskelion Community College, the patient adviser and only friend I’d made since leaving home.

Actually, I hadn't thought I'd be doing it at all.

What I had thought about – daydreamed, really - was how Becki would look when I barged my way past her and knocked on Mr. Barstow’s door. How her face would glimmer just a bit at the drama of it all, as if my life was her own personal soap opera, as I turned the knob and stuck my head in the darkened office. Glancing back over my shoulder as I did just that, Becki didn't disappoint.

Nor did the mysterious Mr. Barstow, who was, as I had suspected, hiding out from his serial temp. He was just as I’d remembered him: short, perfectly dressed, but with an undercurrent of paunchy greasiness that had little to do with his trim waistline and gorgeous black hair. He was crouched over his desk like a spider over prey, watching a movie on his phone. He munched on a carrot stick, a $10 latte at his elbow. He might have come out of a Brooks Brothers catalog, if they hadn’t gone out of business, or a museum exhibit of Early 21st Century Man.

He was everything my father had been and everything I was deathly afraid of becoming.

“Mr. Barstow,” I interrupted him mid-munch, “It’s been a pleasure. I wish you the best, but I’m parting ways with your agency.” I closed the door softly behind me. Becki did in fact look just as I had imagined, caught somewhere between outrage and incomprehension with a little gleam of excitement thrown in for flavor. But she also looked strangely worried.

I was nearly out of the door when she found her voice, which had possibly been soaking in a bottle of whiskey, and used it to call after me, “Wait! There’s a job, one other job, and they need someone by tomorrow night. I already told them, I promised them we’d find someone who can do it!”

“I’m not interested in slaughtering anything, thanks, Becki,” I chirruped back. My face was growing warm and my feet were sliding around uncomfortably inside the yellow patent leather as I strode out the door. I hadn't bothered to wear pantyhose. You've gotta draw the line in the sand somewhere.

“It’s not, it’s just a secretary position,” she said, hurrying out of the office and trotting along beside me as I continued down the dingy hallway. “But they had some kind of emergency, and they really, really need someone for a job, someone who can type fast and knows computers --” – which was Becki shorthand for ‘knows where to find the on button’ -- “--and I’d really owe you one, and--”

“Sorry, Becki,” I said, smacking the elevator call button. “You know I don’t do after-hours jobs. I have to be home by dark.”

“And we’d pay you, on top of whatever they give you!” she begged.

“Mmm, no.” I tapped my toe tip against the green granite floor. The industrial  florescent lighting set low in the ceiling above our heads flickered ominously. At least the high heels were useful for showing just how bored of this conversation I was.

As the elevator car arrived, I was privately panicking a little. I hadn’t meant to do this, not really. I’m bad with permanent decisions. Now I was thinking of what it would be like to go home with the news. This wasn’t really what I wanted.

Sometimes I don’t understand myself. It’s times like those that I understand how the world looking outside-in must feel about me. It's almost as confusing as I find it looking inside-out at everybody else.

“It’s for the Kinnitmana agency,” Becki said, shifting her eyes back and forth like a frightened doe who’s scented a wolf and is looking around for a slower herd mate to hide behind.

I stood back, looking at her, and let the elevator doors close in front of me. Becki stared at me hopefully.

In my years of cruising the low-paying temp jobs available in Maconville, the Kinnitmana agency was the one nut I’d never managed to crack. In fact, it was another temp agency. A much better temp agency. I had no idea what they were doing sourcing backup employees, even temps, through Day One when they already had a full stable of some of the most reliable and well-trained people in the industry, but the irony amused me the way a vintage 80’s shirt amuses a hipster.

Oh, fine. One more job couldn’t hurt.

“You’ll pay me double,” I suggested, as I raised an eyebrow. “With the same fee as usual?”

They’d be taking a loss. Becki nodded frantically.

“I thought Kinnitmana never hired externally. They contract with a lot of security officers, don't they? Former Navy SEALS looking for bodyguard jobs? Cops interested in contract work in war zones?”

“That's my understanding,” Becki said, twirling one golden curl of her hair around a Minnie Mouse fingertip. “They really emphasized they only needed someone for one day, and none of our other clients were up for such a short-term job. I thought for sure you'd try it?”

Well, darn. Now my curiosity wouldn’t let me go without a fight. The job itself was a mystery, but what had gone down that Becki was responsible for staffing it was an even more interesting conundrum. I pretended to think hard about it, but by the time Mr. Barstow cleared his throat in the doorway behind us my mind was already made up.