September 2001

THE TEN RULES OF TEMPING

By the time you read this I will have left the wonderful world of temping to go back to U of T after six years of working for some of Canada's most blue-blooded Bay Street firms. As a service to the 80% of indie musicians who also temp, here is my advice to you:

1. Never, ever, under any circumstances, mention to your co-workers that you are in an indie band.
This will give bosses the chance to scrutinize your every move. Even if you have the flu, they will say "late night last night?" every time you look under the weather. It's only a matter of time before they learn the name of your band, and some of your younger co-workers will attend one of your shows. This will prove to be especially disadvantageous if you dress in drag for your performances. Co-workers who grew up in the '60s and '70s will most assuredly have been in garage bands of their own in their youth, and will try to recapture their youth by asking you stupid questions about the Beatles.

2. Make friends with the security guards
When your ruse is up and the time comes for you to be forcefully escorted from the building, they will treat you more gently than the executive who acted snippy to them every day. Also, if you need to be let in to use the office photocopier on weekends to make zines and posters, the security guards will recognize you and let you in without question.

3. Learn to furrow your brow
Bosses do a double take when they see you frowning at your terminal, and hesitate to give you additional work. If you are reading a funny email from a friend, you will be able to laugh inwardly without drawing attention to the fact that you have fuck all to do.

4. The cafeteria is not a good place to eat lunch
Most cafeterias don't bother posting a menu because they serve the same thing every Monday, the same thing every Tuesday, etc. If you are a vegan, you will starve on a diet of iceberg lettuce and radishes (a cafeteria "salad") and you will draw scornful looks from the cashiers when they realize you aren't a full-time employee and thus do not receive staff discounts.

5. Bite your tongue
This rule is especially useful for your first couple weeks of temping. Smile slightly and nod as you are being taught your job, but under no circumstances should you engage your boss in conversation. This will make them think that they have a friend in you and encourage them to drop by your desk unannounced to discuss problems with their marriage.

8. Always arrive early for work on Friday
Friday is the day that temps fill out their timesheets, which need to be signed by your boss. It is advisable that your only encounter with your boss is as soon as they arrive for work on Friday. They will get the idea in their heads that you arrive before they do every day.

7. Corrupt the summer interns
If you are fortunate enough to be a temp during the summer, you will encounter keen summer students anxious to learn the ropes of big business. You will be doing them a favour if you delegate all your work to them, and brag about how quickly you've completed your own "work." They will soon feel inadequate for big business and become artists and take up jobs in the service industry. You'll have delivered a double whammy: you will have taken a bright future as an office drone away from somebody, and will have removed a potential drone from the big business.

8. The golden shortcuts: Undo, Copy & Paste
If you keep saving your work, trouble will never come to you. Learn to automatically hit CTRL-Z (or APPLE-Z for those temps who work in modern advertising and image bank firms) whenever you fuck up. If you have a complicated PowerPoint presentation to create, find one done by somebody else, copy (CTRL-C) and paste (CTRL-V) their design, and alter the contents. Then take a coffee break for the rest of the day, while furrowing your brow.

9. Mention how you plan to have babies
It doesn't matter if you don't think you're ever going to have them, or if you're not planning on having them for decades. Nothing warms the heart of a temp-employer more than the knowledge that you expect to be trapped in a dead-end word processing job for the rest of your life. Poor people with mouths to feed never complain about their jobs, for fear of losing them.

10. Look like a homemaker
Get a picture frame, find a photo of a dorky looking member of the opposite sex out of a university yearbook (even if you are gay), and tell anybody who will listen that this is your partner. This will keep the "silver foxes" from trying to mate with you. I personally used a picture of my dog Misha, which worked even better than a human.