Live and Learn- Ways other temps will screw you over

If you ever have to work with other temps, DON’T! Okay, only if the other temp is evil, don’t.

I was at this one an assignment with another temp, who at first seemed very nice. But you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover… There were some things this temp did to specifically make me look bad and no, I am still not happy about it...

First, she had a task that required ¼ of the attention I had to give to mine. She kept loudly announcing how I was going slow. Girl, for real? Stick to your job and don’t try to exceed your title as a “temp”, will you?

Our boss seemed easily manipulated. So the temp purposefully repeated that I was going slow. Hopefully, the boss was intelligent enough to understand this other temp’s motivations behind her comments.

We were told, there would not be any overtime. So the options were (1) finish the work as quickly as possible, (2) don’t finish the work, (3) work the overtime but not get paid.

Of course, who would want to work overtime and not get paid, especially if you get a job every 2 weeks? So #3 was out of the question. #2 doesn’t fit my work ethics (but the other temp seemed real cool about it, “you can only do what you can do at a time given” she said. Well, that left only #1- to finish the work. So, I filled up my caffeine and brought on the snacks and focused all my attention to this work and worked through 8 hours with 30 minutes of break. I hardly ever left for the bathroom or any other break. On the contrary, the other temp slowed her pace down (X amount of work, which took her 30 minutes before, ended up taking her 2 hours) and took a longer lunch ( maximum you can take was one hour).

Our boss had to leave earlier. But she assigned someone else to sign the timecards.

I did as I was told. I was done right at 8 hours and was exhausted. The other temp managed to still have some work left, though. Not only that, but the assigned someone wanted to leave early too so she got her timecard signed blank. Oh wow! And that thing about not getting overtime vanished right there!!!

I sometimes wonder how successful I could have been if I could pull off unethical behavior in the workplace… Wouldn't you agree?