Don't Temp-t Me!

This is my first post since rising the stellar positon of Will Type For Food blogger and the pressue is on to make it good. I actually started writing a post last night that was so witty and urbane that it would have made your pants explode with joy... but my computer froze and I lost it forever. So, I thought I'd continue on from Tim's post on temp agencies and give you the inside shit on what happens if they do get you work. I've been temping for over 12 months and had some very good experiences I must admit, but then there are some really crumby bits too.

The worst part of temp work is that you get screwed over by the taxman big time. Just say you get some work and you need the money to feed your starving kids and it's a cold, cold winter so you work your fingers to the bone and put the time in so you get enough money to survive another week. So then you go up a tax bracket or two and you realise you could have worked less hours for around the same money. Well, that's how the system works and it happens to everyone. But then the next week there is no work so you are back to foraging through dumpsters for your dinner.

Now if you were getting paid fortnightly your tax would be averaged over that period, and would drop down to a reasonably-ish level but you are getting paid weekly so you just have to wear it.

And the only compensation is that you might get it back at tax time (which somehow doesn't seem to happen to me).

Another shitty thing is that you should be getting paid about 25% more than a permanent employee -- as a casual you get compensated for no sick leave and no holidays and none of that other good stuff. But it never seems to work out that way. Of course, you are unlikely to ever find out what the permanents are getting but I've made some pretty educated guesses and, at most, I've been getting a dollar or two an hour more.

Then you get work for places that call you "the temp" -- if they even bother to talk to you.

There are some advantages to temping though -- once you get in with a temp agency you get a pretty steady flow of work and it is much easier than trying to get a permanent job. The best thing though is whenever you are asked a question, you can look all wide-eyed and innocent and reply ... "I dunno, I'm only the temp."