We Are All Temps

In my last post, I floated out various reasons why people "temp" in hopes of dispelling the notion that people temp because they can't find permanent work. In this post, I want to debunk the myth of the "perm job" itself.

To get all heavy and existential, 'cuz that's how I roll, teachers from Buddha to Heraclitus have taught that change and impermanence are an integral part of existence and cannot be escaped or avoided. This applies to employment just as it does to living bodies and any object subject to entropic flux.

Everyone knows this intuitively, and yet, when we apply for or are offered a "full-time job," while we know that it won't be "permanent" like death, we assume the amount of time we will end up giving to the company is more or less in our control and practically indefinite. Indeed, this implied indefiniteness tends to separate the full-time employees from contractors who, as the name implies, work under a contract stipulating the terms and, more importantly, the length of their employment.

Of course, anyone who has gone through a round of lay-offs, downsizing, or re-organization knows that this sense of indefiniteness and permanence is an illusion.

I remember the dark days following September 11th when it seemed like every time I turned around a friend of mine was being "let go." (Doesn't that sound like a kind of "liberation"? Isn't it strange that the notion of freedom doesn't seem to apply to either the state of employment OR the state of unemployment?) Although I was spared (so far), I became acutely aware that the permanence of my own position was entirely contingent on the decisions and perceptions of others. As long as my contribution was viewed as valuable and I was viewed as, to some degree, irreplaceable, then my job was secure. That security, however, is not a given and could evaporate the moment the economic tides shift and the with them the fortunes and needs of the company.

In other words, I've never taken the permanence of my position for granted and, in a strange way, have always thought of myself as a "temp." It may have to do with the fact that most of my working life has been spent either in temporary positions or working for a temp agency (called a "staffing agency," in polite company). But I actually think that it has more to do with the actual nature of the beast for all of us unprotected by tenure, powerful unions, or lifetime appointments (all of which, sadly, are temporary in their own ways).

In other words, people don't temp because they can't find permanent jobs; they temp because permanent jobs, like the elusive unicorn , don't exist.

All jobs are temporary. The only difference between one job and another is the length of the assignment.

Image Courtesy of dreamcicle19772006.

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