When I was in college and had no money for the holidays, I would call into a temporary employment agency, and tell them when I was available to work. Usually they would have some stellar opportunity like manufacturing music stands (screwing the same one or two parts into each other for an eight-hour shift) or sorting through brown glass bottles for the ones with a certain code on the bottom. The pay was never great, but it was usually $1.50 above minimum wage.
For two weeks, in January of 1999 I worked for a company that went into fire-damaged homes, salvaged what they owned, cleaned, it and returned it to its original position once the house had also been fixed. We each had items that we preferred to move and clean. My specialty was wall hangings and photographs; checking out the photographs gave me the edge when it came to betting who in the family caused the fire. And no matter what the job was, I always met fascinating people, experienced a different sector of the working world, and got the money I needed to travel home (or to Vegas) for Thanksgiving.
But I never thought Temp Agencies could ever help my career; I thought they could only find warehouse jobs or paper shredding jobs –jobs you’d never want for life. The first several jobs I got through Temp Agencies, after moving to Los Angeles were no different. I sorted mail at Playboy Entertainment, filed archival paperwork for law firms, and evaluated teachers in training for a company called Testmasters. They pay their instructors $50/hour (not bad if you can score in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, which all of their instructors have). I, on the other hand, made $10/hour –the same as I made at the other temp jobs in L.A.
And so I’ve carried on. The old lady who supervises my filing has finally gotten off my back, and they’re paying me $14/hour. The Temp Agencies still haven’t found me a job doing what I want, but I can pay my bills and keep looking for the right job.