Tempted by Temp Work

Temporary employment. It may sound like the desperately optimistic way of saying "mostly unemployed," but that isn't true at all. Temporary employment can provide an efficient route to a full-time job. In these uncertain economic times, temp jobs are often more than an opportunity to hone your word-processing skills: For the companies who hire temps, and the people who hold those jobs, temporary assignments can become a way of life. Thanks to the agency I found a month after graduating from college in December 2001, I secured a six-month temporary position in a Philadelphia-area industrial laboratory long before my parents could nag me about my lazy, freeloading lifestyle. Temporary agencies for jobs in the sciences have proliferated in the Philadelphia area where Big Pharma thrives, as do knowledgeable and experienced people willing to bear such hardships as flex time, reimbursement for college classes, and onsite daycare centers. From day one, I doubted whether I fit any of those categories: I lacked both knowledge and experience, and a temp like me rarely enjoys 'perks,' but the promise of a steady paycheck can make details like that seem unimportant. In my new job I worked in a lab that assessed products sent from universities and biotechs. We would send the item though a battery of tests for compliance with Food and Drug Administration requirements, and would ultimately grant the all-important thumbs-up or thumbs-down rating. I was assigned to the virology lab, where I helped screen the samples to ensure that they contained no viral contamination. Of course, they hardly ever did, mostly because a little thing like virus contamination can put a real crimp in a drug-development cycle. Any hint of a problem would put into effect a chain-reaction of justification, where we would, in essence, keep sending the problem to someone higher up who could come up with some technical sounding reason to ignore what I saw. If a highly ranked person found a problem, I might have to repeat the test, which no one wanted to do. Obviously, the client would be notified of a significant virus contamination. But in my six months at the lab, I never saw a virus for which I couldn't find someone to overrule. We had to don lab coats, gloves, booties, and even big, static-causing hairnets just to enter the lab, and we worked under a hood to minimize the chances of contracting any viral infections. But any shortcuts I could devise to make the tests move faster were always welcome. About two months after I started my job, after a long day without viruses, I took off my hair net to shrieks of delight from my boss. She immediately recognized my frosting as a product of the peroxide we use to spray the hoods. Admittedly, I was occasionally performing my duties without the hairnet or gloves, which, of course, was slowly turning my hair into something out of a 1980s music video. I tried to be more careful from that point on, but blonde hair was just a small sacrifice for the extra fifteen minutes of lunch I gained by going netless. In the end, my temporary job was a success. While employed, I was simultaneously looking for a graduate program to begin in the fall, which could eventually help my chances of getting into medical school. I wound up getting accepted at Drexel University five months into the job, partly as a result of my successful work experience. Both my temporary agency and my parent company were sorry to see me go, but they hosted a painless transition. Of course it's not always that easy. Temporary employment is subject to all the pratfalls that can ruin any job. Three months and five haircuts later, my hair color is almost back to normal. But the occasional light streak reminds me of my temporary experience, and the way it can ease people into fulltime work--sans anxiety. As my boss told me when she saw my blond locks: "Don't worry about it, it's only temporary." Matt Zibelman (zippy23@hotmail.com) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia.

Tempted by Temp Work

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