This was my first ever assignment (after spending years at home raising children), and I was so nervous I threw up before I left the house.  It was only a couple of miles away from where I lived so I went on my motorbike (a Virago 535).  I was keen, I was enthusiastic, I was there for five days.
 
During those five days typing correspondence in a small office with one other secretary (who kept wandering off to talk to secretaries in other small offices), I had to answer the phone.  I knew nothing.  I quickly learned to admit not knowing anything and uttered the immortal words of every temporary employee, “I’m sorry, I’m just a temp.” 

On my last day, someone rang about an appointment with the boss.  I looked on the desk diary – nothing.  “Its not in his diary,” I said.  Next thing I knew, I was being hauled into the boss’ office and literally interrogated – “Why did you tell the client he didn’t have an appointment?” “Because it wasn’t in the diary” “Didn’t you think to check?” “Check what? It wasn't in the diary.”  “Here, you can explain that to him.”  And then, to my utter amazement, the boss thrust a phone into my hands.  I was stunned.  Whilst the boss looked on, furious, I had to cut through my excruciating embarrassment and explain to the person who had called before that I had made a mistake and had caused him to miss his appointment. 

It wasn’t over there, either.  There was more.  The boss even made me and the other office secretary (who had been there when I’d taken the call and saw me check the diary) write out statements explaining what had happened.  How could they do that to a temp who had only been there a few days?

I was glad to leave after that.  I found the place oppressive, and I never learned to distinguish between the staff and the inmates – which made walking through the building to get to the small, nicotine-stained smoke room extremely nerve racking.  It wasn’t until my next assignment I discovered I had developed a phobia about answering the phone, which remains with me still.

This was a small office with six or seven truly wonderful ‘nurses’ and staff who decided they needed someone to take care of the paperwork.  They were wrong, there was no paperwork, just a solitary filing cabinet to tidy up now and again.  So, not only did I have absolutely nothing to do all day every day, I was also surrounded by very sick people with deeply disturbing problems. 

Because of their work, the people I worked for were obsessed with food – the small office was always full of biscuits and cakes and chocolate, and woe betide you if you didn’t each all your lunch (“You haven’t eaten that?  Why not?  Aren’t you hungry? Why aren’t you hungry?”).  I was nervous, I was shy, I sat there reading newspapers all day, and I went out for cigarette breaks. 

I witnessed things I never wish to witness again.  Finally, after four days, I decided I couldn’t take it any more.  When the office was empty I quickly scribbled a note saying one of my sons was ill and I had to rush home, and high tailed it out of that place as fast as my motorbike would take me.  I didn’t go back.

Big bright offices, and the other secretaries were wonderful – they even diverted the telephone on my desk so I wouldn’t have to answer it.  Lots of work to do (easy stuff like memos and correspondence) and I was working with women bosses, which I really enjoyed. 

Time passed very quickly.  They clearly liked me!  Bloody amazed!  This was the first time I actually heard praise about my work.  I overheard one of the solicitors saying, “She’s good, isn’t she,” to one of the other secretaries.  My ego swelled to mammoth proportions! 

On my second day, I forgot the code for the security door and had to stand outside like a pilchard until someone came along and punched the right numbers in – I pretended I’d only just got there, but I’d been hanging around for a good 10 minutes. 

Had to work late on my last day to finish something, but I wasn’t happy about it.  Rushing to get the job done, I muttered furiously, “As if I haven’t anything better to do on a Friday night.  I do have a life, y’know.  I have children!  My children need me!” Little did I realise that the solicitor was standing right behind me the whole time.  She just laughed. 

I was quite sad to leave, it was a pleasant working environment with really nice people..

It was a small team of three secretaries working for five ‘fee earners’ (i.e. bosses) and a nice, friendly place to work.  One of the secretaries was middle aged and going through the menopause.  She also like to talk, and constantly regaled us with grisly details of her every ‘change’, which quite put me off my lunch (I lost almost half a stone on that two week assignment!). 

First hour I was there, Big Boss came storming out of his office at the end of the corridor and started berating me for doing a heading wrong on his letter.  “Give me a break,” I told him, “I just got here.”   He glared at me and wandered off without saying anything else, but he was terribly nice to me after that – not many people stood up to him, apparently, but I was just a ‘temp', what did I care? 

By accident, I came across an email on my computer which read, “Agency sending someone who can type at 80 words per minute, which is v. good,” which cheered me no end.  Wangled leaving early on my last Friday by working through lunch.  As I raced out of the office, I passed the boss in the hallway and yelled my goodbyes, noticing as I did that he had a large box of Thorntons chocolates in his hand which I’m sure was destined for me - missed out there!

My first experience of this company was exceptional.  They put me in the Building Consultancy department, and I absolutely loved it.  The other secretaries were lovely, the surveyors nice and friendly, and my boss had a voice to die for – his audio tapes were music to my ears.  On my last day they actually presented me with a leaving card and a bouquet of flowers - after two weeks!  I pestered my agency to go back there, and eventually I did, about a month later. 

I was there for two months and I learned an incredible amount about office practice.  The other secretaries were very patient with me - in fact, knowing how nervous I was about the phone calls, they took all the incoming calls for me, how good is that!  I really settled in and got used to the work.  It was a real pleasure to be there..

Then the day came when I had to leave. Desperate to stay with the company, I applied for a vacancy in a different department, but the first thing my ‘potential boss’ said to me in the informal interview was, “We don’t encourage people to smoke outside the building.”  He’d apparently seen me leaning wearily against the building smoking on a day when I was feeling quite ill (temps don’t get sick pay, so you go to work even if you feel like death has a vice like grip on your internal organs), and he wasn’t impressed.  I wasn’t impressed with him or his job either - it had a different atmosphere on this floor.  The new job didn’t offer as much money as I was getting temping either, so I turned it down. 

Once again I was ‘out on the streets’ wandering from one temp position to the next.  I worked in a few solicitors offices in the city centre and enjoyed most, except two.  Job From Hell No.1 was an antiquated place with wood panelling on the wall, making the offices look incredibly dark and depressing.  The people who worked there were obviously depressed by the décor, and were the most uncooperative, unhelpful, unfriendly people I had ever come across.  I overheard another temp who had been there a month say to one of the ‘permanents’, “I’m really sorry to bother you, but could you possibly show me how to do this?” to which she was treated to a loud tut and a huge huff as she was irritably shown how to do it. 

I was only there for one day, but that was more than enough.  Each minute passed like an hour.  I’ve never visited the toilet so often, willing the time to pass (only a maximum of 6.5 minutes can be spent wasting time going to the toilet - unless, of course, you take a book, and then people tend to come and look for you).  I’ve never smoked so much either, just to get out of that oppressive place for a few precious minutes. 

In an effort to do some work and earn the money I was getting paid (which wasn’t enough, I kept telling myself, really not enough), I did an audio tape by the side of the computer.  When I’d printed out five letters, somebody bothered to come over and check I was still alive, looked at the letters, and said “Oh, these have already been done.”  “What should I do then?” I asked enthusiastically, but they couldn’t find anything for me to do! 

The two other secretaries in my ‘pod’ of tables gossiped nastily all the time - they avidly told me about the temp they’d had before who hadn’t done a single thing all day.  I could well understand why.  It was one of those places where you knew, without a single doubt, they would blame everything on the temp thirty seconds after she’d left the building. 

Late in the afternoon, one of the solicitors asked me to deliver a letter to Companies House … I did it and enjoyed the freedom for half an hour, but felt like a courier or, worse, an office junior being sent on an insignificant errand - and I was made to feel that way too. I vowed never to return.  It was possibly one of the longest days of my life.

It was a small solicitors on the Bristol Road (small as in one female solicitor and a very bored looking bloke on reception - reception being the tiny front area with a desk, a chair and a battered table with copies of Woman’s Weekly from 1960).  It was my only day of work that week so, despite the fact that there was a blizzard raging and the radio advised people not to make car journeys unless it was imperative, I struggled into the city. 

 Just as I approached the place where I thought the solicitors was, the snow plummeted down so thick I could barely see my hand in front of my face.  And I was freezing!  I rang them on my mobile and, through the howling gale force wind, screamed “Where are you?”  They gave me directions and I arrived only 15 minutes late, despite the appalling weather.  I was shown to a sparse room - in fact, room is too good a word for the broom cupboard I worked in; dirty white walls, no windows, just a frosted (and dirty) glass partition dividing it from the tiny solicitors office next door.  The table was about 100 years old, and the computer wasn’t much better. 

I started work.  It was updating some office manual and they’d booked me for two days.  I was determined to do it in one.  I’ve never typed so fast in my life.  When I went to make myself a coffee, I discovered the grimy kitchen - peeling, mouldy wallpaper, stained cupboards, and a cooker I didn’t want to stand too close to in case I caught something; it didn’t look as if it had every been cleaned!  And when I asked where to go for a quick cigarette, I was shown through the kitchen to the ‘yard area’.  I can’t begin to describe how filthy this was; pigeons were happily living out there (and had been for quite some time), and there was at least 15 years worth of household rubbish strewn all over the place.  I curbed my smoking somewhat. 

At 5.30pm, I was finished (thankfully).  I had worked my butt off trying to get the manual finished so I wouldn’t have to return for a second day - I’d even worked through my lunch hour.  I presented my time sheet to the solicitor.  “9am-5.30pm?” she said, “But you arrived 15 minutes late this morning”  I pointed out that I’d worked through my lunch break, and she reluctantly signed it.  I raced into the blizzard still raging outside, glad to escape.

The following week, my agency contact me and mentioned those wonderful words, “PPP [not their real name!] need a temp for three months, are you interested?”  Was I!  It was in the Ratings department and I snatched up the assignment in an instant.  The Ratings department, I discovered, was on the ground floor, behind the reception area, right at the back.  The Forgotten Zone, I called it.  I was working for a Ratings Officer who had been there since the beginning of time and who had never grasped modern technology - consequently, he didn’t know how to use a computer or the ratings software and was Very Bad Tempered about it.  He used to bawl and moan at everyone, especially me, his secretary, and he never once smiled.  His favourite trick was coming over to my desk and barking, “Where’s that piece of paper/file I just put on your desk?”  I’d do a search of my desk, and eventually the missing item was found on his desk or on top of a filing cabinet somewhere else in the office.  He did this so often I eventually stopped searching my desk altogether and automatically searched elsewhere, meticulously tracing his steps. 

I once came into work and found my desk ‘turned over’ – drawers were left open and piles of papers and files toppled.  I was furious.  “It’s not acceptable” I cried to the other secretaries.  It wasn’t, but eventually I got used to him and even ended up liking him in a Mad Professor type way.  He retired not long after I started (nothing to do with me, I’m sure), and his leaving picture, with all the staff standing round him, is one of a man who has Genuinely Had Enough.

My job in Ratings was basically data inputting - it doesn’t get more exciting than data inputting!  It was the time of the year when they have all the Ratings Appeals back, and there was MASSES of paperwork to be filed.  This, I soon realised, was to be my primary objective - to file 10,000 pieces of paper in 10,000 separate files (I exaggerate not).  The other secretary wasn’t that keen on filing (who is!) and did everything she could to get out of doing it.  So it was basically left down to me.  I sorted through the reams of sheets, put them in alphabetical order, put them in date order, and banded them into piles that didn’t seem so daunting.  And then I began.  It took a full month to file all the papers, but I did it.  At the end of it, the office manager (The Big Ratings Bloke) came over to my desk.  Did he thank me for doing such a good job?  Did he offer me a permanent position?  Did he tell me he’d never known such an efficient secretary and they didn’t want to lose me?  No.  He said, “We don’t need you any more, you’ll be leaving on Friday.” !!!!!!!!  Surprisingly, I got a small leaving present on my last day - which is more than the other secretary (who’d been there years) got when she decamped a few weeks later (no doubt having totally forgotten how to file). 

When I left that last Friday, the doorman said, “See you again soon.”  “No,” I told him, “I’m not coming back here again.”  And I didn’t.  After three assignments with them, they hadn't recognised my 'potential' and had 'let me go' ... again.

A couple of years later, I did phone after a vacancy they’d advertised in the paper.  It wasn’t in the Ratings department, which was good, but the salary was on the lower end of what they pay secretaries in the city centre.

Loved it, very similar to PPP.  Busy but organised.  Another temp started same time as me, but she was brand new to temping, didn’t know how to use the fax and got flustered doing the work.  Consequently, by comparison, I looked brilliant!  The woman I was working for (who I looked up to enormously because she was just so confident) told me to apply for the job I was doing, and I was dead keen.  Then HR informed her that they’d already filled the vacancy. 

The only drawback to this assignment was, because they were some way out of the city, they had an hour and a quarter for lunch, which I felt - because I don't like shopping and because I was being paid by the hour - was a waste of my valuable time (they wouldn’t let me go early in lieu of a shorter lunch, which some places allowed if I whinged enough).  I was sad to leave.

It was some IT company near Five Ways.  They were offering quite a big salary and I was lured into accepting the position by my temping agency. 

It was truly awful.  I wanted a busy job with lots of typing, but I discovered that the boss actually did all the typing himself (never a good sign) while the secretary I was replacing (who was training me for the last three days) wandered around chatting to people and filing her nails all day, occasionally doing a bit of admin work. 

Most of the duties involved telephone work - booking hotels, plane flights, arranging meetings - which I absolutely loathed  (the agency knew I had no aptitude for  telephone work but sent me anyway).  I hated it and felt completely out my depth.   I was too nervous to speak to anyone, and my self confidence fell to previously unknown depths. 

On the third day (when the girl was leaving), I rang my agency and told them I had a problem, I couldn’t stay there, it wasn’t the job for me.  They managed to persuade me to stick it until the end of the week.  I went back but felt oppressed, trapped, useless, pathetic.  By mid afternoon I was on the verge of tears and knew I couldn’t stay a minute longer.  I went into the boss’ office and told him I didn’t feel well, that I was going home.

I never went back.  The agency apparently got some stick for me walking out, but I didn’t care, life was too short to be that miserable doing a job you weren’t cut out to do.

I turned up in some dive-hole building, again near Five Ways.  The place looked unkempt and the people were positively scruffy (definitely a sign that they weren’t being paid enough and moral was low). 

I was led to my desk, started up the computer, asked where the typing work was.  The head secretary handed me a three page list of names and telephone numbers, and told me I had to organise a massive meeting for that Friday.  I was struck dumb - more telephone work!  And how can they ask a temp to organise a meeting on her first day, before she even knows where the toilets are. 

“No,” I said, “I’m an audio typist slash secretary.  I can’t do this.”  She looked surprised and fussed around for a bit, then dug out a piece of paper, saying, “I think this needs typing up.”  “I think the agency have sent the wrong person,” I told her, determinedly turning off the computer. 

She rang the agency, and I waited.  I definitely wasn’t staying here.  The woman finally came back, saying the agency was sending someone else.  I left, marched into the city and barged into the agency offices with a vengeance.  “No telephone work!” I told them.  “Its in big letters on my CV, I don’t like telephone work, I’m not good at it, don't send me to jobs where I'm expected to do it!.”  They said they understood, but I joined another agency the same day.

EMAILS SENT HOME WHEN TRYING TO LOOK BUSY (sending emails to myself, how sad is that!):

“First day, not so bad.  Bit of excitement maybe, but not a great deal cos you don't know what to expect and you think, whatever its like, you can wing it.  And you discover your desk isn’t so bad either - there’s nothing worse than turning up at a place and realising you've got your back to the office, everyone can see what you're doing, and you convince yourself that everyone’s staring at you all the time.

Second day is a different kettle of fish because you know what the place is like and have a gist for the kind of work you'll be doing (and there's bound to be something that you've never done before and you don't feel too confident about this - especially the bloody phones and everybody's names) ... but you manage, and smile (and try to not offer to make drinks for everyone because, hey, you don't do drinks).  Its not so bad. 

Third day, they might give you something 'proper' to do and you wonder if you can do it, its probably something you've never done before (but hey, you keep reminding yourself, you're good, you can cope). 

Fourth day, you're convinced all the other secretaries hate you and are talking about you at every opportunity - paranoia sets in.  Fifth day, you don't give a bollocks, what the hell, you're only a temp, thank god you don't have to stay there permanently, and you'll be gone and forgotten soon, so what does it matter that you've crashed the system, lost two big clients and most of your confidence with it.  There's always the next job.

Nothing worse than sitting at a computer all day with Absolutely Nothing to do.  Keep asking people if they want help and eventually they get tired of it (and start to ignore/avoid you cos you're becoming a real pain).  And you're so bloody bored you could chew your own leg off, only you can't sit at your desk doing nothing all day so you try to make it look as if you're busy and madly type emails to other people (and yourself!) and reading stuff on the internet that doesn't look like its on the internet so at least if someone passes by they'll see all this text on your screen and think you're working.  And you're amazed and get rather excited when someone comes up to you with a 2 minute tape (and they ask if you're busy!)  Should really sit here and file my own nails just to announce to the whole office that I'm not actually doing anything (and they’re paying me for it!).  The last place tried to burn me out, this place is trying to put me into a coma, sometimes you just can’t win.

After the 4th or 5th day you realise that you're not as good as you think you are, in fact, you're pretty crap at everything.  Worrying about meetings that you know nothing about and phonecalls where you really don't have a clue what they're talking about.  And little things like transferring calls and stuff, how do I do that, how does it work, will I cut someone off (yep, pretty often as it turns out).  Then the misery starts to set in.  You should withdraw yourself from employment altogether and do something more suited to your skills, like roadsweeping perhaps.  And you start to hate the people around you because they've got something to do and they know what they're doing and you haven't and you don't.  Thrust into a new place with different routines and strange phone systems, and your confidence takes a massive nose dive and you feel all alone and stranded. 

Well its Day 5 here and I've settled in a bit, but the department is so incredibly quiet.  Know the people a bit better now, but they don't really talk amongst themselves much ... they send emails to each other even if they’re just sitting opposite each other.  There’s no rapport.

After two weeks, settled.  Know where the loos are and how to start up your computer.  During this 'settling' in period you'll tend not to drink much: a) because you're not sure where the kitchen is or how anything works, and b) you daren't ask everyone what they want to drink cos you'll never remember what they want or which cup/glass they use.  So you sit there dying of thirst trying to blend into the wallpaper, rushing out to buy loads of cans/bottles at lunchtime and hugely relieved when someone else offers to make a drink. 

Saw Big Boss Man in the Big Office today.  Walked in and thought there'd been a burglarly there was so much paperwork everywhere.  Very gruff, very much I'm The Boss type. 

Found some online games which kept me going a bit through lunch.  I think I’ve actually forgotten how to type.

Today I had to book an appointment into four peoples' diaries.  Not a clue.  So fiddled around for a bit (trying to find a date where everyone was free - impossible!) and figured it out for myself (you have to do this a lot when you’re a temp).  And just now, I've spoken to a secretary in Denmark about her boss, who's flying in tomorrow - then had to phone hotel and book a room.   Now that I’ve done it and know I can do it, it’s a piece of cake.  I’m now a woman who speaks to people from abroad and arranges their hotel rooms! Get me!

After three weeks, things are running smoothly; you know the people, who to talk to, who not.  All very well if you're there permanently, but a bit off-putting when you're a temp and, just as you settle in, its time to leave and start all over again somewhere else.  This is where you can be 'trapped' into a job you don't particularly like, but its so much easier to stay (if they ask you) rather than go out into the big bad world and find something else … again.  And its even harder to resist when you’re told that “Everyone here thinks you’re great,” and HR send you an email about vacancies, saying, “You’re apparently in great demand.”" 

This company moved me around to different departments to cover for ‘missing’ secretaries.  When I got into the lift each morning, I was never quite sure which floor button to press.  I came across different types of desks (some messy, teetering with clutter, barely any elbow room; others so meticulously tidy and clear you wondered if anyone worked there at all) and different keyboards (argh! clacky ones, my pet hat).  I could never get the chairs into the right position and, since I was only there for a few days, I sat awkwardly and went home each night with backache.  But at least moving around gave me a taste for each department (and its own separate atmosphere) and I got to know a lot of people so that when I walked down corridors there’s always someone to say hello to - which is nice. 

It was almost a wrench to leave.

Every now and again my agency would ring and ask me about certain assignments:-

• “Boss can be a little demanding” they'd say (I’d just had one of those, so, no, not interested).
• “Its based in Aston, does your bus go by there?” (nowhere near!). 
• “It’s a lot of telephone work” (I don’t do telephone work). 
• “It's in St Pauls Square” (not miles from my bus stop, but a nightmare of dark roads in winter). 
• “We have a position at [my favourite property company]” they’d tell me slyly.  Then, when they had my attention and I was all excited, they'd
   add, “Its in the finance department.”  (I hate numbers).