• "Are you a team player, or do you have fantasies of going postal whenever you're forced to mingle with coworkers?"
  
  
• "Do you prefer the security that comes along with following a clearly defined career path, or would you rather not have any idea of where your next meal is coming from and whether or not you'll make your rent next month?"
  
  
• "Do you like to take advantage of formalized learning and development programs as a means to gain experience and acquire new skills or would you rather not have any filler for your reseume that might help you make more than minimum wage someday?"
  
  
• "Do you like checking in every day with the twenty year old temp agent you've been assigned to to hear that she's got a couple of hot data entry possibilities over the July fourth holiday for you?"
  
  
• "Do you prefer being called 'Temp' to your real name, if, indeed, you have one, subhuman office fodder that you are?"

To be fair, there are those for whom temping is a necessary evil, and there are temp agencies that provide their temps with the health insurance and benefits their clients don't. Many businesses also use temping agencies to screen prospective employees for entry-level positions, and I know quite a few people who landed permanent jobs that way.

But my two experiences some years ago with temp agencies in Boston benefited no one. This was before I knew white slavery was actually for me, not temping. Back in '01 I was only here for the summer — I was still living in Budapest then — so temping seemed the way to go. I went with KNF&T, who sent me, for some reason, to the Dana-Farber, where I had a front-line grunt job dealing with desperate, frustrated, and exhausted people in the last stages of terminal cancer. I made nine bucks an hour.

I somehow managed to escape, but KNF&T kept finding me and sending me back. Finally, I fled to PSG, where my adolescent temp agent didn't bother to even look at my not too shabby resume, never called me, and when I called him once a day, as suggested, to check in, answered "um, what do you want?" Like I was stalking him, or something. I had secured a sugar daddy by then (hey — I was thirty-one — I could still swing it), and decided I liked white slavery better than temping after all.

I didn't hear from PSG until the first holiday weekend of the summer rolled around — on my way out the door with Papi on our way to Vermont, and I get a call from Caleb or Jedson, or whatever this little PSG pillock called himself. He was all rainbows and skittles now. I was like, "what do you want?" He had this very exciting opportunity doing data entry at a very generous seven-fifty an hour all weekend, and was I interested?

I was like, "Jedson, temp this."

Temping just wasn't for me, I guess.