The Pink Shoe Diaries

The other day I was perusing the wine aisle at a local liquor store, and I came across a pinot noir called Rex Goliath that I remembered I loved after having a glass (0r 3) at D Bar. As I remember it, I had started off with red zinfandel and the waitress strongly reccomended I try the Rex Goliath Pinot since it was SO GOOD. And who am I to turn down the advice of a fellow wino. So I ordered a glass and it was as good as she said and so I stuck with that for the rest of the night. So imagine my chagrin when I got the bill and each glass of wine was a little over $10. A big leap from the $6.50 glass of red zin I had started out with. That's fine though, I thought. It was really good and I don't mind paying a little more for something as long as it's worth it.

So imagine my surprise when the same wine that was $10 a glass at D Bar is around $8 a BOTTLE in the liquor store.

Wine = such a racket. I know they are starting to allow you to bring your own wine to restaurants but there is a corkage fee and all these weird restrictions and you have to be ordering a certain dollar amount from the menu and yadda yadda yadda.

But the point of of this post is not wine, although that is such a racket. But rather temp agencies which are in fact the biggest rack of ALL.

Now, I temped a lot in college and I really liked it. You got to try a little bit of everything, no real commitment which is great since you're probably on a school break. However, when I was a temp there was a process. You came in and interviewed and you took a battery of tests that judged your familiarity with Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Then you came back for another interview and filled out a lot of forms about what you were looking for, what your experience was. So when something that came up that matched your experience, you were good to go.

So these companies, who were paying the temp agency $25 an hour for me, $12 or $13 an hour of which went to me, were getting a fantastic deal on me, a virtual admin-extrordinaire. This, I thought, was why companies payed so much for temps , because they were guaranteed a good employee without having to really look for one.

This is decidedly not the case anymore. At least not with the temp agency I am using.

In the past one and a half weeks, we have gone through three temps. When I initially contacted the temp agency I told them there were 3 main criteria for this temp: he or she had to have a reliable form of transport since we are not T accessible, he or she had to have recent admin experience and he or she had to be able to work 8 to 5 every day.

This seems like pretty easy criteria to meet, right?

So when our first temp arrived she seemed great. She told me she was from Hingham, which is FAR away from Newton for a daily commute, so I asked her "Wow how did you get here?" and she replied "I dont know, I got a ride. I don't drive".

Hmm. She further told me that her boyfriend had a few days off from work and would be driving her to and from work for those few days. Which obviously meant she had no way to get here after that. It also means her boyfriend is NICE. Good lord.

So I called the temp agency and told them that I really needed someone who could make a commitment of at least a few weeks. My contact there thanked me for the clarification (why this needed to be clarified I don't know...if you had a client who said they needed an employee who could physically get here, why would you turn around and send someone who didn't?) Then they sent us a woman who had not worked in an office in ten years. It took her two hours to learn how to use the phone. I had to sit with her almost all day and she had no idea how to use Excel.

Now, I am not a beast (well, not too much of one) but I was starting to get the feeling that they don't even screen the people they send. Do we really need to pay $25 an hour for someone who hyperventilates at the idea of adding a row on a spreadsheet?

So after another tete a tete with my contact, she sent me a very nice young lady who had admin experience, and a car. So far so good.

But she went on so many job interviews that she was only in the office probably 4 hours a day for the 4 days we had her. And since I was leaving early on Thursday and not coming in last Friday I told her that I really needed her to be here for those days and what happens? At 5PM on Wednesday she emailed me and said she needed to leave at 3 on Thursday too. And couldnt make any promises about Friday.

So this was the limit for me. The temps they are sending me NEVER meet any of the very basic needs I have in an employee.. And we are paying $10/hour more for them then if we just hired someone already but we can't hire anyone because NOBODY wants this job. And the ones that do are really not suitable. As in "I have never worked in an office in my life but I figured, what the hell?" inappropriate. (Someone literally said that in a phone interview)

So I called the temp agency again, fuming, to break up with them. We are paying them for something that we are not getting and I was the one catching all the flak for it so we had it out. My contact there was SO apologetic. I mean I think she was going to start crying. But then again I have that effect when I am mad. She told me that she would not be charging me for the last three candidates she sent over, and she begged for one more chance. PLEASE. She promised that this new person she was sending over was perfect, and if I didn't think so then by all means, cut ties with them and we won't be charged.

And you know I have always been the kind of girl to give second (and sometimes third) chances. I am a sucker, I know.

But this time, FINALLY, it is working out. The woman they sent to me on Monday is a gift from heaven, I have no doubt. I only had to train her for TEN MINUTES. She has the best phone voice I have ever heard, she is even better than I am with Excel. She is one of those "Hey I have some downtime, can I help you with anything?" types. Everyone loves her. She gets it DONE.

At last, my temp has come. And she is no $8 bottle of Pinot Noir, let me tell you.