The Temp

We have this temp at work that is driving me nuts. He is a nice enough guy but has no business working in our department. He has somehow managed to take a project that I used to work on at most a few hours a week and turn it into a full time job for the past 9 months. He takes leisurely long breaks and lunch hours, he leaves early to go to class, he spends the majority of his work time on the internet (even going as far as having his Yahoo account open on his desktop throughout the day. Other than an occasional email to a supervisor, this temp really has no reason to be on the computer at all. I've pointed out to him numerous times that our company monitors internet usage so if he was indeed trying to get hired on as a permanent employee (in a different department) it might be good idea to quit being on the internet so much. When that approach didn't work I finally took the guy aside and told him he was really ticking the rest of our department off because the money paying his salary was coming out of our department budget and the rest of us were working our butts off because my supervisor didn't want to spend money on another employee yet we were essentially subsidizing this guy's social life. That didn't work either. He was self absorbed and I think just didn't even realize that what he was doing was so out of line for the work place (the only real job he has had previously was working in a mail room). I know you are asking yourself why wasn't your supervisor doing anything? Well, you know how some people have blinders on because they don't want to see the truth? That scenario is alive and well here. She doesn't chose to recognize that he doesn't know how to use a 10-key calculator, that he stammers on the phone to the point of complete ineffectiveness while trying to relay company policies to employees, that he is always the first one to know if Lindsay was arrested again or if the highway is closed, if he takes a 30 minute 15 minute break, etc.

Well, the other day, while the temp was gone on his break or lunch or whatever...since he does very little while he is there we don't always notice when he is gone, a "tech" guy stormed into our office asking my supervisor which computer was #562281 or something like that. She pointed to our temps computer and the IT guy unplugged it and make this big fuss about nobody logging in as their was a virus and security risk, blah blah blah (remember that I work for a publicly traded company and the confidentially of information is of highest importance). The guy was gone just as fast as he had come in and my boss and I were left reliving the scenario which simulated the scenes in the movie Brazil (my favorite movie by the way) where the government broke into the family home, abducted an innocent father and then disappeared again.

Why am I telling you this? Well, because of that virus my boss has now placed a strict no personal email accounts policy on each of us in our department. No Yahoo, no Gmail, you name it. I can still shop on eBay and beat to death my Google skills but those privileges are no doubt short lived. All because of this damn temp who never should have been working for our department in the first place. He is probably feeling it most of all at this point (funny, now he doesn't have any work to do and has a hard time pretending that he does). So I continually walk by his desk, refuse to make eye contact and point out that his inbox is empty (yeah, I'm a bitch to him but the dude has totally worn out his welcome). Problem is, one of these days he will walk out of these doors to another job and (hopefully) I'll be at this same job for years. His self-centeredness has cost me a significant benefit of my job (with dial up at home it was so refreshing to be able to look at photos, etc while on my lunch at work).

At a previous job (where we didn't have any internet access) I pointed out to the owner of the company that in this day and age it isn't realistic not to offer internet services for your employees. It is like a phone. It's just a sign of the times. In order to attract and keep good employees you need to offer them that tool. That tool is gone from me and I am oh so sad.