Wage Slave

Recruiter (out of frame): “You have a very impressive resume. I’m sure we’ll be able to place you.” Caedmon: “Thank you.” Recruiter: “So, what sort of thing did you have in mind?”
Caedmon: “Well, I need some work while I’m completing my doctoral dissertation. I was thinking something in academic research, perhaps in an editorial capacity.”
The recruiter is silent.
Recruiter: “You do know what an office temporary does, don’t you?” Caedmon: “I gather that it was the best that corporate America could come up with after the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified.”

For those of my readers from overseas (or Americans who attended public school anytime from about 1988 forward), the 13th Amendment to the constitution abolished slavery. That’s the theory, at least. And there endeth the political lesson. Please open your checkbooks to chapter “Overdrawn Again...”

Chapter

  • Caedmon the Office Temp

Location

  • Caedmon's Workplaces

Characters

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Older Comments (Closed for Reply)

Kantuck Nadie Nata-akon
July 27, 2019, 1:19 pm
Yes, they ended slavery, but laws are only useful if enforced. Corporations, and the rich, are above such laws, it seems.
John Dunkelburg
July 28, 2019, 12:52 am
I understand where he’s coming from. I’m looking for a new job right now, and I’m actively trying to avoid the temp agencies. Companies use temp agencies to get customer service representatives without having to pay adequate pay or other benefits because that is coming from the agency itself. I had enough of that working for a dedicated third-party company that provides such services to other companies and saw that first hand without having to move about the country.

For what its worth, I don’t think this business model started in the US. I read in Walter Lord’s book “And the Night Lives On” about the Titanic disaster that the White Star Line hired their famous band from just such a company in 1912 in order to save money. The company even tried to dun Wallace Hartley’s widow for the cost of his musicians uniform.

July 28, 2019, 2:05 pm
“… The company even tried to dun Wallace Hartley’s widow for the cost of his musicians uniform…”

Yep, sounds like a corporation. Then I’d tell ’em. “Try and collect” now they have laws written so even if you don’t pay, they still make you pay (credit score) I’ve said before, if we’re not headed to an a fascist state (AKA: Nazi) we’re headed for a corporatology.
Wonder how long it will be, before laws are enacted that says you must buy only products from certain companies. I’ll say “I’ll buy windows when you pry Linux off my cold, dead computer!”