The weird thing about temping is that you never see the sonuvabitch partner who hired you. He’s always the same man, even if he’s a woman. And he always wants to know the same thing—”What’s your deal?”
Are you a degenerate alcoholic?
Are you bucking for a BigLaw job?
Are you crazy?
Are you hopeless?
Are you forever doomed to be the most ridiculous of life’s creatures, a six-figure temp?
But for once, I’ve found the sonuvabitch partner who hired me. Or rather, he’s found me. I endured his inquiry into my mental fitness, his probing questions about where precisely it was that I took the wrong fork in the road, his patronizing description of the case, as if I actually needed to know why Big Firm #1 was billing Money Bags Client “A” to sue Money Bags Client “B,” which is represented by my employer, Big Firm #2.
This is the man who put me right here on a Saturday night. Right here on the 44th floor of some forgettable office building downtown. Right here in this lifeless conference room, surrounded by boxes, choking on Sharpie fumes and stale paper.
“Would you like to go to dinner?” he asks. “My treat.”
And just as I’m about to accept, I realize he’s talking to the cute redhead I was hoping to ask out for drinks.
Temper(a)mental is written by a real legal temp. He has a license and a law degree. We checked. He’ll continue to post his “thoughts” in between doing “your work.”