Some­one who has on occa­sion looked to me for sup­port dur­ing a dif­fi­cult period of unem­ploy­ment and resorted to short-term assign­ments while seek­ing reg­u­lar employ­ment (you notice I did not use the word per­ma­nent, because no one’s job is) sent me the fol­low­ing ques­tion.  I have san­i­tized it and para­phrased because I think it’s the proper thing to do.

It’s con­cern­ing the treat­ment of tem­po­rary work­ers and that raises red flags because so many peo­ple have turned to temp­ing in these eco­nomic times with the hope an employer will rec­og­nize and appre­ci­ate their tal­ent and work ethic and hire them as a regular.

Karla,

I don’t know if you would know the answer to this one but why do Temps get such a bad rap and get treated so badly? I just fin­ished the assign­ment that I started in Nov, sadly due to the bud­get they couldn’t keep me on. I didn’t fin­ish what I was sup­posed to do but it was due to the CFO not hav­ing the time to sit with me and go through what he wanted to be done and how I was going to do it. So I did help the HR dept and then went onto the CFO’s office and A/P.

In the A/P dept I was treated badly and another temp was treated like a child. I don’t get it at all. I was being rep­ri­manded by two employ­ees when the CFO walked in through one door of this long nar­row office and walked past me and the other A/P employ­ees and went out the other door with­out say­ing a word. I feel that he should have inter­vened, should he have? Should I have told them not to speak to me like that? I was afraid of los­ing the posi­tion if I answered back or told them not to speak to me that way. What could I have done or said at that time?

My Dis­traught Reader,

I’m sorry you con­tinue to go through dif­fi­cult times which have resulted in feel­ings of low self-esteem and doubts of self-worth. It’s pal­lia­tive at best I’m sure to say, “you’re not alone” in your unem­ploy­ment and that 1 in 10 peo­ple are feel­ing your pain.

I don’t think there is any dif­fer­ence between an employer who treats tem­po­rary employ­ees badly and one who treats reg­u­lar employ­ees that way. There cer­tainly are too many of them and one goes with the other. Tem­po­rary employ­ees have the same right to fair treat­ment as reg­u­lar staff. If you are not being treated fairly as a tem­po­rary employee you should dis­cuss it with your employer. I sug­gest dis­cussing it with the agency you are work­ing through or in the event of direct hire, the human resources depart­ment at the work­place. There might be a “She’s just a temp” atti­tude going on that needs adjustment.

There could also be some­thing else going on inter­nally within you. The paper, “Con­tin­gent Work and Depres­sive Symp­toms: Con­tri­bu­tion of Health Selec­tion and Mod­er­at­ing Effects of Employ­ment Sta­tus,” was co-authored by Suzanne DeHaney and Anto­nio Ciampi, both from McGill. The research shows tem­po­rary and short-term con­tract jobs con­tribute to psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress and depres­sion. That’s a tough sit­u­a­tion when one is already dis­tressed and depressed over unem­ploy­ment in the first place. It would be help­ful for agen­cies and employ­ers of con­tin­gent work­ers to under­stand these find­ings so an appro­pri­ate strat­egy to assist in their suc­cess could be imple­mented. I haven’t seen any evi­dence of com­pa­nies doing this but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea.

I hate to have to say this, but as inap­pro­pri­ate as your co-workers’ behav­ior was, you allowed your­self to be treated dis­re­spect­fully because you accepted and swal­lowed it like a bit­ter pill with­out a peep. It could be you were afraid if you spoke up your assign­ment would have been ter­mi­nated. That’s why it’s impor­tant to have doc­u­mented dis­cus­sions when funky things are going on. It would be an issue if your assign­ment were ended and then imme­di­ately refilled for no log­i­cal rea­son — like you were not per­form­ing to expec­ta­tions or vio­lated a com­pany pol­icy. It would pos­si­bly be cause to file a complaint.

You men­tioned that through­out your career you have been embar­rassed by oth­ers in the work­place and dis­re­spected before. There can be coin­ci­dences, of course. How­ever, I find when one indi­vid­ual has repeated inci­dences it is because of how she han­dles her­self. Again, this could be a mat­ter of self-esteem and con­fi­dence, inter­per­sonal skills, or other fac­tors. Have an hon­est chat with your­self or ask some­one you know in per­son and trust to give you feed­back on how they per­ceive your abil­ity to man­age rela­tion­ships. If you are a per­son that inter­nal­izes, fears rejec­tion, has a high need for accep­tance and praise and wants to be liked by every­one, you may be able to learn tech­niques to help pre­vent this type of sit­u­a­tion in the future.

As for the CFO’s actions, I can’t speak to a sit­u­a­tion I haven’t wit­nessed or inves­ti­gated. Unless it was an ugly loud scene maybe he wasn’t aware of it because he was in his men­tal P&L spread­sheet. I would have asked him about the sit­u­a­tion at the first avail­able oppor­tu­nity and not allowed myself to won­der for­ever about why he didn’t say anything.

I’m con­fused about why you said that “sadly” they couldn’t keep you on. Why on earth would you want to invest your­self there if they didn’t treat you well? I sup­pose that’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. I know you’re sad about it because you just want a sta­ble job in a really bad way.

Hope­fully this helps shed a lit­tle light on the situation.