A fool and his money
The day of the temp
Bernard Hollowood
Temps are not dolly birds; that is, temporary secretaries are not purely.decorative and highly paid Girl Fridays.
Who says so? The Federation of Personal Services, whose methhers include secretarial agencies. This body estimates that half a million people work clerically each year and that at any one time something like 60,000 temps are gainfully employed. They are efficient, says the Fed, and are probably "paid less than permanent staff." So fair play for temps, please, who have been maligned for as long as I can remember.
Nearly all temps, it now appears, are supporting aged relatives crippled by arthritis and living in hovels. The temps can set off to work only by getting up at 4.0 am to do the household chores and preparing meals for the day for doddering and incontinent dependants. So by the time she arrives at the office the temp is flaked, out oil her feet and bearing no resemblance to the houri of popular journalism.
If little Miss Temp manages to look attractive and to be infected by joie de vivre it is because she is clever with make-up and has spent the 45 minutes getting to the office by tube rehearsing her lines from that best-seller The Temp's VadeMecum.
"Oh, yes, it's a gold mine of info," Natalie Broncho told me. "The temp's worst problem is the jealousy of perms. There's rivalry. A temp means a new face in the office and unless she's terribly plain or offputting she's bound to affect the behaviour of males. There's a rash of new neckwear and a. clash of deodorants. For a time the men become gentlemen, opening doors for the temp, stirring her sugar, offering her gaspers and being ever ready to carry heavy ledgers or explain the elements of bookkeeping."
The book explains how the temp should react, how she should show favouritism only to the boss or the boss's son, and then only in the subtlest and least detectable of ways. If for example the boss is playing golf on the morrow, "make it your business to pace out the distances from every bunker or other hazard to the pin and slip the statistics into his fist before he piles into his Jag." One Girl Friday who surprised her managing director with this invaluable service cut his round down to 97 (he was playing from the ladies' tee), won his undying affection and received a weekly bonus of £10 and a diner a deux at the Nullabar.
There are hints too on flower arrangement, the entering of appointments in the bossman's diary, the careful elimination of failing felt-nibbed pens and the upkeep of the drinks cabinet.
"If the senior executive likes his scotch, make sure that his office guests are offered gin or vodka. If he smokes join him and share his feeling of guilt."
Wives are usually less suspicious of temps than of perms, and this is a fact fully appreciated by male executives and temps. So it is a good idea to discourage the boss from using your Christian name.
"Not once during the three weeks I was with him," said Natalie, "did I allow Mr Betteshanger to use my Christian name. It was always Broncho this and Broncho that, so that the perms, who were all addressed by their Christian names, felt that I was déclassé and certainly no rival. Mrs Betteshanger was similarly duped and was so confident of her judgment that on one occasion she actually sent me on an overnight flight to Brussels with her husband's underpants. He had forgotten to pack them and she was worried about one of his lumbar discs."
Because bossmen are so good at delegation they often have much time to kill every day and a temp who can talk modestly but inventively about her past can relieve her chief of excruciating boredom. Both Natalie and Melba gave it as their opinion that bossmen become extremely excited and generous when they discover that their temps (a) have spent some time in a nunnery, (b) have appeared in a skin flick when desperately short of money, (c) have never had a regular boy friend, (d) are supporting a mother bedridden in Winnipeg or Bendigo, (e) speak five languages well enough to apologise for the late delivery of British goods and their failure to match samples, specifications and agreed price, O) know Interflora's phone number by heart when the instant delivery of conciliatory blooms is needed and (g) know how much brandy to put into mid-morning coffee.
It may or may not be true that temps are paid on average less than perms. Natalie, Melba and Francine all claim that fringe benefits and the avoidance of PAYE more than, make up for any shortfall in pay.
Fringe benefits? Well, yes, they include luncheon vouchers for a week instead of for the two or three days worked; bonuses for suggestion box ideas (transferable from company to company); quite lavish presents from a senior executive who wants the temp to stay on as a replacement for Miss Plank (on the verge of retirement) or Miss Stepney of the dropped aitches, (execrable spelling and sickening goo-goo eyes); a free read of the boss's newspapers (temps can afford to take risks), and free lifts home in the-cars of execs, who feel at liberty to start something with a temp while being terrified of perms The Vade-Mecum offers more advice to temps than I can possibly cover here. It has already sold eighteen editions and is at present being extensively revised. Its author is none. other than Arthur S Cholmondeley whose earlier work How to Make It on the Lump is already a classic.
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