The Blog of Lone

Here’s a quick article I wrote as an aid for those seeking temporary employment.

In this article I’ll be pointing out a few of the pros and cons of temporary employment, aka temping; as well as a few tips, gleaned from my own experiences, that will help those seeking to temp to make the most of the experience; both on a financial and personal level. I have to mention that I’ve only ever managed to find successful and frequent temporary employment through an agency; trying to find it yourself can be a long and unrewarding process, so the article will primarily deal with employment through an agency.

Pros:
1. If you need a job for a temporary period, then (no surprises) it is far better to sign up with a temp agency than apply for a full time job and simply quit when you need to leave. If you’re looking to get a glowing reference for future work, then a temp agency is far more likely to give you this than a company who you promised to work for and then promptly left. Effectively this is lying to them about how long you were willing to work for; lying employees don’t get good references.

3. If you’re temping in a job that you grow to hate there’s nothing to stop you calling up the agency and telling them that you won’t work there any more. The temp is never trapped in a miserable job for long.

Cons:
1. If you like a job you temp in, it can be difficult to obtain a full time placement with a company; you’re likely to be reassigned fairly regularly.

2. If you want to be regularly offered employment from the temp agency then you must be prepared to be flexible in both the type of jobs you will accept and the hours you’re willing to work.

3. The uncertainty of employment. If you’re with a temp agency that is not very effective you may have to wait long periods between placements. Consider changing agencies if your current one is not getting you work.

Tips!

1. Be a Yes man (or woman).
Say yes to the temp agency. If you’re willing to say yes and accept a wide range of job types then you’re more likely to be regularly employed by an agency. Saying no to work a few times is acceptable; but just don’t expect to be at the top of their list when they’ve got a new placement available. When I applied to a temp agency they were turning away people only willing to work in an office, but because I was willing to turn my hand to any kind of work I enjoyed a full summer of employment instead of those more pedantic and ultimately out of work folk.

Say yes to the company you’re on a placement with. If the boss asks you to work overtime, or do a job that doesn’t fall within you job description, don’t reject it immediately. When the choice of renewing temps comes around, who are they more likely to keep? The person willing to do the work needed and cover overtime, or the one who wasn’t?

2: Have your own transport.
Temping by nature means you’ll be frequently swapping between jobs, and the jobs available often require you to travel. Having your own transport not only makes you more flexible, but opens up more job opportunities to you as well.

3: Don’t be too picky.
Over the course of a summer’s temping I did a wide range of jobs, many of which I ordinarily would not have considered or turned down because of my preconceptions of them.
For instance, I was dubious about working as a hospital porter because I’m no fan of hospitals (who is?). However, it turned out to be the most rewarding day of work I did. I worked for 8 hours, but only actually ‘worked’ for about 2; the rest I spent waiting between operations to wheel patients to surgery. I chatted to patients reassuring them before surgery, something rewarding in itself. Also the pay was far above average.
Working as a removal man involved brief periods of heavy lifting followed by hours spent sat in the van eating sandwiches; as well as a hefty tip that far outweighed the actual wage for the day.
Try not to reject a certain type of work before you have tried it, you never know if you’ll enjoy it or not.

I hope that this article has been helpful in some fashion to those considering, or already in, temporary employment. The suggestions above are just a necessarily limited selection; if you have any queries or need further help then feel free to get in touch.

Here’s a short article I wrote for Helium.com in response to someone else’s terrible analysis of ‘Brave New World’. If you’ve read the book, take a peek and see what you think …

The dystopia future that Huxley depicts in ‘Brave New World’ is one marked by the degeneration of the individual within the social whole, the reduction of the individual to that unit of the economic, the consumer. Physiological and mental conditioning reduce the characters to mere cells of the social organism; programmed with impulses that perpetuate the system. Communication between most characters is restricted to the language of consumerism, the discussion of the latest material product available; which is ultimately devoid of meaning and no form of communication at all. The drug soma provides any required escapism. The society of BNW is one where “everyone belongs to everyone” sexually, promiscuity is used to subdue the sexual impulse and to harness it to the social cause. Huxley’s use of language, using the word “pneumatic” to describe Lenina’s sexuality, shows the reduction of the individual’s physical impulses to terms of industrial economics.

While the individualistic ideology of freedom that John proposes as having more intrinsic worth than the conditioned happiness of the state initially appeals to the modern reader as the more worthy cause, Huxley does not moralise so simplistically. Although John’s individualistic ideology may sound more genuine, it is ultimately flawed. The freedom to seek happiness and be hurt in the process incorporates its own defeat; to be hurt is not happiness, but it is freedom. Happiness is then sought but unachieved; freedom is an unhappy state of being. In contrast, while demeaning to John’s idea of the individual the citizens of culture of BNW know happiness by their own definition. That it is a limited form of happiness does not matter because through conditioning they are made unaware of any other possible way of seeing the world. Those that do somehow slip through the system are still part of it, they may be unhappy with the social system, but they are bound to it. Ultimately those opposed to the system are still incorporated into it by being shipped off to islands where they will not trouble the social whole.

Huxley contrasts this two systems of thought but does not place one as morally superior to the other. To be free or to be a happy drone. Each can only be judged on its own merits. To each their own seems better. You cannot judge both ideologies by both different standards simultaneously.

It in this ambiguity that Huxley fails to forecast social demise.

John’s individualistic society of the past can be equated to our own. The society of BNW can be seen to represent the future, but likewise incorporates parodied but recognisable elements of modern society. Huxley’s novel is totalitarian in that there is no alternative offered between the two. Neither is better than the other as the individualistic society has/will evolve into the mass culture of BNW. Both systems are totalitarian in that they offer no alternative to themselves. The BNW is self perpetuating, there is no inherent demise in its system. The ’savage’ society seeks individual happiness but does not find it, this search will however lead it to become the BNW society, offering each individual happiness at the cost of their freedom, unaware of the trade off taking place. There is no social demise, the individualistic system is self perpetuating in that it has already evolved into the BNW; all that remains is a historical preservation of the past to contrast to the novel’s present.
Both society’s are degenerate in one form or another, but neither is in demise. They may mock modern society with their parodies of current social conditions, but neither offers an alternative to it.

Huxley’s depiction of a dystopian future fails to forecast a social demise but instead parodies and mocks aspects of modern society; it may be satirical but it is far from prophetic.

Hello lil’ blog monkeys, I trust all is well you everybody out there in blogland. Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve started writing for Helium.com and that if anyone wants a peek at the two articles I’ve done so far they can find them by going to Helium.com and searching for Nicholas Cockayne.  Hope you enjoy.

 If anyone wants to pop over there and read them, maybe rate them, then I’d enjoy any feedback people want to give.

As always, Lone. - Oh, and they’re under my ‘real’ name, just in case it confuses you.