The Temp

You nailed it, Amanda! I’ve never been even a short-term temp, but you made me understand what it feels like to be the invisible long-serving member of a closed community. Nearly three years and nobody knows her name. Not even the reader.

She doesn’t get the memos (she’s only a temp) so everything she does is out of step, from casual Thursdays to the baseball game. You made my heart bleed for her. And then, of course, her own heart bleeds, into a bottle because she doesn’t even have her own trash can.

No one seems to know if she lived or died out there in the parking lot. What a sad ending.

You are a very effective writer and this is a story that grabbed me. A good job of showing how it feels to be on the outside looking in.

The story could be pared down a little. As an editor I’m always stumbling over extra words. But all in all, a very good job.

Judith

You really described the office “life”.

I loved the rhythm of this sentence: “One day, someday, maybe soon, I could get company e-mails or a name badge and access code all my own too.”

The paragraph that started with “She is tall and thin” = that kind of jarred me a bit, not sure if it was the change in tense or just the description, it took me out of the story for a moment (but I got right back into it).

Well done – can’t wait to read more.

Utterly accurate. This kind of thing makes me shudder with empathy! 🙂 Just one small word of caution is to watch the perspective-switch. It went back and forth between her POV and narrative POV without any transition, and it threw me just a couple of times. But yow, I really liked this. I also want those shoes. 😉 Thanks so much for sharing it!

We think there are a lot of people in temp jobs and even full time employees who feel ignored and not fully accepted and this story portrays that feeling down to a tee.

We really liked the plot and the twist in the end, as now no-one will ever know “The Temp”.

One thing to improve is that the narrative chops and changes between “The Temp” and third person and this could be done a little more seamlessly.

Great story. I loved the ending. It was something I didn’t expect at all. Your descriptive writing is very good and you hit it on the head with making a person feel in the character’s shoes. My only improvement would be to watch the POV changes.

Amanda – This is a great story. This certainly resonates with me in so many ways.

A couple of years ago, myself and another person, were hired to help install a new computer system meant to deal with the Affordable Care Act at an insurance company (I work for an IT Consulting Company). My friend and I were there for almost eight months – in a little room that was actually a converted vault. People almost never came back to talk to us, no one ever invited us to lunch, and a couple of times (I am not kidding) we were locked in building with the alarm turned on because people left to go home and they forgot we were back there.

We would often joke that if one us died in the vault, it was the responsibility of the other person to call someone, because otherwise no one would ever find us.

I’m sure you didn’t mean this story to be a funny one, but I chuckled a few times reading it because it was so accurate to me.

Just a suggestion – I think that there were places where you could probably leave out some items to streamline the story just a bit. You would tighten up the story and lose nothing that would make the story any less vibrant.

For Example:
You could spot her enthusiasm from a mile away like a sore thumb hit with a hammer. Coincidentally this place of work in which she so temporarily resided was, of all things, a homebuilding company. Yet a home of her own she will never be able to build or afford at her temporary pay rate. The work she does is that of an administrative assistant, but her official title remains absent. She still remains known now as just “The Temp.

This is a great detail – but if I don’t know what company she works for, it still doesn’t make it any less readable. It just seemed to read a bit rough to me. If you really like it you might try to weave along with something else in the story.

Really great – I really enjoyed reading this.

James Schmidt (J.L.S.)