Anyone who's worked a temp job or, hell, anyone who's worked anywhere can relate to the stories in Temp Slave! The zine was started by Jeff Kelly in 1993 as a one-off response to being strung along as a temp at an insurance company with a promise for future employment only to be canned out of the blue. He handed it out to other employees as he was leaving the company. He got such a good response that he continued publishing. Each issue includes crushing boredom, rage against bosses who use you and then toss you out, hilarious ways to scam the company, cartoons, survival tales, the many many ways to get fired, and more. Jeff Kelly no longer publishes Temp Slave! but you can buy the Temp Slave! compilation book through Garrett County Press.
This excerpt from Heidi Pollock's great article chronicling the day in the life of a temp from issue #5 is a perfect introduction. It reminds me of every mind-numbing spirit-destroying data entry temp job I've ever had:
"In the morning you always feel a complete and total separation from your fellow workers. At no other time during the day do you feel like such an outsider...Even the briefest thought that you might have something in common with the permanent secretaries makes you queasy and short of breath. This arrogance wears off as the day continues.
In any case, from 11 or so onward, until lunch, you experience a supreme and all-consuming boredom. It is so boring that you want to kill yourself. You want to stand on the top of your desk and scream and jump up and down and tear your hair and tear off your clothes. Sometimes the urge to simply scream out random obscenities is so powerful, it makes you worry about your sanity. You begin to feel the power of desire."
Some scanned pages and covers after the jump...
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