This is Law and Order…………..

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two distinct, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate the crimes and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.

And this is me…………..

In the vocational employment sector, candidates are represented by two distinct yet equally important groups. The recruitment consultants who hire them and the employers who persecute them. This is one Temp’s story.

It has been 4.7 years since the fateful day that I found out I was going to be liberated from my position as chief press secretary to the Hon. P.J Hawthorn. Staff from the Departments of Agriculture and Regional Affairs and, Environment, Sustainability and Water were called into a meeting to discuss the amalgamation of the two departments and associated budget cuts. Two ministers, two colossal egos, one department. This should go down about as well as swallowing castor oil during the day, with equally as many side effects.

Armed with my mocha latte and iPad to take notes on the possible fall out of the amalgamation , I sat down in prime PowerPoint viewing position. That, and I had forgotten my glasses. Turns out I needn’t have worried about the glasses as the dot points on the presentation were the size of golf balls and the font the size of a golf club. I could see clearly that the amalgamation meant that there would be rations on sticky notes, percolated coffee would be replaced with freeze dried mud and that I was surplus to requirements.

I could hear  collective inhalations by 20 heavy- weight bureaucrats giving themselves whiplash as they turned to see my reaction. I, on the other hand, was apoplectic and had not exhaled for at least three minutes. So, I did what any professional press secretary does when they need a quick get of jail free card. Staring at a blank iPhone screen I placed the phone to my ear and promptly began taking an imaginary call from an imaginary very important person. My mocha latte, laptop and I continued our imaginary conversation right out the door.

Once safely outside, apoplexy was replaced by raging anger. I wasn’t hormotional. This was Shakespearean rage. You see, the person who delivered the poisonous PowerPoint presentation was my Minister. I had taken so many bullets for that man that I could have had my own character in CSI Miami. The ballistics report would have uncovered so many color coded irrigation flow diagrams. Water flows into the farm, crops grow. No water, no crops. As the Agriculture minister, he wouldn’t know the difference between an aquifer and a turnip.

So at the age of 32 with an honors degree in chemical engineering and 10 years of professional experience, this is how I, Alexandra York, became The Temp.