I'll never have a million dollars...

Meeting this morning with the temp agency went well. Now that I've shared a post that shows the existential individualist impression of temping, let me think out loud about temping with a longer-range, capital filter: What is temping, essentially? To temp: to temporarily fill a need for employment; to outsource work projects; to get a foot in the door. It's interesting to look at jobs like temping from both angles of the employer and the employed: Temping to the employer is a "more anonymous" way to do certain projects that would come with in-house politicizing; it also serves as a bridge for the minimum-wage conundrum, when minimum wage forces business to cut bottom-rung jobs from their payrolls; in a capital market that revolves around boom and bust cycles and that experiences basic industry extinctions around technology, temping type services can also serve as a transitional element in preparing people for career changes. Temping to the employed is a starter job (something basically lost in the age of instant careers and starter marriages); it provides free training for the employed and places them in career areas with a personal touch from a counselor of sorts; it works to often open doors for personal contact with employers and create relationships of "rent-to-own" type contracts; it is in some senses a model of the entrepreneurial spirit that Catholic theologians were debating around the founding of our country, which fundamentally holds together a healthy capitalist system. In as much as that sense has any merit whatsoever, I say rock on to temping!