Customer Reviews

TEMP.tation: An Introduction to Busyness Management

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I picked up this book because I used to be a temp, and I can't even imagine the mindset of a person who would choose that as a career path, rather than a between-gigs wage-haven. Well, that and the cover illustration of the author looked like Fran Drescher on benzedrine.

I managed to bang out the bulk of the book on a single 45-minute train-ride, and once you get past the 'humorous' cartoons and the biographical filler, there's just not much there of any practical use. Her advice seems to be an odd amalgam of 1990's office politicking bred with 1950's polite society mores.

If I had been following her advice in my temping days, I wouldn't have lasted half a day in most of those jobs. The #1 rule of temping is to get the job they hired you for done, and #1a is to not rock the boat. Filling out detailed work logs or carrying around a tote bag full of his or her own office supplies might make a temp feel empowered and self-important, but it sure won't keep him or her employed.

Carol Feltman is racist. Don't buy her book.

.... I've done a bit of temp work, and this ...is waaaaaaay over the top. job sheets?? write down every single thing your asked to do, the time you were asked, the time you completed it?

A hand made tapestry saying you smoke and i croak? I dont smoke personally, but no one likes a smart [aleck]Anti Smoking crusader.

working within a 5 kilometer radius and no further, [could be] burning your own bridges....

I decided to take the plunge and read this little gem just to see if it was as bad as the negative reviews imply. Guess what? The "nays" have it. Now I know why there are so many obnoxious temps on the planet. They're organized...and they have a HANDBOOK!

It appears that Ms Feltman regards the central role of the temp in the modern work environment as being that of irritator. From her "amusing" ways of dealing with minor office incidents (usually revolving around patronising the offender until they go away or go postal) to her insistence on petty habits such as keeping a work log to throw back in the faces of anyone requesting a little extra help, she has a bad answer for any situation.

The only way I could recommend the advice in this pitiful excuse for a book would be if someone desperately wanted out of a temping position. Even then I'd be loathe to do it.

This book truly bares the tortured soul of the temporary employee, and dares to plumb the existential abysses that we temporary workers stare into each and every day. From the very first chapter, Ms. Feltman takes us on an enlightening journey through the tangled maze of temping, and prepares us for the real world of temporary employment, where we will no doubt be called upon to keep our work areas meticulously clean, log our activities religiously to expose the hopeless inadequacies of the "permies" or permanent employees, and keep the workplace tobacco-free. There is an endearing "Mommy Dearest" quality to Ms. Feltman's writing style, and her prose is less a guidebook to the workplace as it is an exploration of her own complex psyche. By focusing not on the external niceties of the workplace itself, but upon her own inner struggle for triumph over adversity in the form of sent faxes, filed papers, and transcribed letters, Carol Feltman serves as a stark signpost on the very edge of acceptable workplace behavior - an edge where most people dare not tread. By reading the book, one is transported into her inner world, where all of life's perplexing problems have quaint, embroidered solutions, and people in the workplace are reduced to their most basic, trivializing iconography. Can we truly _know_ anyone? The question is age old, and Ms. Feltman addresses it directly: we can only know that portion of another person which directly intersects with our own zone of perception and feeling, and only by addressing that portion alone, without delving into the tedious morass of the subconcious "other", can we truly hope to classify that person within our own Platonic system. Ms. Feltman's book does this almost unconciously, so that by the time the volume is complete, you are conditioned to view the world through her imaginative and analytical mind. Temp.Tation does not disappoint. The convergence of a compartmentalizing and active mind with a classic pattern of controlling influences is rendered in exquisite detail. Use it as a workplace guidebook if you must, but the underlying core aspects of "Feltmanian Psychology" go far beyond the seemingly simple exterior, and may prove to lay the groundwork for the next behavioral system, as we temps forge ahead into the next millenium.

This book truly bares the tortured soul of the temporary employee, and dares to plumb the existential abysses that we temporary workers stare into each and every day. From the very first chapter, Ms. Feltman takes us on an enlightening journey through the tangled maze of temping, and prepares us for the real world of temporary employment, where we will no doubt be called upon to keep our work areas meticulously clean, log our activities religiously to expose the hopeless inadequacies of the "permies" or permanent employees, and keep the workplace tobacco-free. There is an endearing "Mommy Dearest" quality to Ms. Feltman's writing style, and her prose is less a guidebook to the workplace as it is an exploration of her own complex psyche. By focusing not on the external niceties of the workplace itself, but upon her own inner struggle for triumph over adversity in the form of sent faxes, filed papers, and transcribed letters, Carol Feltman serves as a stark signpost on the very edge of acceptable workplace behavior - an edge where most people dare not tread. By reading the book, one is transported into her inner world, where all of life's perplexing problems have quaint, embroidered solutions, and people in the workplace are reduced to their most basic, trivializing iconography. Can we truly _know_ anyone? The question is age old, and Ms. Feltman addresses it directly: we can only know that portion of another person which directly intersects with our own zone of perception and feeling, and only by addressing that portion alone, without delving into the tedious morass of the subconcious "other", can we truly hope to classify that person within our own Platonic system. Ms. Feltman's book does this almost unconciously, so that by the time the volume is complete, you are conditioned to view the world through her imaginative and analytical mind. Temp.Tation does not disappoint. The convergence of a compartmentalizing and active mind with a classic pattern of controlling influences is rendered in exquisite detail. Use it as a workplace guidebook if you must, but the underlying core aspects of "Feltmanian Psychology" go far beyond the seemingly simple exterior, and may prove to lay the groundwork for the next behavioral system, as we temps forge ahead into the next millenium.

I'm a temp worker, and the stuff she says is not real life. You could never get by in a temp office with her advice. Maybe in the 1950's. Don't buy it.

This book sums up the rantings of a possible obsessive-compulsive person. I bet she has changed assignments many times, because some of her "advice" are serious career-limiting moves. I wonder if she has any little rituals to go to the water fountain (get the second paper glass, not the first, but not before having sanitized it first with her own antibacterial wipes brought from home. Test the water temperature with her own thermometer, and do not drink it until it reaches 70 degrees).

If you just got a temp assignment and you want to get rid of it fast, buy this book.

If you follow Carol Feltman's advice, you will be the most hated temp a company could ever have the misfortune of meeting. It's obvious that Feltman hates authority figures and advises employees to take it upon themselves to teach good manners to their bosses. She states that temps should bring their own office supplies to assignments. Why? To avoid cooties? And requiring supervisors to sign a work log after every task a temp completes - bah! Why not just come out and ASK to be fired? If you want to get/stay employed, DO NOT follow the advice in this book.

This is a terrible book. I would give it zero stars if I could.