The more things change . . .

. . . the more they stay the same. Once upon a time I put up a post about the seven personal characteristics that tend to surface in temp attorneys. The list is not particularly PC, but it is descriptive. On the other hand it is not exhaustive, and for lack of a better category, I included an eighth category as a sort of catch-all: bad things happen to good people. In drafting that list, I drew upon years of experience, both working as a supervisor of temps at Big Law firms (rarely, thank God) and working with temps for Big Law firms (way too many years of my life, thank you very much). Because of the collapse of Big Law, which poured a bunch of people into category 8 and kind of blurred the lines, I left out one category from my list because I wasn't sure it fit. Over the years, I have become sure, yet I have not included this characteristic in the list of what tends to make a temp.

That characteristic is lack of social skills. The reason I never included this in the deadly seven (if you have three or more of these characteristics, went to law school and came to The Big City (DC, New York, LA) you are almost undoubtedly a temp) is because, frankly, Big Law attorneys are not necessarily noted for their social skills. Lack of social skills is no bar to entry to the Big Law orbit. There are, however, limits to that statement, and last week I encountered one of those limits.

In the kitchen area, we have a machine that dispenses chilled, filtered water. If you've ever read about DC's public water system, you know why "filtered" is important. Like pretty much everything in the public sector in DC, the water is corrupt. But I digress. Our water dispenser is, alas, located next to the kitchen garbage cans, limited as the agency is by the need to put the dispenser near a water supply.

In any event, I was busy filling a bottle with some nice, cold, filtered DC water when I sensed a presence over my left shoulder, standing in front of the garbage cans next to me. I also heard a strange "tick, tick, tick" sound that I could not identify. When my bottle was full, I stood up and turned to my left, intending to exit the area but also so I could see what the hell that sound was. There, standing in front of me, God and everybody, was some temp, cheerfully flossing his teeth into the trash cans. Face with the choice of puking or running, I chose to flee.

Upon relating this story to some more human temps, I learned that this guy does this every fucking day. Even temps are disgusted by this temp. And temps wonder why Big Law holds us in contempt? One guy flossing his teeth into the kitchen trash can is enough to overshadow a dozen Oliver Wendell Holmes clones. (Not to suggest there are any of those in Temp Town.) Unfortunately, he's probably not alone. As much as the influx of Big Law refugees has changed the social makeup of Temp Town, the archetypes that originally made Temp Town what it is remain with us.While no longer the majority of temps, there are still enough of these folks to remind Big Law why they hold us in thinly veiled contempt.