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Once upon a time, there was a young lady, a perfectly ordinary young lady, sitting mournfully at home, consoling herself with the fact that even if she was suddenly unemployed, she now had a lot more time to read and write popslash.Then rings her friend T, desperately in need of a temporary receptionist for her finance company, to cover the regular receptionist's holiday. The young lady, reflecting that, after all, slash won't pay the rent, agrees. This is inspite of many cautionary tales, related to her by supacat, about the kind of perils in which such a receptionist might find herself (deep, mind-killing, head-pounding-on-keyboard boredom being one, and the financial adviser sense of humour being another). Thus is born (cue soaring music) SuperTemp.The time passes reasonably quickly for ST, even if the company has no centralised phone list for their 300+ staff, or list of position titles, or organisational chart, or anything more sophisticated that several old post-its stuck to the computer monitor, for her to refer to. It makes life interesting, especially for everyone else. Between phone calls, ST finds time (a lot of time) to surf the net, and be pissed of by the fact that some kind of net nanny program automatically blocks any interesting sites (and I wasn't even trying to look at slash, I swear).In time, T mentions to G (ST's nominal boss, who took four days to introduce herself) that ST might be able to find time to copy-edit the company newsletter.'Cool,' says ST.'Fuck,' thinks ST, looking at the newsletter. For it is suddenly, blindingly obvious, that G, the Communications Manager, can't communicate. At all.'Heh,' thinks ST, 'Good thing I'm an anal grammar-nazi.''Wow,' says G, 'This is really good.''Er, right,' say ST, 'Thank you.''Here, can you do this one, too?' asks G, 'And this one? And this one?'Friday, later that week...'So,' says G, 'You've been really great on reception. People have commented on how nice you are.''Thank you,' says ST, 'I've, er, enjoyed myself, too.''Actually,' says G, 'I was hoping that you would be able to give me your input on a project, and perhaps be in a position to take ownership of a task to communicate our company's existing staff members internally to each other.''I'm sorry?' says ST.'We have an internet library communicating our staff details internally between offices, and it's mostly wrong,' clarifies G.'You're asking me if I would be interested in staying on to update the staff database?' asks ST, 'Cool.''Great, see you Monday,' says G.To be continued...