An hour in the life of a Relief Secretary (street value $23 p/h)

Being a Relief Secretary is not for everyone. If you have no ambition, like being treated like a retarded child and could hold a conversation with a block of wood then this is the life for you. Most large companies have a 'relief team' comprised of a bunch of ladies who are sent to various departments to warm the seats of the full time secretaries who are sick or on vacation or just having the day off because they hate their job. The thing is, when you are sick, the world doesn't actually stop turning. When you miss a few days in your job, things the laws of gravity don't change, pigs don't fly and companies do not go bankrupt.
Thus the relief secretary who comes to replace the supposedly irreplaceable finds that there is no work to do.
It is 10.09am and I have had no work today. I have sent an email around the office asking for work, as is kissass company policy but it has gone unheeded. Yesterday after lunch, from 2pm to 5.15pm I HAD NO WORK. I don't mean very little, I mean none.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm not only a relief secretary, I'm a temp? Which means, for most firms including this one, that I am not worthy of decent conversation. The only conversation I was engaged in today was with a lifer relief secretary who tried to talk to me about how it was good that we had a system in place in the office because it made things easier when you were relieving someone. And wasn't it nice to be a relief secretary?

I smiled, agreed in a non-committal fashion and then turned my back on her and continued my private text message to a friend.