Needed: One good temporary worker, available the next morning, with a pleasant phone voice and the ability to file by letter and number.

Theresa Hershberger, a job-placement manager for a small local temporary staffing agency, had four hours to get it done or risk losing a reliable piece of business.

Stressed? Absolutely. Hershberger, a woman in her late 40s, reddened like a thermometer from neck to forehead as call after call went unanswered. Another fire to put out to keep a customer happy.

“Not that I’ve gotten up and gotten the fire extinguisher, but it feels that way,” Hershberger said.

She works for Advanced Staffing Inc., whose headquarters are in New Castle, Del. The company keeps a roster of 300 to 500 temporary employees – mostly clerical, customer-service, accounting and light-manufacturing workers. Advanced has its own administrative staff of 18, three of them, including Hershberger, in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Because the office there is small, she also screens potential temps and makes sales calls to persuade companies to use her agency to fill temporary slots.

Experts say the temporary-employment business is a barometer of the economy. Typically, when times get tough, the temp industry gets hit hardest first, as employers ditch their temps to save their full-time employees’ jobs.

But in the down period, temp agencies motor along, providing the extra bodies companies need as they winnow their workforce. Finally, as the recession turns to recovery, the temp business picks up ahead of the employment rate. Companies need more help, but are not ready to commit to permanent staffing, so they hire temps.

“Usually the staffing business is good in a recession,” Hershberger said. “But this time we were hit like everyone else. Business was flat. They are just worried about expenditures – period, whether they be temps, or computers, or software.”

Indeed, the staffing industry had shown nothing but year-to-year growth since 1993, until it was interrupted by eight straight quarters of decline starting in late 2000. As of 2002, 44,625 people worked in temp jobs in the Philadelphia region and were dispatched by hundreds of companies.

Hershberger still has faith in the pattern. She occasionally sees a hopeful flurry of business, and the American Staffing Association reports an increase in the average number of temporary workers employed per day in the first half of this year.

“Nothing’s sticking, though,” she said. “I’m hearing that businesses are starting to pick up, but upper management doesn’t know whether it’s a true turnaround or just a little spike.”

But all this economic analysis was too macro for 9:20 a.m. and only 2.5 cups of morning coffee.

Already the morning had been maddening.

Back from vacation and hoping for a calm day one recent Monday, Hershberger checked her e-mail and dialed up the weekend answering service.

That’s when she heard the playback from a Sunday call from one of her temps, a clerical worker:

“I won’t be in tomorrow,” Hershberger said the caller said, as the person wept into the phone. “By then, hopefully, I’ll be dead.”

Still vacation-mellow, Hershberger was walloped by the call. In her 20 years in the field, Hershberger has heard a million excuses about why someone can’t come to work. But this was no excuse.

“I was very upset.”

At 9:20 a.m., the woman who had threatened suicide still weighed heavily on Hershberger’s mind, so she called her a second time. The first time, just before 8 a.m., the woman answered the phone, much to Hershberger’s relief, and the two talked.

After the second call, however, Hershberger realized that the woman wasn’t prepared to work. “I know you need your job,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be better if we told them you’d be in tomorrow?”

Hershberger hung up and called the employer to say the woman couldn’t come in: “She doesn’t want to lose her job. She’s got a good work ethic. It’s some sort of stomach thing.”

But that wasn’t all. Almost immediately, she got another phone call – this one from a hospital.

It was another temporary worker, calling from the hospital, two hours before her unexpected heart surgery. The woman, who had been honored as Advanced’s Employee of the Month, called to let Hershberger know she’d be out for a week, but wanted to keep her assignment.

As Hershberger listened, she leaned her head on her hand and exhaled heavily.

“Oh goodness,” Hershberger said. “And you drove yourself to the hospital? That’s unbelievable. Don’t worry about the job, we’ll handle that. OK, dear, I’ll be saying a prayer for you.”

Hershberger hung up the phone, and called that employer to explain the situation.

The company that had contracted for the distraught woman could probably handle a day’s absence, but she didn’t want the other company to be without one of her temporary workers for a week.

Maybe they would think they could do without the temp indefinitely. So, while Hershberger wanted to save the job for the woman having heart surgery, she also wanted to save the work for her agency. She told the company she would find someone to fill in – the person with the good phone voice and filing skills.


Hershberger wolfed down lunch, and started to work the phones and computers, talking about her job as she dialed.

The roughest part? “People lie,” she said, and not just when they say they can’t come in because the same grandmother had died five times in the last 60 days. They fudge resumes, they say they can do things they can’t. “You become jaded. You begin not to believe anybody.”

The best part? “When you do help someone go from starting their career as a temporary worker, to getting a full-time job, to. developing a career.” Now, one of her former temps is a client, she said.

Back on the hunt, Hershberger turned to the computer, pulling a list of temps who had recently finished assignments.

First on the list: The woman couldn’t start until 9 a.m., but the assignment began at 8 a.m.

Next: This one had walked off the job. Not a good choice for a treasured client. Number three? Doesn’t have a professional phone voice. Number four hates to file. Number five wants $12 an hour, but this job pays between $9 and $10. Hershberger made at least 20 calls between 1:30 and 4 p.m. without a nibble.


In between, she called the distraught woman one more time.


“I need a semisweet chocolate bar,” she moaned at 3:30 p.m., red with stress. “It’s not looking good.”

Phone call 18: “I be going on vacation,” Hershberger said, quoting the woman’s answering machine, “so she won’t be going on this job.” Her grammar meant she wouldn’t qualify as a receptionist. “It’s a shame, but that’s how a person loses a job.”

At 3:50 p.m., Hershberger got her first callback, pounding her chest in a relieved hallelujah. No luck. She was working for another temp agency.

Then, bingo, at 4:07 p.m., she landed a candidate. Her neck and face flushed red with success. “Best of luck,” she said on the phone. “Thanks for helping me out. I’ll never forget it.” She hung up the phone and collapsed on the desk.

“Whew.”

Hershberger breathed heavily, and then picked up the phone to call the employer. “We’ll call tomorrow to make sure she arrived OK.”


Making a mental note to visit the sick woman in the hospital and to call the troubled person that evening, Hershberger headed home to Willingboro.

For a first day back from vacation, she had had enough.

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(c) 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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