Hey all. first time posting here. This isn't as huge of a deal as a lot of posts I see on here, however it rubbed me the wrong way and I needed to vent about it somewhere.
I work as a temp in the back-end office of a private broker-dealer. I've been bouncing around between these temp jobs at the same agency since I graduated back in spring of 2020 and have not been able to get hired anywhere despite being a high-performing team member at all of my positions. I just started back in June of this year at a new position at this company. It is a remote position except for one day a week that we go into the office.
Today my recruiter called me to see how things were going and to give me feedback from my leadership that was given during their one-on-one. First, they noted (with no criticism towards me) that volume is very low this time of year and they know I don't have much to do right now. My supervisor has apologized to me for this in person and has assured me they'll get me trained on other things while we're waiting for volume, which has happened sporadically. They did say they were happy with my performance overall, but did note as one criticism that I am on my phone a lot when I'm in the office.
This is what upset me. In the same breadth they acknowledge that I have nothing to do all day, but then turn around a criticize me for being on my phone? I take care to constantly check our queues to ensure no work has come in, and when it does, I do it straight away. I have literally nothing to do for most of the day and being on my phone is the only thing for me to do to get through the 8 hour drudgery. I don't like it, I would much prefer to be working but my only alternative is to just stare at the wall and do absolutely nothing. Now I know business minded people would give me the usual “take initiative!” and “ask for things to do!” and maybe there is some validity to that, but I would rather my supervisor (who sits right next to me) just turn his chair around and say this to me rather than tell my recruiter who passed it along to me. There's also a chance it's not a huge deal and they're just looking for something to criticize to make it look like they're doing their job, but I find that agitating too as it is another BS facet of corporate life.
On a side note, I have found that a lot of these jobs have similarly low volume most of the time and I feel very under-utilized. Most of the companies I've worked at have a fair amount of employees sitting around with nothing to do. After being a top 3 performer on my team for a year at my first job out of college, myself and every other temp on my team (who they referred to as “managed resources”) were let go with no notice because some higher-ups decided we were dead weight given the low volume. My direct supervisor really liked me and wanted to hire me, and went to bat for me to no avail. It's depressing to feel like your professional worth boils down to pressing a few buttons for 20 or so minutes every day and watching a queue for the remaining 7+ hours, only to be dropped as soon as this role is no longer needed.
tldr; Supervisor told my temp agency I spend too much time on my phone despite acknowledging there is nothing for me to do all day. Tired of poorly organized and dehumanizing temp jobs that never go anywhere.