It’s like wanting to marry someone just like you, only not you.

Back in the days I was working as a temp, this would come up way more often than you could imagine. “Oh, I can’t get over how perfect you are for this job. If we could only get someone just like you, we’d never have any problems whatsoever. Wow you’re perfect for this job. Oh, no, you shouldn’t apply — we need the guy answering the phone and making the coffee to have a degree.” Or any number of other things.

I used to assume that it was just me they didn’t like — they had just been polite before. But I have been assured that this is commonplace. People, for whatever reason, don’t see their temp as anything but temporary, and they need to overcome that sense of “oh, this guy won’t be here that long” before they think they might like to stick around.