What awaits us all in the exciting world of temp work

A self-help guide in the guise of a workplace comedy, “Haiku Tunnel” shows what happens when permanency threatens to stabilize the seesaw life of a temp employee. Can an aspiring writer who has always flitted from job to job and woman to woman commit already?

Josh Kornbluth, co-writer, co-director and protagonist of this intermittently funny, shaggy-dog story, stars as a josher named “Josh Kornbluth,” the pride (and perhaps only employee) of a temp agency called Uniforce.

A balding Buddha of a guy, “Josh” talks to the camera as analyst and to therapist, recalling how it was that he went “perm.” He is engaging at first – especially for anyone who has ever worked in the secretarial pool and tamed a dodgy letter moistener. But as “Josh’s” story wears on, so does one’s patience.

However refreshing it is to see a movie about the secretary rather than the lawyer (a point inadvertently made by “The Firm,” where Holly Hunter’s secretary was infinitely more interesting than Tom Cruise’s attorney), there is a long wait for the light at the end of the “Haiku Tunnel.”