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Though we are still a long way from having identified all forms of temporary work, we know that many private- and public-sector organizations use this type of labor. This article studies a type of temporary employment found in France’s local civil service sector from the perspective of a group of female human resources department employees who organize job assignments for low-skilled, mainly female temporary workers. The HR managers who organize this temporary workforce on a daily basis are caught up in multiple tensions that create instability, discomfort, and discontent—a situation they are constantly trying to overcome. Tasked with sending temporary workers on jobs and keeping them loyal without really being able to hire them, constrained to follow rules and in some cases compensate for the absence thereof, these HR managers play a composite role of employment intermediary and legal intermediary. To reduce the daily uncertainty of their work and be able to ascribe morally acceptable meaning to their practices, they use several rationales in their interactions with workers. These include inventing rules to frame their own activities, which fall somewhere between making commitments to/obtaining commitments from workers and simply making do in the moment, instilling a sense of accountability in workers, and keeping their distance from them.