THERE ARE TWO security guards manning
the reception counter at my local Job Centre.
They are grim-faced and uniformed.
They serve to extinguish any faint, remaining vestiges of hope in the
faces of anyone who walks through the door.
Even police stations and hospitals are more welcoming. We are all viewed as scum, our past histories
in respectable occupations counting for nothing. Here, we are all treated equally. No-one gets the benefit of doubt, no-one is
innocent ‘til proven guilty. We are all
condemned prisoners, trapped in the margins of a world where caring, feeling
people are termed “Human Resources”, and where “customer care” is an abstract
notion at the end of a telephone line.
And yet the Job Centre regards me
as a “customer”. This is patently
ridiculous. It has no products to offer
me. Yet judging by the expressions on
the faces of the security guards, you’d think it housed a treasure trove of
riches and opportunities.
It is a core requirement of my
qualification for benefits that I attend here to “sign on” once every two
weeks. In return for agreeing to seek
work, the government pays me a Job Seeker’s Allowance(JSA). But the people here don’t realise that my
skills and horizons extend further than the boarded up high streets and empty
harbours of this part of the world. As
ever, I nod patiently as my “advisor” scrolls down on her computer screen
through the current vacancies which, apparently, match the criteria I stipulated
at the drawing up of my Job Seeker’s Agreement.
Months ago, when I had still believed this would be a short-term hitch,
I had said I’d be willing to do anything, including clerical or unskilled
manual work. I soon learned the error of
my ways when I found out that not only was I expected to apply for every shop
assistant’s or admin assistant’s vacancy that came up, but my “advisor” would
be checking with the employer to make sure I had actually done so. During those first few months I received a
regular stream of letters, unsigned and produced by an automated computer
without any human input at all, warning me my JSA would be stopped unless I had
a good reason for not applying for the vacancy of part-time toilet attendant on
minimum wage.
It was six months before I had a
chance to review my Agreement and adjust the criteria slightly. Now I’m only expected to apply for jobs in
the fields of media, education and tourism. But my own eagerness to escape the
unpitying gaze of the Job Centre staff regularly lands me in trouble. As my advisor scrolled through the dregs of
the jobs market today, I spotted a vacancy for part-time driver for a company I
hadn’t heard of before. Before I knew
it, I was being handed the contact details and job spec for the post of pizza
delivery driver, 5 pm to midnight six nights a week inc. weekends.
I was now obliged to apply for this
job, or risk losing my JSA. I looked at
the sheet of paper in my hand. I had to telephone a mobile number to ask for an
application form. For a pizza delivery
driver’s job! I had no intention of
wasting my own money on calling a mobile phone number, so headed to one of the
phone booths available for the use of Job Seekers. But it wouldn’t allow me to dial a mobile
number. I approached one of the security
goons. While he consulted with an
advisor, I scrolled through the latest vacancies on one of the public
computers. The same sad script as every
week. Door-to-door sales jobs disguised
as “Driver” or “Product Designer” posts.
Market research jobs promising minimum wage but which in reality paid
only commission. Glamorous-sounding
overseas jobs with big travel companies who would expect you to travel half the
length of the country at your own expense to “Open Days” if their search
spiders found the appropriate key words in the on-line application form you’d completed.
And at the end of it all would be a
minimum-wage job trying to sell optional extras to a load of sun-burned,
tight-fisted British holidaymakers on the Costa del Sol .
The security goon nodded in the direction
of one of the advisors. She seemed quite
put out at the prospect of someone using a Job Centre resource to try to find a
job, but allowed me to dial the number of the pizza place. Answering machine. In a voice loud and clear enough to make sure
the advisor heard me, I left my name and address. I’d done my bit now. I could pretend either
the application form never arrived or that I filled it in and never heard back,
having been deemed insufficiently qualified or experienced for the position of
pizza delivery boy.
I left the Job Centre under the
usual cloud of despondency. While I’m
looking for employment under my own steam, I retain a semblance of
positivity. But that is snuffed out every
time I visit the professionals. Today
was no different. I’d entered feeling
upbeat and confident, and left having been put firmly in my place as a member
of the underclass. It’s no coincidence that my local Job Centre – a shiny
façade of pastel colours and graphics – is in a run-down part of town
surrounded by empty shops and crumbling blocks of flats. When you leave the Job Centre, you might be
leaving the pitiless stares behind you, but you’re not escaping your
plight. The hopelessness and despair is
waiting right outside to punch you in the face.
I went to Tesco. I was cooking tonight and I had a list of
stuff to buy. But they’d moved
everything around. I couldn’t find the
baking ingredients. All I wanted was a
packet of sponge fingers and some vanilla extract, but they were nowhere to be
found. Neither was a sales assistant, or
“colleague” as they call themselves. I’d
just been to a place full of hollow-eyed souls looking for work, and now I was
in a big, shiny shop devoid of staff. I
traipsed up and down a succession of previously familiar aisles and found
nothing, no-one. So, following the
example of the in-store Tannoy, I decided to broadcast my appeal for
assistance. Cupping my hands to my
mouth, I shouted out: “If anyone knows where the baking ingredients are, please
could you shout out the aisle number, as the signs in here are rubbish. Thank
you.”
A few bemused stares from other
shoppers, then a “colleague” appeared from around a corner. He looked personally affronted, but led me to
the new, unsigned location of the sponge fingers. I thanked him. A customer service operation had been
successfully completed. That should have
been the end of the matter. I should
have been on my way home with everything I needed to make a Jamie Oliver
tiramisu.
But before I’d even put the packet
of sponge fingers into my trolley, two more senior-looking “colleagues” arrived
at my shoulder, one male, the other female.
The male one, called Greg according to his badge, asked if everything
was alright, in a not particularly warm tone.
Yes thanks, I replied, a member of staff had promptly solved my
problem. But this wasn’t sufficient for
Greg and his companion. They commenced a
critique into the manner in which I had appealed for help. Things escalated. I never swore or lost my temper, but I was
deeply irritated by being prevented from completing my shopping by two
under-employed Tesco managers. They
didn’t like the tone of my voice. They
said I was being “aggressive”. The woman
claimed I’d called Tesco staff “rubbish”.
I corrected her. I’d said “signs”.
They said they wanted me to leave the premises. Fine, me too, I said. I’d just take my
trolley to the checkout. But Greg
grabbed my trolley and said he wanted me to leave immediately. He called over security. A dead-eyed, crop-haired youth – not dissimilar
to the security staff at the Job Centre – came over and gripped me by the
arm. I immediately sat down on the
floor. You big baby, said the security
guard. I’m not leaving without my
shopping, I said. Right, said Greg,
we’ll call the police. What? You’ll
waste the time of the police when you could just let me pay for my groceries
and leave? Call the police, he
instructed his companion.
The police arrived. Friendly and smiling. They’d expected to find one of their
“regulars”. Yes, they told me, Tesco
were entitled to eject me without my shopping.
They weren’t pressing charges, but they were banning me. All because I couldn’t find the sponge
fingers.
There’s a moral here
somewhere. I wasn’t banned from Tesco
because I’m a jobless loser, I was banned because I dared challenge the status
quo. Greg and his colleague, fresh out
of corporate training, couldn’t compute what was happening. There’s a new hierarchy in the business
world, where the customer isn’t always right and is expected to conform to
certain standards of unquestioning and blind loyalty. Otherwise they’ll be punished. That’s why the
Customer Service desk at Tesco doubles up as the tobacco kiosk. Customer service isn’t as important as
selling cigarettes. In fact, it’s
considered such a low priority, it’s been outsourced to a call centre on the
outskirts of Mumbai. Face to face
interaction is an outdated concept that has been replaced by telephone numbers
for these battery farms of indifference.
When Greg went home that night,
probably to his parents’ house, he will have boasted over tea how he had to
call one of the emergency services to deal with a customer who had had the
temerity to shout out for help when he couldn’t find where the store had moved
the baking ingredients to.
Meanwhile I had to explain how a respectable, law-abiding, middle-aged man had got himself banned
from Tesco and that we’d have to do our shopping in Morrisons from now on.
