Wish I Was There

I caught sight of myself in the full length mirror in the hall as I was leaving and was struck by a crisis of confidence.  The tall, clean-shaven figure dressed in a brown Merino polo neck, black jeans and black leather jacket staring back at me wasn’t going to be taken seriously at this interview.  I looked exactly who I was: a middle-aged dilettante with aspirations above his dole cheque.  I’d be twice as old and better dressed than anyone else, but that wasn’t going to impress a group of line managers weaned on corporate-speak and sales targets with all traces of discretion erased from their brain. I almost turned back to the bedroom.  The hall was dark and empty, apart from my bikes propped up against the wall.  A couple of discarded washers from where I’d replaced my back tyre earlier still littered the floor.  I instinctively checked the tyre, convinced my cack-handed struggle had punctured the innertube.  Fuck it, I was all dressed up, I’d been on my own staring at the same four walls all day – I picked up my car keys and left.

The experience was no less depressing than I’d feared.  There were eight of us being interviewed for jobs in Dundee, Forfar and Perth as well as Arbroath.  The posts were all the same: part time sales advisors for Thomson Travel. My rivals were all females.  A group of Thomson’s managers had been bussed in from the other branches to monitor us as we took part in a “group exercise” before the one-to-one interviews.  The three females in my group were very garrulous without actually saying anything of note.  When I offered a point of clarification, I was met with looks of disdain.  My experiences shepherding adventure tourists around Egypt or US High School students around Europe could not compete with Emma's success selling optional extras as a holiday rep for Club 18-30. All this was noted on their clipboards by the hovering managers.

Then we were each assigned to a different manager for our interviews.  This system struck me as remarkably flawed: even if they were going to ask us the same questions from the same checklist, it would ultimately amount to whether our respective interviewers argued our cases strongly enough when they sat around to compare notes afterwards.  It also struck me as entirely arbitrary that my two rivals for the Arbroath job were to be interviewed by the manager and deputy from the Arbroath branch, while I was to be interviewed by the deputy manager from the Dundee branch.  None of it made any logical sense and yet all of it was obviously straight from the Thomsons corporate HR manual.

The actual interview consisted of Anne reading me a series of questions from the printed sheet of paper in front of her to which I was expected to answer with phrases like “I consider myself a good team player” and “my main goal would be to ensure customer satisfaction.”  I also included a few abstract references to “personal and professional achievements” and “career goals” for good measure.  At the end of it, I had to play the part of Thomsons sales advisor to Anne’s customer.  My previously much-touted virtue of being “a good listener” was put to the test here, but I think I passed with flying colours, successfully selling Anne a two-week holiday to Egypt complete with insurance and the optional extra of a late checkout.

When I left the interview, I was already going through the first stage of a cycle I had become increasingly familiar with.  In this first stage, I was content I at least hadn’t disgraced myself at the interview. (In some instances, I’ve even felt as if I’ve learned something from the experience, though I honestly couldn’t say that in this particular case). Over the next few days, I would go through the rest of the cycle:

• I don’t actually want the job anyway.  It’s menial, target-driven and poorly-paid.  Plus I’ll have to deal with members of the public.
• Actually, if I was offered it, I’d probably take it.  I’d earn more (in this case just about) than on the dole, and it might do my self-esteem some good to get out and interact with other people.
• The more I think about it, I’m a certainty.  Even if I was twice the age of the other candidates(and some of the managers), how could they fail to have been impressed by my worldly-wise charm and abundant life experience?

The final stage is the crushing disappointment and emptiness I feel when the rejection email finally pings into my inbox. 

Lost In The Supermarket

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.

What I Did On My Summer Holiday...

Dear Jessica Alba, Please Retweet my CV...

IT’S THE GREAT social dilemma of the 21-st century – how do you increase the number of people following you on Twitter?
After barely two weeks with a Twitter account, I’ve scraped the dizzying total of 30. I belatedly starting using Twitter as a marketing tool, a cheap way of getting my CV out to people, but I appear to be trapped in some kind of Cyber-Groundhog Day where I’m selling my wares to the same 30 people day after day.
Actually, there are a couple of options open to me.
The expensive one is to pay a celebrity to follow or retweet me. Until tomorrow afternoon(25 Sept), 150 celebrities are auctioning their tweetability to raise money for Haiti. You can bid to have Alicia Keys follow you for 90 days or Gordon Ramsay to retweet one of your messages. Or you can opt for the full package, where a celebrity will follow, retweet and mention you. As of this moment, with two days of bidding remaining, Jessica Alba’s package is the most popular, with the current bidding standing at $4,650.
A similar package with Guns’n’Roses will currently cost you a mere $132.50.
Of the British tweeters on offer, the Stephen Fry package currently stands at $2,247, while Melanie Chisholm aka Sporty Spice – yes, apparently she is capable of producing prose in 140-character bursts – will cost you $525. Her erstwhile bandmate Victoria Beckham’s tweet package is available for $1,525. For the Lidl shoppers, Simon Pegg will RT one of your tweets for a mere $250.
Even cheaper are the retweets offered by pneumatic Sin City actress Rosario Dawson and sylph-like rapper Snoop Dogg - $90 and $92 respectively.
You can bid now at http://www.twitchange.com/.
But if you’re really strapped for cash, there’s the budget tweeter’s option – you can buy packages of followers – from 100 to 5,000 – on eBay(look under “Business, Office & Industrial > Marketing”)
“We will deliver 500+ Real & Active Followers to your Twitter Page for £5.99”, says one of the advertisers. They promise to “deliver them to your Twitter page within three days”.
Other sellers offer similar deals. You can buy 1,000 followers for £10.99 or 5,000 for £50. That’s a penny a follower. The sellers promise: “All the people we introduce to your Twitter account are REAL people and active users of Twitter, from all around the world.”
I was sorely tempted to press the PayPal button straight away. The prospect of being able to tweet my CV to that many people was a no-brainer.
No matter how many times I ask my existing followers to retweet my pithy observations on life, love and joblessness, my total has barely flickered. (Imagine the shame of having to ask to be retweeted.) In fact, I’ve actually lost a follower recently(I have no idea who they were or why they chose to give up on me just when I was really starting to master the art of profundity in less than 140 characters). Then again, it might just be my less than uplifting choice of username: manseekswork.
But I never did order an extra 500 followers, because I discovered there was a high likelihood that my new “followers” would be the products of a Twitter Follower Farm.
It sounds like something out of Philip K Dick novel, yet makes perfect sense in a world where a business is defined by the number of its Facebook fans or YouTube subscribers.
The Twitter Follower Farms are one of the more bizarre manifestations of the sprawling technological cornucopia embracing the world - thousands of on-line labourers tapping away at keyboards in cramped apartments in Communist-era tower blocks on the outskirts of smog-ridden Chinese cities. They harvest millions of false identities and assign them Twitter accounts where they are destined to become – at a price – followers to the vain, lonely and desperate on the other side of the world.
But just like the old adage about money not being able to buy true friendship, nor can it buy you true Twitter followers. These “followers” are empty husks who will never call, write or remember your birthday. And, more importantly, they will never read or retweet your words of wisdom(or CV).
Respected social media commentator Erick Schonfeld says that while evidence for the farms is anecdotal, their existence is confirmed by the fact that the price of packages of followers on eBay has fallen from the equivalent of 15 pence per follower to a penny in the last year.
“So are Twitter followers simply worthless as many people have suspected all along?” he writes at TechCrunch.com.
“Follower counts don’t tell you that. Just as all website visitors are not worth the same, neither are all Twitter followers. But you can’t buy real followers. They come to you.”
As for me, unless any of my existing followers start retweeting my CV any time soon, there’s nothing for it. I’m going to have to bid $95 for Snoop Dogg…..
• In a desperate bid to get more followers without recourse to the dreaded Follower Farms, I have changed my Twitter name. You can follow me using the link on the right.

Postal Workers - A User's Guide

HERE ARE SOME of the most common questions received from members of the public about their local postal service:

The postman never closes my garden gate. Surely he should be sacked or, at the very least, prosecuted and jailed for this?
First of all, you have to remember that you are not actually a customer of the Royal Mail. Our customers are the people and businesses who buy our stamps. Therefore, unlike the customer, you are NEVER right. You have not paid for the postman to deliver your mail every day, come rain, shine, snow, fog or ankle-deep dogshit, so therefore his obligation is exclusively to the person who paid for the stamps on the letters you are receiving, and extends no further that putting said letters through your letterbox. Posties are inherently polite and courteous people and will always try to avoid walking on your lawn or leaving your gate open, but sometimes, after having turned up for work at 5.30 am that day and been confronted by several hundredweight of Ikea catalogues and Sky magazines, they suffer fatigue and stress. If they should leave your gate open, is it really such a heinous offence? Is it beyond the bounds of reason that you, as someone who is at home during working hours and probably overweight or very old, could actually benefit from the exercise of walking the length of your garden path now and then?

My postman regularly leans his bike against my garden wall whilst delivering my mail. I'm concerned his thoughtless action will chip the brickwork. Can I have him deported?

First, consider this. Royal Mail-issue equipment is usually rubbish. The buttons on the shirts and zips on the stormcoats are about as useful as Jade Goody's gynaecologist. The bikes are no exception. The parking stands they are fitted with are useless, and these bikes are not designed to cope with the weight of hundreds of copies of Ceramic Figurines Weekly. So a responsible postie will always seek to lean his bike against a wall or hedge, rather than risk having it topple over onto someone's cat whilst he is delivering letters. Rather than displaying your small-minded and selfish materialism, why not thank your postie for the free and reliable daily service he provides you with?

As a council worker/bus driver/school teacher, I was given several days off work when we had all that snow recently. What I find unacceptable is that my postman was at least half-an-hour late on each of those days. What's the world coming to?

Unlike people in your own profession, postal workers have a great sense of responsibility and collective pride in the service they offer. The world will still revolve whilst a lardy-arsed council worker/bus driver/school teacher spends the day sledging, but it will cease to function the day the mail stops.

What is the correct procedure in the case of my dog biting the postman? Is there a liklihood of adverse reaction in my Doberman?

Even though as a dog-owner you are probably sad, selfish and friendless, and even though British law provides you with complete immunity to prosecution as long as your dog attacks the postman on your own property, it is always appreciated if you could provide the victim with some soothing words of comfort and a tourniquet to stem any arterial spurting. Don't worry, you will not be liable for any injuries caused to the postman, as the Royal Mail is too spineless to prosecute for damages.(Nor will it pay the postie his wages for any days work lost as a result of the attack)
I never receive my mail until as late as 1 pm, yet I know of other people who receive their mail as early as 9.30 am. Doesn’t this prove that my postie is a bone idle bastard who should be severely reprimanded ?
Not at all. Not everyone can get their mail at 9.30 am. A typical postie’s walk lasts three and a half hours and consists of 600 addresses. Someone has to be at the end of the walk. Have you ever considered that you might be your postie’s last address? And be honest – does not receiving your Grattan and Argos mailorder catalogues until lunchtime really affect the quality of your life that much?
Why do postmen/women deliver so much junk through my letterbox? Surely I am entitled to be surly and indifferent to them for having the effrontery to deliver so much useless, printed material to me?
Contrary to popular belief, your postman does not take perverse pleasure from carrying around hundreds of kilos of clothing catalogues or mobile phone brochures. You only receive these because, at some point in your empty and desolate life, you have ticked the box that says “I agree to be sent loads of rubbish through the post. Please pass on my address to anyone else who’d like to send me loads of worthless shit as the more junkmail I receive makes me feel incredibly popular.”
I received a letter from a long-lost friend that was simply addressed: “Sarah Smith, London.” But it took three days to reach me. Surely this shoddy service is justification for the Royal Mail to be privatised and thousands of posties made redundant?
Postmen and women don’t just deliver the mail. When some illiterate halfwit such as your friend posts a letter with an incomplete address or the wrong house number/street/city/country, a good postie will become detective. We will cross-reference as many details from the incomplete address with addresses on neighbouring walks in a bid to get the letter to the correct recipient. We don’t get paid any extra for this service.
Surely if I have a letter that needs posting, and I’ve put a stamp on it, but it’s a bit wet outside, the postman is obliged to take it from me and post it at the nearest post box?
Fuck off you cunt.

*ALL THE ABOVE QUESTIONS ARE BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS.

Postman To The Living Dead

Residents eagerly anticpate the arrival of the postman.

I’VE BEEN working as a postie in Zombietown*, aka Dogshit City, since last summer. I deliver around 100 kilos of junk mail, gas bills and Amazon parcels to 600 addresses, many of which are up several flights of stairs or at the end of dimly-lit, foul-smelling, piss-stained closes(the Scottish equivalent of entries, alleys or ginnels in England). I deliver to houses, shops, factories, garages, high-rise flats, amusement arcades, pubs, churches and even a football stadium. The recipients of the mail – they are NOT customers, they are receiving a free service from us posties, it’s the people who buy the stamps who are our customers(this is an important distinction, thought admittedly lost on my bosses) – include pensioners, students, businessmen, single-parents and drug fiends. There’s also a high percentage of foreign, usually East European-sounding, names, which makes me wonder how fucking terrible things must be in their own countries for them to end up living at the top of a crumbling, dogshit-spattered stairwell in Zombietown.
The Royal Mail are rubbish employers. When I was attacked by a Doberman in my first week and needed three days off work after receiving stitches in the back of my calf, they refused to pay me my wages. It took a letter to Adam Crozier threatening court action and embarrassing press coverage before they finally – two months later – paid me my lost wages. The Royal Mail also took no interest in supporting me in legal action against the dog owner.(I eventuallly received £100 in compensation from him without any help at all from my employer, whose duty I had been carrying out when the attack happened) Posties have no say in when they take their holidays – their annual leave is pre-assigned to them. And, because we work Saturdays, we are lucky to ever get two consecutive days off, even though we are – allegedly – entitled to one in every six Saturdays.
The people we deliver to are, generally, a bunch of halfwits. They are the living dead. Their brain cells - in this part of the world anyway - have been eroded by too much alcohol or drugs, or crushed beneath the burden of living in such a blighted shithole. Of the thousands of addresses I have delivered to since last summer, I cannot think of any where the occupant has had a genuinely warm word or gesture for me, or shown even the merest hint of respect. (At Christmas, my “tips” came to the grand total of two boxes of Cadbury’s Roses) They view me almost with suspicion bordering on distaste. If these people were my customers, who had paid for the service I was providing, I honestly wouldn’t give a shit. But they are not my customers. They are the lucky recipients of a unique, universal and free mail delivery service and should be fucking grateful for it. But they are not. They blame me for the wads of junk mail they receive, as if I personally filled in those coupons in the back of the Sunday Post for a Damart catalogue; as if I personally called all those freephone numbers asking to receive all the latest product news and special offers.
We posties are fucking brilliant. Nothing stops us delivering the mail, even though we know it’s 98 per cent junkmail and maybe 0.05 per cent handwritten, well-spelled, beautifully-punctuated letters. Our (average) five bags a day are supposed to weigh no more than 16 kilos, but by the time you’ve included your door-to-doors(those leaflets advertising the latest offers at Somerfield or night classes at your local college) and parcels – yes, we deliver parcels up to the size of small items of bedside furniture too – your bag will be bursting at the seams and weighing easily more than 20 kilos. But it all gets delivered. Heredotus, the Greek historian from 2,000 years ago, was a fan: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”
Today, I delivered a letter to a terraced house with a small garden. I pulled the gate shut behind me, but it must have bounced back open – hey, shit happens – because as I was climbing back on my bike I saw the elderly female occupant come bounding after me. She was about 70, stooped and toothless. And came out with the following: “Can’t you close the bloody gate?” Can’t you close the bloody gate? As if I’d just pissed over her rhododendrons and trampled her cat to death. I was too shocked to respond. She was the same age as my mother. Mothers don’t speak to postmen like that. So I ignored her and finished my walk(duty). But half-an-hour later, after the final letter from Sky advertising their HD box had been delivered, I decided I deserved an apology. So I returned to the address, knocked on the door, and the following conversation ensued:
Me: Hi, I'm your postie. I couldn't help but notice you used some abusive language when I delivered your mail earlier and wondered if you'd care to apologise?
Elderly toothless hag: What, you mean, 'could you close the gate.'?
Me: I think you're missing a word. You used the world 'bloody'.
Decrepit geriatric: So what? You should have closed the gate.
Me: I pulled it shut behind me. It must have bounced back open. But there was no excuse for your language. I don't have to put up with abusive language. If you're not prepared to apologise, then you may not be getting your mail in future. Will you apologise?
Musty-smelling old bag: No. See if I care.
Me: You are not prepared to apologise?
Withered, incontinent witch: No
At which point I turned and left. Without closing her gate.
Back at the office, I left a note for my boss saying I shouldn’t have to put up with abusive language from members of the public, and that he should send the foul-mouthed old bat a letter warning her that if she repeated her behaviour, mail deliveries to her address would be suspended. After all, our office is plastered with anti-bullying, diversity and “Dignity in the Workplace” posters.
I look forward to his reponse.
*Name has been changed.

Job Search Optimisation

ANOTHER WEEK, another job applied for, another employer taking the piss....

I'm currently earning just over £7 an hour as a postman. It was a summer job that has turned into a permanent position. Far from being a custodian of people's hopes, dreams and love letters, I shove junkmail through 600 doors a day. A handwritten letter stands out like a beacon amongst all the dreary catalogues and pre-printed matter. I always had - and continue to have - the utmost respect for postal workers, but it is a soul-numbing job. So I continue scouring the classifieds and internet in the hope of finding something a bit more stimulating.

A Dundee company called MediaCo who specialise in internet copy writing were advertising for a copy writer/sub editor. It was the same position they'd advertised 14 months earlier. I'd sent in my CV then and didn't even receive an acknowledgement. So this time I telephoned them - the number on their website is an 0870 number which meant it cost me somewhere between 6 and 10 pence a minute from my non-BT landline - and spoke to the MD David Mills. Understandably, he couldn't recall my CV from 14 months earlier, but when I mentioned a couple of bullet points, such as my Daily Record connection, it seemed to ring some distant bells. But he still didn't seem very keen to welcome an application from me. Eventually, with the cost of our telephone conversation now well over a pound, I got him to agree to look at my CV (again) and, if he decided it didn't merit inviting me in for an interview, then he would offer me some constructive feedback. So I duly emailed my CV which, since I last posted here, now includes not just my stint as a postman but also a stretch working as an Assistant Producer on an episode of Sky TV's Ross Kemp on Gangs.(See for yourself by clicking on the link on the right)

Later that day, David sent me this email :

Thanks for calling and sending your CV.

I confess to being somewhat puzzled by your background. For example, one minute an adventure tour guide and next Features Editor of the Daily Record.

Can you fill in the blanks and clarify how things link together?

So not a very promising start. I sent this reply:

The "blanks" have been periods of either voluntary or involuntary unemployment(usually the former) during which I have either:
(a) travelled abroad
(b) written my autobiography
As for clarifying how things link together, I'm afraid the best I can come up with is Alan Bennett's definition of history: "It's just one [..] thing after another." No links, no five-year plans, just me working to live rather than living to work.....
Here, it seemed, was yet another small-minded, unimaginative employer who, if they weren't shocked by the inclusion of a photograph with my CV, seemed slightly traumatised by the fact my periods of employment didn't flow seamlessly together and that I'd once decided to travel abroad. So it was a pleasant surprise when later that day David emailed me to invite me in for a chat.

In a run-down part of Dundee - and trust me, that's saying something -MediaCo's office is the top floor of an unprepossessing former warehouse now grandly titled "Manhattan Works". There was no reception, never mind a receptionist, and after opening a door marked "Entrance" I found myself in a grey and noiseless open plan office peopled by earnest young men hunched in front of computer terminals. David emerged from his own glass office at the back and led me through another, similarly characterless and silent office(this one populated by even younger-looking staff) to a small conference room dominated by a whiteboard containing a spaghetti of hieroglyphics which apparently revealed some distant, dark secret of search engine optimisation(MediaCo's major USP).

The chat was amicable enough, with David even claiming the reason for his company's non-geographic phone number(i.e. 0870) was purely to prevent prospective clients being prejudiced by its Dundee location. There was no mention of the 1.5 p per minute profit 0870 numbers usually generate. He begrudgingly admitted he was impressed with my CV, but added cryptically that he thought I came across better in the flesh than on paper. He also seemed concerned that my "larger than life" character might clash with the sedate atmosphere of his office. I assured him that I could be as loud or quiet as the situation dictated, and was equally at home working in my own personal bubble as I was being the life and soul of the office. Then we talked about the kind of copy I'd be writing which was every bit as boring as I'd expected. We spent a lot of time discussing sheepskin coats on sale at the House of Bruar. Finally, despite acknowledging my experience as the Features Editor of a national newspaper and my stints as an English language teacher, he gave me a grammar and punctuation test.(The same thing happened when I went for an interview for a journalist's job at the Dundee Courier last year. I was eventually offered the job, but when I asked if I could think about it overnight, the Managing Editor looked as though I'd just called his mother a pox-ridden whore and said: "In 40 years, no-one's ever asked me if they could think about it." So the next day I decided to decline the offer.)

Meanwhile, back at MediaCo, David delivered the punchline: the job on offer paid £18,000. The hours were 9 to 6, Mon to Fri, with half an hour for lunch. There was the option of flexitime, i.e. starting at 8.30, 9 or 9.30 and finishing accordingly. And David went to great lengths to explain that if I was due to start at 9 but arrived at 9.05, I wouldn't be five minutes late, I'd be "25 minutes early". And there were strict controls on personal email and internet use.

So, just to clarify, the position was 45 hours a week in a drab, lifeless office without personal email or internet access in a shitty part of Dundee where there was nowhere to go for lunch and where all the shops had metal shutters. And I'd be writing mainly about sheepskin coats. And all this for less money than I was currently earning as a postman......