‘Work’
A long time ago some twat told me that work sets you free. As well as being a slogan for concentration camps this is clearly bollocks. What sets you free, at least to some extent, is money.
Need a house? Only money will buy you one.
No social healthcare in your country? Money will cure your cancer.
State education going down the pan? Money will buy a way out for your kids.
Need someone to love? Ok, money isn’t actually everything, you are going to have to make an attempt at being a decent human too.
Maybe because I grew up in the industrial North East of England in the 90s, I never had high expectations of work. It was before people started to follow and monetise their bliss, I suppose. The advice I received was thus:
‘Most people hate their jobs, and you’re lucky if you get one. ’ — Our Mam. Our Dad nods.
‘When you leave school most of you will be unemployed for a while. Years maybe, and it’ll grind you down being on the dole, but don’t loose hope.’ — Mr Dillon (Head Teacher).
‘Condoms are immoral! If you don’t want to get pregnant don’t have sex!’ Also Mr Dillon.
Thanks, Mr Dillon, I don’t know what I would have done in life without your sage advice hovering around in my subconscious.
So, it was a pleasant surprise when at aged 16 I got my first job as a shop assistant at Woolworths. I turned up religiously on Saturday & Sunday afternoons with a blazing hangover wearing a cylindrical piece of polyester, tan tights and two badges; one that said ‘Elizabeth’ (I’m called Catherine) and another saying ‘Ask ME for a lucky dip’ (National lottery related). Many, many old men asked me for a lucky dip and everyone I worked with thought I was called Elizabeth.
I never corrected them.
In the great tradition of British customer service I stood behind the till with vodka metabolites oozing out of my pores and chatted with my mates, who would always wander by mid shift. The one service I felt I did to humanity while I worked there was disabling the sound function on all the noisy toys.
My next jobs were barmaid type ones, where I continued to excel at customer service.
One was in an old man’s pub where I learned what being ferreted means. It means that a weird old man stands in a narrow corridor or other small space that you have to go through (like the bar hatch) with his crotch thrust forward. This means that to get past him you will rub against his polyester clad erection. The most rampant ferreter at our pub was called Brian. If Brian is reading this I have a message:
HI BRIAN! WELL DONE FOR BEING OVER 80 AND BEING ABLE TO READ THINGS ON THE INTERNET AND STILL BEING ALIVE AND SHIT.
I’m guessing he can’t still get an erection so there’s no point in holding a grudge.
The other barmaid job was in the student union bar (No ferreting, but there was often vomit to mop up at the end of the night.) My finest hour at the SU bar was misunderstanding the following order:
Him: “Half a pint of beer and half a pint of water please”
Me: “Really? Half beer, half water?”
Him: “Yeah”
Me: (makes a pint with half beer half water) “OK, 50p please.”
In my defence, no one had ever ordered water from the student union bar before.
At this point in the story I can imagine that you’re wondering where this meteoric career trajectory might take me. Be patient! This is the montage bit! If you like you can always just hum ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and scroll down to the end.
When I was 20 I decided that my customer service skills had been perfected and I moved on to other types of work.
I managed to get a gig as a guinea pig for 3rd year medical students. It was easy money. They did burst a few small blood vessels in my upper arm but it was completely worth it for £50 a day.
Then I moved on to my most short lived job: Worker in a pizza base factory. The Pizza base factory was located in one of the worst places ever, which was annoyingly two bus rides away from one of the other worst places ever, which was where I lived at the time.
On the first day I was introduced to the uniform; hair net, white over coat and a pair of white wellies. Everyone in the factory was naked under their white overcoats because it was bloody hot in there.
The factory ran 24 hours a day so that they never had to reheat the ovens, which meant that the wellies had just been taken off by the unfortunate people who worked the night shift, which meant that there was a depth of around one cm of someone else’s sweat waiting for your feet at the bottom of of them. It was hard to know whether it was better to paddle bare foot in it and wash your feet afterwards or if you should wear socks in the hope they would soak most of it up.
My role in pizza base production was to get a tray of three raw pizza bases out of what I’ll call the squisher machine, slap each one down by hand and then put the tray in the oven (which was a kind of conveyer belt type of affair). If you accidentally put your hand into the squisher too early, the alarm went off and the machines stopped for about 10 seconds, thus meaning that you got to keep both your hands… Which was a nice system. I really like having two hands and appreciate the engineer who worked hard to make sure I still have them.
As you stand next to the oven your gloves (the type that are made from condom material), slowly fill up at the finger ends with sweat. I have quite long nails, so, one by one they would break through the fingers of the gloves and my sweat would splash merrily out onto a pizza base (Extra salty! You’re welcome!). The radio was always on and it was always at full volume and it was always playing the euro pop classic, ‘Whats she gonna look like with a chimney on her?’ — Its a song about giving a vain woman a black eye. All the people who worked in the factory were extremely nice. They all sang along. They were the Oopma loompa’s of pizza. A left handed man gave me the right hand of his heat resistant glove after lunch so I wouldn’t keep burning my hand on the edge of the oven.
At the end of the day the grease from the pizza bases had soaked through my overcoat and my other clothes and onto my skin in patches. I got my own seat on both busses on the way home.
On the second day I went the full Oompa Loompa and wore underpants and bra only under the overcoat.
I’ll just stop for a moment to let that sexy image soak into your mind. Wellies. Hair net. Sweaty condom gloves. Got it? Good! On we go to the third day.
On the third day of my factory job I got to the bus stop for my second bus to work and decided to turn around and go home.
The next day I got a job working as a cleaner in a local pub. I liked that job a lot. No danger of losing your hands, work at room temperature, wear your own shoes, complete dominion over the floor buffer… plus you never have to talk to anyone. In fact, everyone ignores you. Being a cleaner is a lot like having an invisibility super power. The only downside was the smell in the mens toilets and all the crumpled up bits of tissue in the women toilets. I can’t remember why or when I left the cleaning job. Perhaps I just forgot to go in one day. I stayed there long enough to get calluses on the palms of my hands but not long enough to get to know my supervisor’s kids.
Anyway fast forward a year or so…..aaaand… I finally graduated (from university, I’m dead clever me, like. I was totally doing a degree the whole time!!).
Degree in hand I strolled off into the sunset towards my dream career with all this ‘work’ behind me. I became a researcher, an educator and the youngest ever head supreme lizard of the illuminati.
Sorry about Trump… and Brexit. Its all part of a supreme plan. You guys will understand eventually.
