Chose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Confucius
Confucius
The job landscape twenty five years ago when I started working, well a better phrase would be turning up at work, was very different to what it is now. For starters there were jobs on the landscape with start times and guaranteed wages. It seems to me there are hobbies with more security than a job now. Jobs are so in favour of the employer that I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a time in the not too distant future where you paid to work.
I was sent to the workhouse at 14 years old when my parents called a meeting in our kitchen.I dragged myself away from my Sega Megadrive to listen to what they had to say, they were paying the rent after all, it’s the least I could do. The gist of the meeting was you’ve had a great childhood but that ends today as you are getting a job. Great, not only do I have to go to school five days a week I now have to get a Saturday job as well. And if I don’t want to get a job? “You can go to Sunday school instead.” I weighed up the options, learn about a god that didn’t exist or worship at the altar of one that did. I thought about it and said “I won’t be doing either of them.” Two hours of negotiation later my mum was crying reciting the usual monologue about what a nightmare I was and then my Dad threw a cup of water at me. That was that, I was getting a job, preferably one that didn’t involve negotiating because I sucked at that.
TEEING OFF
My first job was at a golf shop. The “golf course” where balls are putted, deals are made and slimy white men make jokes about their wives. The atmosphere was exactly what you’d expect from a golf shop in a North London backwater staffed by six forty year old golf enthusiasts. The smell of junk food lingered in the air, the staff room was wallpapered with porn and “I’m not being racist but” was if not the company's motto certainly every employee but mine's catchphrase. The other Saturday boy who worked there had special needs and told me about how a couple of weekends ago they had tied him to a chair and hit golf balls at him. I said he should speak to the HR department. He didn’t know what an HR department was so I told him not to worry about it.
The shop’s goal may have been to make a profit from selling golf equipment but a bi-product of that was it made me wish I was dead. In my experience the only cure for death is to avoid it for as long as possible so one day I just didn’t go in. I assume I got fired. I never went back to check.
My first forray into employment had ended in failure for my parents and triumph for me but I could not savour the sweet smell of success for long, I was told in no uncertain terms that unemployment was not an option.
FLIPPING MISCONDUCT
Bukowski no stranger to working dead end jobs once said “Find something you love and let it kill you” with that in mind as a 13 year old boy the only thing apart from computer games I truly loved was McDonald's and it just so happened one of the perks of working there was not only did you get paid but you got free McDonalds. “I get free McDonald's” was a less impressive chat up line then I thought it would be but who needed a girlfriend when you had free Mcdonald’s. The job was painless enough. You got to wear a baseball cap, operate a deep fat fryer, press big buttons on a till and you got a star every time you learnt a new skill. It was like being a monkey in a laboratory without a cage. Like most jobs in my experience the job was not so bad it was the customers and your colleagues who were the problem. And McDonalds was no different. If you are eating in a McDonald’s it’s not because you like food or the ambience of a good restaurant it’s because you have an emptiness inside you that can never be filled. If you are working in a McDoanlds it’s because you have a minimal skill set that encompasses flipping burgers and not being able to make sustained eye contact with a human being. There are intelligent hard working people at McDoanld’s I’m sure, but none of them were in the service of the branch I worked in. One fellow low level colleague David in his thirties had done the rounds of the fast food chains and would often remark to me the Maccy D’s was the best, he was planning to “stay there for a long time and work his way up to management.”
One day a new manager took over, he was trying to make a name for himself with Ronald. He didn’t trust me, I was too young. My involvement on the shop floor was minimised. I was set menial cleaning tasks like collecting trays and sweeping the floor. One day I was asked to do a stocktake in the walk in fridge. I’ve always loved a walk in fridge the idea of being accidentally trapped in there is a real thrill. You get yourself to the point where you feel like you are going to freeze to death then you come out warm up and go in again. One of the only joys of a shitty job is the games you make up for yourself to make menial tasks more exciting. Imagine a job before clocks and watches, working in a void instead of knowing you are entering your last hour. Your last hour can sometimes be more fun than leaving it can also be the longest part of the shift.
The walk in fridge was an Aladdin's cave of McDonald’s produce there were cows that went into a big mincer to make the burgers,a lettuce tree that you picked the lettuce off, big bin bags of milkshake, tubs of sauces and enough frozen potato products to make a Siberian cum. This was before the McFlurry when we just sold mr whippy’s and as a result we had boxes of flakes not full ones little half ones. Good luck being 14 and counting a box of flakes without eating one. I popped one in my gob, David walked passed, I called him in. “Want a flake?” I said as if I owned McDonalds and they were mine to offer. We ate a couple and stepped outside the fridge still chewing when the new manager saw us. “What are you eating?” “nothing” we replied with chocolate smeared on our faces. We were fired on the spot “gross misconduct” I had free McDonalds and I lost it over a 5p flake. I was fine, I had my whole life ahead of me but poor old David no doubt ended up in a dungeon at KFC.
A DOUBLE SHOT OF MISERY
There was a new craze sweeping London in 1996, drinking coffee. Drinking coffee was nothing new but Starbucks was. As far as I’m concerned drinking coffee can be split into two eras before and after Starbucks. We are used to giant black and white pictures of coffee workers and world music playing in the background when we drink a cup of coffee now but in 1996 this was the studio 54 of coffee shops. I’d had two jobs both of which had ended in firings. Perhaps if I worked in a really cool place I might enjoy the slog of meaningless work that perpetuates the cycle of misery to third world countries, facilitates global warming and makes a select band of people wealthier than the whole population put together.
Early on it became clear to me that having a coffee in Starbucks and working in Starbucks were two different things entirely. Instead of working I decided to conduct an experiment, how little work could I do before I got fired. I went on a tour of the firing procedure. Verbal warning where they have a little chat with you and say could you do a bit more work. Written warning where they put down in writing that they asked you to do a bit more work and you haven’t really done that and final written warning where they clarify that they asked you to do some work they even wrote it down and now you are still not doing what they asked so if it happens again they will fire you. Written warnings are great as you’ve got a lovely memento of the time you had a soul destroying job and refused to do any work whilst there. I tried to explain this to my parents but they would not frame them.
My problem was always with the people who took the Mc Jobs seriously. You can have pride in your work without trying to dominate someone because you are forty and the only way you can get any validation and sense of importance is by telling a sixteen year old to empty a bin. If you are telling someone what to do at a job that a face drawn on a balloon tied to a broom could do not only do you need to reevaluate your life choices but you need to buy a sword and sit on it. With my healthy attitude to work and authority it didn’t take long before me and Starbucks had a conscious uncoupling. I took umbrage with them. Actually this was a witch hunt so I picketed outside. And it turned out much like Jeremy Corbyn the people were on my side as I got two A4 pages of signatures from the lovely people of Muswell Hill.
My start to working life had not gone well but it was only going to get worse.
My problem was always with the people who took the Mc Jobs seriously. You can have pride in your work without trying to dominate someone because you are forty and the only way you can get any validation and sense of importance is by telling a sixteen year old to empty a bin. If you are telling someone what to do at a job that a face drawn on a balloon tied to a broom could do not only do you need to reevaluate your life choices but you need to buy a sword and sit on it. With my healthy attitude to work and authority it didn’t take long before me and Starbucks had a conscious uncoupling. I took umbrage with them. Actually this was a witch hunt so I picketed outside. And it turned out much like Jeremy Corbyn the people were on my side as I got two A4 pages of signatures from the lovely people of Muswell Hill.
My start to working life had not gone well but it was only going to get worse.
Read the hilarious next instalment here
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