I would love to spiel ad infinitum about the sulphurous emotions I am feeling right now. I would relish the opportunity to let the vitriol drip from my fingertips into your commodious eyes but I can’t; I’m simply too exhausted.
So instead let me settle for giving you a glimpse into the past so that you may gain a vision of my tomorrow.
“Before I accidentally touched Luke in inappropriate places…” - Rosie Mitchell.
This quote makes me sad on Andy’s behalf.
And presto-bingo-bango, I’m back in work
Perhaps this delicious chicken nugget of information requires the BBQ sauce of context (I’m hungry, alright?).
I recently left my job at Blockbuster Entertainment Ltd. in search of a change.
Feeling the malaise that comes in a grey, cold package when serving a role for six years I finally Ruth finally managed to convince me to bite the bullet and leave. Leave I did, having attained work as a Care Worker for vulnerable adults.
Finally, I said to myself in italics, I’ll have a job that’ll make a difference. I’ll be doing something worthwhile. I turned the word over as I emboldened it in my mind. Something significant.
Sooner than I really had time to be ready for, training had begun. As the only male in a group of eight women, not including the teachers who were exclusively women also, I was somewhat of a novelty. I heard, on occasion, an impressively two-dimensional and astoundingly sexist statement on how I would probably feel about any given topic as “the male”, as “the man”; channelling into my gender to derive some stereotypical, quasi-offensive cliché with no respect for my individuality beyond sex.
I couldn’t tell you with any certainty what exactly it was they were clucking on about when they did this. Probably nail polish or periods or something. Women.
I digress. Uniforms were issued, hand-gel dispensed and before I knew it I was catapulted into the first care-user’s home, uniformed and gelled. Out of respect, I won’t divulge details on the users but the things I saw in that short, shadowing shift haunted me. I absent-mindedly completed the day’s training and returned home to the most pleasant, fascinating company one could wish for, unable to give her anything but a glassy smile. (Sorry, Helen.)
I informed Ruth that I would be unable to continue in the capacity I had experienced that day and agreed with her not to make any rash decisions, instead allowing the weekend off we had been given to cure what ailed me. Or at least get some ale in me.
After stewing for what seemed like an eternity, I came to the realisation that this line of work, despite all my hopes and best intentions, was not for me. I sullenly reported this to my colleagues and tutors on the Monday of our return, chagrined further by how easily they accepted this revelation.
Without work, and slightly dejected, I returned my nose to the warm spot I had left on the grindstone and continued with my job hunt. Straying past the window of CEX, a franchise based on sales of traded-in electronic goods and software, I spied an advert for vacancies in their window. Without much hope, I applied and yada yada yada I got the job! Which is nice, and the people are really nice, and the company seems much better too. Except…
All those raw, aching doubts I had before have barely had time to scab over and I’m already back in retail. Also, I’m not sure whether Ruth approves of the one-step forward, one-step back model my career seems to be taking. Also, less hours, less pay.
Still, back in work.
Yay?
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Fini
I pressed the buttons on the keyboard that concluded the final words in my resignation tentatively, carefully choosing the words that professionally expressed my desire to conclude my responsibilities as the manager of my workplace.
I wish I hadn’t bothered. I wish I had just said what was really on my mind:
“Dear XXXX XXXXXX,
After months of gruelling work for tiny sums of money, enduring endless barely-legal work practices and expectations that far exceed reason or logic, I have come to the decision that I am miserable. The responsibility of tasking these jobs, and raising the imaginary bar of ‘success’, is yours and therefor I must put no small part of the blame at your moccasined feet. Your unprofessional behaviour coupled with your quasi-presence are perhaps the two largest reasons motivating this communication but they do not define it. The crucial factor, the catalyst, was my wife. She inspired me to squirm out from the cruel headlock you hold your employees in and I thank her breathing life back into an engine that had too long been motionless. I resign from the position of manager because of you, your lack of ethics, compassion and the company you represent.
FUCK YOU!
Regards,
Shawn McCready”
Mr & Mrs Russell
A little while ago my wife and I received a handsome envelope in the post, printed and embossed in a beautifully underspoken manner. I admired it for a time (although I fancy I heard the envelope audibly ”tut” upon being held by such provincial fingers). It was pristine, an opulent blue print on rich white paper and just holding it probably increased my credit rating. Gingerly opening it we found a square card following the same colour scheme, plain but tasteful, inviting us to a wedding. However the bride and groom-to-be on this joyous occasion exist within Ruth’s side of the family and whilst Ruth always strives to be cordial, relationships remain strained.
Devoid of context (even the context added with the strategic use of italics) strained could mean anything from “Who ate the last Wagon Wheel!?” to “I opened your post. You have chlamydia” and everything in between. In this example strained means Ruth was forced (not by me) to choose between her family and myself. For Ruth, the sheer arrogance and presumption of the ultimatum posed by her closest family needled her into staying with a bum like me, I guess. Anyway, I’ve digressed.
We chatted for a while about attending, together or apart, and we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be fair on the betrothed to have their day in anyway sullied by any of the subtle tension our/my presence might cause. Instead we opted to gracefully decline their invitation, plumping to let John Lewis help ease their bitter disappointment at our decision as we perused their gift list.
My immediate thoughts on the list were those of shock and a churlish regret that I hadn’t had the bare-faced audacity to put a £799 treadmill on my wedding gift list. Or the £22.50 Vera Wang tea-cups with a requested quantity of 10. Not forgetting, of course, the matching £70 sugar box. I mean, maybe they have a lot of sugars in their ten cups of tea and that’s why they need the treadmill, I don’t know. I’m still puzzling over the £40 touch-operated bread bin.
Because I am a petty man, I laboured for 15 minutes adding all the items in their list together. The grand total? £7,000 not including things that have already been purchased and therefor removed from the list.
I picked up the invitation once more as I considered the extravagant items before me, appreciating the finish and personal detail with a warm smile in one moment and griping at the cold hunger in their list the next. Ruth and I selected some extortionately priced set of glasses and winced with each stage of the transaction. It prompted us to add some meaningless generality in the ‘personal message’ section so we bitterly cheerily entered something like “A FUCKING TREADMILL? SERIOUSLY?” “Congratulations on your marriage!”.
The moral of this story is, quite obviously, be suspicious of post that makes your regular post look lacklustre. It’s from people who want a treadmill.
Photo reblogged from with 2 notes
I.. Seriously. What? I hate everyone.
Illiteracy and bigoted racists go hand in hand. As long as both hands are wyte, innit.
Source: scruffyharrison
X-ray
Today I was accosted by a regular customer who often comes in for extended periods of time to scrape the juicy pulp of knowledge from the inside of my skull. However, on this particular rainy Saturday the customer (Mrs. X for convenience) went into an hour-long rant about a selection of topics, beginning with why Avatar (James Cameron’s sci-fi epic) was “good” and how I was “wrong” for not sharing her opinion. Undeterred by her insistence on correcting me or her terrible habit of interrupting a sentence within three syllables of its inception I tried to explain that we quite simply had different tastes and that there was nothing malevolent or worrying about this, that in fact it was very healthy.
Beleaguered by my ability to remain resolute on my opinion she opted for a different tact and attempted to ask me whether it was worth upgrading to “X-ray” (which I transliterated as “Blu-ray”). Quickly summing up the points in my mind most pertinent to the circumstances that Mrs. X had explained to me at length, I began:
“Well, one might consider whether or no-…”
Mrs. X had quickly (and quite remarkably) gleaned all the knowledge she needed from those six and a half words to continue her tirade and cut me off, though this time with her sights shifted from questioning to self-adulation. She regaled me with tales of how she had met Sky on the battlefield of Customer Service and slain the mighty Sir Rupert of Murdoch to emerge the victor, a lower-than-average tariff clutched in her bloodied gauntlet. She handed off a small pause which I thought was intended for a response.
“Well, I had better be ge-…” I started.
I was wrong. I realised that I would not be granted release until she was done. Leaping in once more she altered her course again, this time going for something more conclusive with which to bludgeon me.
“Have you watched that film I told you to?” she barked.
I was hesitant to answer. The film to which she referred was Another Year by Mike Leigh and I had no (and now perhaps have even less) intention of watching it. I turned some phrases around in my mind, testing for the appropriate weight and trying to plot the possible journeys these sentences might take me on. I considered lies, truths, pleasantries and pleas. Nothing seemed to give this conversation anything other than fuel with which to fire Mrs. X’s boiler, so that it could once more erupt with piping hot words and give me third-degree boredom on ninety-percent of my afternoon.
I rejoined myself in the present and was aware that whilst searching for an exit to this calamity I had simply been smiling instead of speaking and the dam keeping this uncomfortable silence from the bubbling deluge behind Mrs. X’s lips was threatening collapse. I had to act fast and I had nothing. I let my dry mouth peel open.
“…I’ve been waiting for it to come in on X-ray?”
eyes down
When I close my eyes for any substantial amount of time (falling asleep, getting lost in thoughts, trying to preserve my eye-ginity walking along the High St. on a Friday night) I feel it again.
Stirring.
The smell of fermented bean-curd rolls out of sweaty, dirty little dives in dirty little tides and mixes with Tokyo’s humid breath and I suck it in. I feel the micro-climate of thundering noise without origin, clouds of morphing faces and the air is charged with purpose and it crushes me. I merge into a crowd and I sweat, bleed, snort and squeal with them; we share a pulse and then depart. Harassed into losing my identity I am funneled into a shop and I am defined, sculpted by the angry neon eyes that burn my crown and wallet.
But I always awake.
And I’m never home.
