From the Orifice of the Playpen
Good evening campers and welcome to the Playpen.
This month’s sermon is about the evil that must afflict the majority of you reading this. The most evil of evils. That Albatross around every ones neck. Yes folks I am talking about WORK.
Well, it had to happen. We both needed jobs and we thought that two intelligent people with loads of personality wouldn’t have a problem finding
decent office jobs... you know the Dolly Parton kind... 9-5... preferably
with the bondage and whips and chains thrown in to keep things interesting.
But alas! this wasn’t too be. Jobs of this standard are about as hard to come by as a Kevin Costner blockbuster. So we stepped back, measured our options and basically realized we didn’t have any. So on the advice of a well-intended family member we headed out to the town centre with a sack full of resumé’s and hit the Employment agencies. If we weren’t using recycled paper we would have given out a tree in résumé’s in that first three days. We sat back and waited for the offers to come flooding in.
And we waited.
waited...
and waited...
Finally, after two weeks the phone rang. With my best telephone voice I answered the cell. It wasn’t exactly the job offer we were expecting, but, well you don’t expect the phone to ring and the first thing asked is “Will you whip me and chain me up?” Dolly Parton type job here we come I thought, but damn those wrong sex line numbers…!
Eventually a call came in from one of the agency’s with a days work for Linda in an office. Just a day. But a day more than what we had yesterday. Things started to look up, or so we thought but the phone kind of died again after that. The paycheck for that one day bought quite a nice Chinese meal for us… well we had to celebrate that one-day-new-job don’t ya know!?
We both had applications in several places... with no response. Several times I had to ask if we had the right address or if there was a postal strike? Or could it just be that the postman was the biggest Muppet since Big Bird. It surely couldn’t be that we were unemployable. McDonalds was looking a
good option for work again.
Then like a bolt out of the blue, the phone rang and an agency had semi permanent jobs for both of us.
“Were we interested?” they asked
“Do bears shit in the wood?” my shocked reply came.
“Can you start tomorrow?”
“Answer the first question again,” I stated.
“See you tomorrow”
“OK bye bye and thank you!” say I.
Well that's how the conversation went…pretty much. We sat back and thought about it. We got jobs! But what really went through my mind was BOLLLLLLLLOCKS I don’t want to work I want to stay at home read books and have copious amounts of sex. Yes! But the realities of modern life and the landlord tapping on the door with a ball bat changed my mind and diminished that ardor pretty damn quick.
When we arrived at the agency office we were handed that obligatory math test and given safety boots. Obviously we weren't going to be in a nice air conditioned office shuffling pieces of paper in order and drinking cappuccino’s at break time. No way. Instead, we were going to be doing pretty hard time on some shop floor, and I don’t mean the shop floor of Harrods either.
Linda ace'd the math test and I screwed up a simple subtraction question… I hadn’t done that much math since high school so...
They gave us the most attractive steel toe capped boots as attractive steel toe capped boots go and pointed us down the stairs to wait for a staff bus to shuttle us out to the plant where we would be working.
The jobs we were assigned to were probably the dregs of all jobs ever handed out. For 7 and a half hours we packed boxes with mostly electronic components and computer parts or computer paraphernalia. But from time to time we see mop buckets and police riot helmets come down the line to be sent to places like hospitals and prisons hmmmmmmmmmm strange isn't it? Question is are the mop buckets going to the prisons and the riot helmets to the hospitals or is it the other way around? Then put the freshly packed boxes on a conveyor line. Not rocket science in the slightest but it can be tricky to decide what size box to use.
After that first day Paul and I realized that we take our feet too much for granted… we both thanked god (or some other deity depending on which side of the fence you're on) that we didn’t have hobbit sized feet.
Once home Paul sank the first in a succession of beers and Linda sat back and wondered what the hell she was doing standing up for 8 hours a day for such little money.
We both went to bed that night trying to remember when the last time it was when we were in as much pain as we were. We slept like babies… and no I don’t mean Paul wet the bed either.
In the morning we felt 100 times worse than the night before. All we wanted to know was who had entered our boudoir during the night hours and beat the shit out of us with a baseball bat…
...but that landlord always wants the rent sooner rather than later or at least on time...so we are still doing this shit job in the hope that it could lead to something better with the same company. If you can’t get a job with the towns largest employers maybe it’s time to hitch up the trailer and move on.
Things are better now than they were three or four weeks ago. Cash is always nice heading into a holiday period but it’s time to start thinking about saving the pennies to make the pounds to make the dollars to get us back to the states. It’s gonna take us some time. Meanwhile if any of you readers
have a couple of nice jobs that involve sitting around shuffling papers and drinking designer coffee on break times please let us know.
So until next time folks keep your cuffs on the bedpost and an eye on the door
Linda and Paul.
P.S. Since writing this Paul did actually get an office job for the same company. He will be answering
phones all day for a living. He is hoping for whips and chains to be included in the induction week. Linda however is still looking for that cappuccino drinking 4-hour lunch-break job that we all want
