The Diary of a Minimum-Wage Waitress: #2

#3: 7 Day Catering, 18/11/12

When my alarm went off at 5am on Sunday morning, I did spend a good few minutes seriously questioning my mental stability. A few months ago, I was a student struggling to make 9am lectures and would only see such early hours from the other side- made bleary from alcohol rather than interrupted sleep. But these days I am too apathetic to even think of an excuse to turn down a shift, and upon agreeing to this ridiculous hour, mused that it would be nice to finish in daylight hours for once.

So after forcing down a bucket of caffeine and confusing my very unimpressed dogs by offering them their breakfast, I set off for the Felixstowe dock canteen. I've worked in the kitchen there once before (at a much more humane hour of day, admittedly) and found it almost rather enjoyable, which was unexpected. I was forty-five minutes late that first day, as a result of driving round and round the various entry and exit points of the enormous container port… Seamus the sat-nav was no help of course, as he was not programmed to fathom why any ordinary directionless driver would need or desire to go into such a place. Eventually I stopped at a security gate to ask the little fluorescent men for help- an encounter reminiscent of Forest Gump meeting Jenny for the first time. A harmless, but very strange man discussed the weather, his mother, and my "boot-ful hair" before finally presenting me with a map of the docks and a free pass through the gate. I bombed it down to the canteen, dodging lorries and cranes, apologising profusely to my supervisor upon arrival, only to discover that he really couldn't be less fussed. 

I think that's why I'd rather get up in darkness to serve chips to truckers than agree to twelve hour shifts at certain hotels who have employed me: the people are friendly, making the atmosphere just so much better. On this occasion, I arrived at 6am and discovered to my absolute horror that I was half an hour early. Every minute matters after such minimal sleep the night before, and I began to slip into a horrible mood. After thirty minutes of hanging around the back of the building, trying to give off "I am not a prostitute" vibes to passing dockers, my co-workers arrived. I was let in by a smiley, friendly chap called Warren, and a not-so-smiley Polish chef named Hollie: apparently infamous for stating that she was "not here to make friends". I decided that if Warren could manage to be so happy at 6am after working here for five years with ol' misery face, I too could manage perkiness for a least one day. 

And so the morning progressed, serving horribly greasy food to horribly greasy men (and some women), but it was fine. Pleasant, even. Warren made jokes, offered me tea or coffee and we both made conversation with the steady stream of dock-workers. My co-worker admitted that he was thirty years old- much older than he looked or acted, which he put down to a healthy life-style and no cigarettes (which also meant he must not be partial to the deep-fat fried offerings around us). Before I could indulge myself in some secret psycho-analysing, Warren readily admitted that he worked here because he was lazy and never had ambitions in life. While this confession would usually depress me, it somehow seemed ok because he was aware of it. He certainly seemed happy enough, had his own flat and was "healthy", so perhaps it just didn't matter. Warren's entire ideology seemed neatly summed up by his taste in food: he ate simple, easy but not too unhealthy things. He had never tried black pudding, because it looked unappetising, he didn't think he'd like it and so believed there was no point in troubling himself. When I told a story about a friend who needed stitches after a bad experience of cutting up an avocado, Warren laughed uncontrollably- not at the ridiculous story, but at the prospect of me and my friends eating such a middle-class fruit as an avocado (which he also had no interest in ever eating) and spent the next few minutes repeating the word "avocado" in a posh accent and pretending to be me.

Hollie was silent, but intriguing. Unlike Warren, she was clearly passionate about cooking, spending what felt like hours carefully arranging interesting looking puddings into pots, after downloading the recipes off the internet. She was seemingly deaf to customer comments that her hair "looked like it had been dipped in period", and when Warren cheerily asked her how her weekend had been, she struggled to make the effort of replying: "fine." I wondered if it was just part of her culture's work-ethic to remain focused and not waste time chatting, but I've met many a happy Polish person before (such as Anya from my previous shift: "You have big hungry dog? You take sausage, you make feed for him, he is happy."). I knew that in all likeliness Hollie was just an unhappy person, but am still not sure whether she kept her silence in order to perfect her baking, or vice versa.

Something else which puzzled me about the whole canteen set-up, was the fact that although the place is open to all areas of dock-worker, there are two separate entrances: one for the regular dockers, and one for the container lorry drivers. This apparently dates back to a time not so long ago, when drivers paid less for their food than other workers. Understandably, the unbalanced treatment caused dissonance between the two groups and resulted in them having to stay separate: a bit like naughty school children… These days the food is equally priced and served to both sides, but the rule of separate seating still stands. Although I greeted each customer with equal cheer, the drivers were noticeably less willing to chat and definitely less patient when waiting for their food. This may be due to the fact that many of the drivers are Polish; perhaps they are related to Hollie, or grumpy because they feel let down by her attitude. The drivers' seating area is also much smaller than the dockers' and so they have less room for their stress to diffuse in. Although I'm not sure how anybody could feel stressed out in a room which has an enormous plastic plant, sitting on top of a stack of carefully placed, spray-painted pink crates as an aesthetic offering.

If somebody told me a few months ago that one day soon I'd be serving up breakfast to truckers and even enjoying it, I would most definitely laugh, and soon afterwards cry at such a depressing image of myself. But my time spent wearing a greasy apron and hideous black crocs was A-ok. The stream of customers was steady, keeping me busy but not harassed for eight hours; most people around me were chatty, making the time go quickly; the kitchen was warm and the tea was plentiful. I can think of much worse ways to earn pennies.

The Diary of a Minimum-Wage Waitress: #1

#1, 'Equity Insurance'- 06/11/12

After spending a few days back in Oxford, I was keen to level out my expenditures with some more shifts. When I started temping I thought I could afford to be choosy- and that was part the reason why I liked such a flexible situation, but these days I tend to agree to everything offered to me and worry about the logistics of getting there or the awfulness of the place later. It's the only way I can afford to keep busy and not feel that I'm wasting my time back home.

My agency go-to man, Paul, offered me three shifts this week: all of which I knew I would view later as a terrible idea, but said yes to all three anyway. I tend to be even more agreeable to unappealing ideas when the phone call has woken me up and I am keen to go back to sleep but too embarrassed to admit to Paul that he has woken me up. The first job this was at an insurance company in Colchester. I was sceptical even in my groggy state because Colchester is over 25 miles away from my house, but Paul assured me that if I made a note of my mileage, I would receive petrol money on top of my wages. I was sold.

So I set off in a terrible mood that Tuesday morning through rush hour, towards 'Britiain's oldest recorded historical town'. Sean the Sat-Nav was on good form this morning and got me to my destination fairly easily, which made a change. Together with the grating sounds of breakfast-show radio, I managed to wake up and prepare myself for another day spent doing what I hate.

Disclaimer: I know catering and kitchen-work is hardly comparable to grave-digging in Belson, and I really shouldn't complain because at least I have a job. There are probably several people out there- perhaps even a whole handful(!)- who would jump at the chance to polish knives for 5 hours. But these people are probably a) public toilet cleaners; b)naturally more optimistic and happy to be alive than I am; and c) not university graduates actively seeking a career in the big city as a journalist or similar. To tell the truth, it's most probably not the physical work which gives me this returning feeling of dread, but the knowledge that I will come away depressed, having inevitably spent my shift in silence, thinking far too much about how when I am pot-scrubbing, I am not actively pursuing my desired career or exercising my brain in any way near enough to make use of my time. It doesn't help that I am often surrounded by miserable people.

Once I had found the building, I drove straight into the wrong entrance. Thinking I could rectify this by driving all the way round, I found myself faced with a security barrier and a trail of impatient cars behind me. A voice from the heavens (or perhaps the intercom) suggested I reverse out and park out the front as "inconspicuously" as I could make possible. One of the bonuses of being a temp is that it really doesn't matter if I piss off most of the employees within my first two minutes because the chances are high that I will never see them again. Having found a marginally inconvenient spot rather than a majorly security-breaching one, I took a minute to slap some make-up on my seemingly disintegrating face. It was only once I walked into the building and was greeted by the security man whose angelic voice I'd heard that I realised he'd had to sit and wait for me to moisturise- watching the whole process through the security camera that I'd parked directly in front of… 

Armed with an apron and a magic, magnetic security pass to worm my way through a series of unnecessary doors, I felt like some kind of pot-washing spy, as is often the case when I am granted access to such places I've never been before and am in a good/desperate enough mood to see my shift as a touching placement of trust. Because it is pretty trusting of companies to hire through an agency: I could be any old chef-stabbing maniac. One doesn't need a CRB check or any real references to work as a temp, and as unlikely as it is that by hiring an anonymous worker, a company will be subject to kitchen-knife massacre, any individual assigned to work barely five hours in a place they have no emotional attachment to will be at best uncommunicative and lazy. 

I do find it funny however, that after many shifts of shirking cleaning duties or any real productivity in my former Wetherspoons days, when thrown into an unfamiliar situation as a waitress or catering assistant, I jump at any tiny job to be done simply to help pass the time. There is also always a small, instinctive desire to please my co-workers when I am working somewhere new: create a good first impression, I suppose. In this sense temping shifts are always stimulated by that first-day-at-a-new-job feeling which, once over the nervousness of the unknown, can only be a good thing. When I am past this four month glitch in proceedings and moving on to apply for "grown-up" jobs, I will no doubt write that working as a temp has helped to improve my confidence: the ability to turn up to a new place and settle into a job within two minutes sans nerves? That's definitely an obtained skill.

On this day, I spent most of my measly four-hour shift in the kitchen. This was fine by me as kitchens are at least warm. My position by the sink and dishwasher out meant that I could stand facing the train station and amuse myself by watching the people on the platforms: staring out the window at the trains passing through to the wider world seemed aptly poetic. My company consisted of the head-chef, whose name I forget, and Dawn, a prominent yet quiet woman who begrudgingly dealt with the tea and coffee machine to serve visiting insurance brokers. My first impression of Dawn was that I had never met somebody who could combine such enthusiastic eye make-up with such a miserable expression. When introduced to me, she laughed in a slightly unkind manner: as if I had failed her expectations already and were part of some ongoing joke. Perhaps they were expecting somebody older and stockier to look at home in a canteen. I am quite used to being interrogated upon arriving at a new place: somebody always demands to know how old I am, and there is usually somebody who assumes I am not old enough to serve alcohol. Sometimes I am tempted to reply that "a lady never tells her age!" but of course I tell them I am twenty-three, to which they are always surprised. I really don't think I look that young, but over the past few shifts I've had comments such as "is your mum picking you up after?" and "shouldn't you be in school?"…

After taking a couple of hours to get used to my added presence in the tiny kitchen work-space, she and the chef did chat to me a little. I learnt that the chef had been in the army and spent time in Central America before training as a caterer. This made me feel a bit sad, because surely after such an exciting career, to make soup all day in a tiny kitchen behind a train station in Essex could be nothing but a disappointment. But then I forced myself to consider that perhaps after being in the army, a simple life like this might be perfect. Dawn on the other hand had never really travelled far outside of Essex, and knew nothing other than simple catering jobs. I would be lying if I said she seemed happy, but then I didn't know enough about her to judge. While I do have to stop myself from sounding like a snob or inadvertently belittle somebody's job like this, I know it's just as hard for my co-workers to not judge me. Whenever somebody bothers to find out about me and my plans, they either seem scared off once I tell them I have a degree and want to travel etc., or they apply some level of inverted snobbery by declaring me "posh" and suggesting that I view myself above the job. It's very difficult to strike the right balance, but I do think I have learnt to be more open-minded about people.

As far as catering shifts go, this was was pretty short and easy. I felt almost guilty to be there because it was so quiet, and they can't have needed me badly enough to justify having driven all the way over. Chef read out some health and safety pointers to me which was a nice touch, and I have to say this was the first shift I've ever done as a temp where I've had to sign any forms declaring that I knew where the fire exit was and all that. Nobody mentioned the fact that I wasn't wearing kitchen-safe shoes however. I know it's actually illegal to work in such an environment without covered shoes, but then when I was assigned the job I had no idea where I'd be or what I'd be doing, which is a fault of the agency.

As lunch-time came and what Dawn called the "mad rush" (a pitiful queue of un-fussed workers wanting baguettes) died down, I was dismissed back to the outside world. A few days later, Paul was fired from the agency and I discovered that I wouldn't actually receive any petrol allowance for my 53 mile-round trip, which irritated me to say the least. But I do tend to think that any kind of new encounter is not a waste of time, and- just maybe, the more people one meets in day to day life, the richer their understanding of the world will become. If I can one day manage to combine this richness with a richness of bank-account, I'll be laughing.

'25th Celebrations'- Article for Oxfam Bookshop Press Release

Oxfam St. Giles Celebrates 25 Years- by Rachael Pells

This weekend marked a very special date for the flagship Oxfam bookshop in St. Giles. 25 years ago this week, the shop opened its doors to the public as a space reserved purely for selling books in order to raise money for the charity. This was an immediately popular idea and remains so, especially due to the shop's location amongst the Oxford University colleges. The shop receives a lot of donations and interest from local academics and university associates.

Oxfam and bookshops are naturally linked in a lot of people's minds, but this was only the case after a group of Oxfam supporters had the idea of starting up the specialist store in Oxford. To mark the event, several of the shop's volunteers met on Saturday evening for a ceremonial cake-cutting, for which the Mayor of Oxford very kindly came along to show his support and present some of the longer serving volunteers with certificates. Mr. Armitage expressed his fondness for the shop and also took the opportunity to browse the music section, coming away with some Debussy sheet music.

There are now 141 specialist Oxfam bookshops across the UK, run by over 4,000 volunteers. St. Giles' Oxfam currently has 63 keen volunteers who bring a wide range of specialist skills to the shop, earning Oxfam an estimated £5m over the last quarter of a century. Of course, this incredible achievement would not have been possible without the continued support from the local community and all of the shop's valued customers, for which the bookshop is very keen to thank.

Oxfam Bookshop St. Giles looks forward to many more years of raising money towards fighting poverty, both within the UK and across the third world.

The shop is organising several more events within the community, including a literary evening with Phillip Pullman and Mark Haddon on the 7th of December. This will be held at the St. Giles' Quaker Meeting House, where the local writers will be signing some unique 1st edition books to be sold, as well as opening a discussion on their inspirations behind writing. There are limited tickets available for this special event, but anyone who is interested is invited to contact the shop or pop in to see us.

The Stupidity of Ducks

As the sun set over our summer we talked about people who talk about art- I was laughing at the stupidity of all that but quietly wondering if ducks too didn't get cold at night.

When I heard the news
I didn't react, I crumbled
walking calmly to fields
fields through fields beyond fields where
crops that just yesterday were tall
and still growing

Something seemingly so natural has since been
cut rolled cropped and controlled
like falling gold fools to be harvested.

On the corner of so far away from anywhere I screamed
out the heart and hurt until
sat down lower than blackberries
no longer able to hold up the emptiness

No friend, no foe, no tough love or sour seeds can make this better

But unnaturally growing nature
winds on still before me, says
I can only continue along with it

So I go onwards growing slowly upwards
forgetting the ground below blackberry bushes
but knowing that the day will inevitably come once again
when I am cut, rolled and harvested.

Thoughtcrime

I deleted Facebook. Not as a some kind of dramatic, political statement (although re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four a week ago did nothing to dismiss any paranoia...) and not because I had been offered a job in the secret service or anything similar; I deleted Facebook on a whim. A moment of madness.

I'm not suggesting that the thought of coping without such convenient social networking at my fingertips is shocking, new or impossible. People delete their accounts all the time: perhaps after getting a Real Job and thus becoming a Grown Up, or after forcing themselves to sift through one too many photos of their Ex. Most people I know who have left the cult (and to be honest there are only a couple) did it with a slightly bragging manner (some might say arrogance) to prove that They were Different, They were Non-conformists, and They were Better than the rest of us abiding mortals. I, on the other hand, may have just been slightly fed-up and emotionally exhausted on Valentine's night, and had a sudden dramatic (I'd like to say 'epiphanic', I should really just admit to 'silly') moment of panic: an awareness that I spent far too much time on this bloody website when I should be sleeping, that it was slowly driving me mad and that my life would be a lot more productive and happy if I just removed it.

After hitting the rather well hidden link to "deactivate my account", relief did briefly wash over me. I shut down my laptop and went straight to sleep. I ignored the minutely disturbing feeling that came from the awareness that once having signed up to Facebook, one can never really dispose of it completely: an account only becomes temporarily invisible, ready for the day of weakness, which Facebook knows will come, when the deactivator will return and be welcomed back into the network's suspicious arms. I suppose my immediate thoughts were the ideas of finding bliss through ignorance of what my many contacts were and were not doing in their day to day lives. I just did not need to know.

Of course I woke up the following morning to remember that I needed to arrange to meet my presentation group as part of my degree. Facebook was the easiest way to message each other rather than call or text or email, because then we would have to communicate one by one to each other, which would take longer and messages may not be communicated as well. This was a problem, but I would fix it later.

The next evening I discovered that my friends were arranging a big night out, and the easiest way to discuss this of course, was on Facebook. I was out of the loop, and had to learn such information through a combination of people.

In just under two weeks I will be visiting some friends at a different University. My lack of social networking means that I am no longer up to date with the weekend's plans. Rather than call each person individually to be updated on travelling matters, I will inevitably re-activate Facebook to make my life a lot easier.

The upshot of all this, is that Facebook is not an absolute necessity and of course most sociably active people could survive rather well without it if they chose to. It is part of human nature to drift away from, and lose contact with some people in our lives, and make the effort to keep in contact with our closest friends through calling, texting and meeting up. But the real reason that nearly all young people have Facebook is to make all that communication faster and easier. I do get hugely irritated by pretentious social experimenters, Guardian columnists and the like, who scoff and despair at my generation for being so dependant on social networks. Yes, Facebook is bloody annoying and some people do take their use of it too far, but like all advances in technology, people will adapt to using things like Facebook to make their life easier and to gain further awareness about how the modern world is developing. The only thing I have gained by not using it in the last few days is a few minutes extra time in my day. Minutes which have most probably been used up by other silly activities such as watching programmes about obese families and writing this blog... so don't judge me for wanting it back.

Are You Experienced?

Like pretty much everyone my age, it has been drummed into me that a degree just isn’t enough these days: what everybody really wants from you is Experience. Work Experience. Experience of Working in the kind of place which you eventually want to Actually Work, not even Pretend Work. 

I think it’s safe to say that I am very experienced in failing to find Work Experience.

After writing what feels like thousands of begging letters (you know the type- “Im really totally fantastic and you will just love me for all these reasons, but I’m not really as full of myself as this letter makes me sound, honest!”) I know well the feeling of complete infuriation at being rejected, or worse: the agony of not even receiving a word of acknowledgement that anyone has bothered to read my beautifully crafted self- summary. 

It’s a paradox: companies tend to only offer work experience to people who have had previous experience. Or contacts. Tragically, I have neither in the field of work I am interested in. If only someone had said to my eight year old self: “Well that’s a pretty exciting ambition you’ve got there, but if I were you I’d STOP THE DREAM and train to be something very sensible like a maths teacher- they’ll have a shortage of those when you reach maturity.”

There was one Almost-Experience last summer. After sending out a lot of begging letters to various local and national newspapers (no harm in trying!), one Oxfordshire based free newspaper phoned me back. A mysterious man (who, come to think of it, may have had nothing to do with the paper at all!) very briefly and vaguely told me to meet him at a certain time the next day at his office. After setting out at the very crack of dawn on a bus through many twee villages, then walking for an hour in search of said office (no exaggeration), I realised I was very lost and had no phone signal. I ended the morning by sitting down at the side of a by-pass, having a good old girly cry.

Never-the-less, I have not packed in my journalism dreams and trained as a maths teacher. As the new year and the end of my degree kicks me in the face, I will once again send out the begging letters with the knowledge that this time, if anybody wants to give me a chance, I’ll be getting a taxi.

Written for theafternoonview magazine