#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.
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