Gamer Girls

I’m trying to remember what autobiographical posts were lost when the last blog got shut down. There was the one about me living in Wembley with Indian guys. I’ve since re-done that one. And there there was one where I talked about doing data entry in a property management company. I think that I also talked about meeting that woman with the terrible teeth in that one.

So is that it? Oh, what about all of the teaching assistant jobs that I did? Yeah, I think I lost that one too, assuming I even wrote about it. It was about how they were looking for a gay man to do those jobs.

I’ll write about the property managment job then because I was still doing the teaching assistant shit after the property management.

When I was looking for work, at least in London, at least 15 years ago, it was completely dominated by employment agencies. These are parasitic middlemen who have absolutely no benefit to you, the worker, but employers like them because the agency acts as a buffer between you and the employer. So they don’t have to give you whatever benefits an actual employee would get and they can fire you at any time, for any reason. These agencies also take a cut of your wages. So the company might be paying the agency £15/hour but the agency is only paying you £7/hour. They’re just pocketing that money for doing NOTHING. You’re going to work every day, and they’re taking half of your money every day for doing nothing.

So I did everything I could to try to get a job directly with a company. It was always a better experience as well. With the agencies, they wouldn’t get back to you, they would just waste your time with pointless “interviews” for jobs that don’t exist, whatever. But whenever I managed to contact the actual company, I was always immediately invited for an interview and it usually went well.

Such was the case with this property management company. It was for a data entry job. They had date that needed entering. Supplier details and whatnot. The name and phone numbers of plumbers and electricians and the like.

So I had an interview. I don’t remember it but it must have gone well. And I got the job.

It was a Jewish couple who owned the business. Of course. Where there’s property and parasitic jobs, you’ll find the Chosen People.

Everybody was pleased with my work. I know how to type so that seemed to be a plus. I don’t know if people in the UK are really taught to type. They must be now, but I don’t know if people of my peer group were taught to type.

But when I went to school, I took loads of typing classes. I had one day a week computer classes in grade school but that was just to play Number Munchers and Oregon Trail and shit like that. We didn’t actually learn to type.

In high school, I took typing classes, though. I learned on an actual typewriter for my first typing class. It was electric but it was a typewriter. Not a computer. Computers were rare and expensive in those days. Other typing classes I had used computers but that first one was old school. It was just a typewriter for that whole semester.

I took the classes because they were easy as fuck and I didn’t see the sense in taking difficult classes when we all get the same diploma no matter what classes we take. I was right. So I took all of these fucking “business” classes, which were just re-branded “remedial” classes. Business English. Business math. Shit like this. And a lot of typing/computer classes.

It turned out to be a great idea because it’s something that I actually put into practice and was able to get work from it. All of these other classes were a total waste of time. Nobody has ever asked me about U-boats or solving for “x” or how many loaves of bread Jesus was able to come up with. But the typing classes were a money maker.

So I was doing this job. Everybody loved me. There was a giant-breasted Sri Lankan woman who would come on to me but, of course, I didn’t do anything so she eventually lost interest.

I told the story about how I quit in the previous article but it’s not really interesting so I’ll just give a brief run down.

I would finish the work really quickly. Because I can type quickly and when I’m at work, I’m there to work. I don’t mess around.

So the guy who was giving me the work, my manager, in a sense, would get slightly flustered when I would finish because there really wasn’t any more work to do. He would eventually come up with something but it was just busy work.

As a result, there was a lot of downtime while I was waiting for this guy to find something else for me to do. So I’d use the internet during this downtime.

My internet started getting disconnected. Then I would do something to get it working again. This went on for a few days. Then I started getting messages when I would get disconnected about wasting company time.

I suspect that it was the owner of this place who was doing this. He was kind of an asshole to me. His wife was always friendly to me and I don’t think that he liked that either.

So after I started getting these messages, I just got up and told this wife co-owner that I was quitting. She was shocked and asked why. I explained the situation with the internet. She said that she’d get the internet turned back on and just to go home and think about it. She asked somebody at HR if I can really just quit like this, to which they said that I could. She was really trying to get me not to quit because I was a fantastic worker and maybe she had a little thing for me. But I was done. “Wasting company time.” Fuck you. I was doing the work of three people there. And it was for like £8.50/hour.

So I quit the job and she paid me for that full month even though I quit during the first week of the month. I worked there for about three months.

Years later, I read that there they got into some legal trouble. Some financial impropriety. Of course.