Gamer Girls

I don’t know where any of these jobs slot in time-wise. I don’t even know what my first paying job was. A lot of these “jobs” were for one day so they’re not memorable. But I’m going to try to only talk about jobs that I had during this period when I was in Wembley with these Sri Lankan guys.

After I got the reference from this volunteer job, I was able to get paying jobs through these parasitic job agencies that dominated the employment market. I’m thinking that the first job was a teaching assistant job.

I had a few sporadic days as a teaching assistant. A teaching assistant is something that they seem to have in England for like…I don’t even know the terms. But for children in grades lower than secondary school. So like middle school. Or elementary school. Whatever term you want to use. Children who are like 12 years old and younger.

Every class, seemingly, for this age bracket would have a teaching assistant. It was just somebody to help the teacher maintain order in the class. You’d stand in the back. So when the teacher’s back was turned to write something on the board, you could see if anybody is causing problems. And if somebody needed help with their work, you could help them? I guess? I don’t even know. This was part of the problem. I have no fucking idea what the job entails. This job does not exist in the US. I don’t know what the role is.

So I’d get there and just try to figure things out. Take it all in.

They didn’t like that. I was never invited to return for another day. I’ll have more to say about this teaching assistant bullshit later because I did this job, very sporadically, up until the time I got a proper job, which is like two years down the line.

I also did exam invigilation. Again, this is not a job that exists in the US. You just have to watch the students take some kind of exam. What’s the exam? I don’t fucking know. I think that it’s some kind of standardised test. They were like high school kids. You were just supposed to check for cheating and give people erasers (“rubbers” as they’re called) and shit like this. Sometimes you’d be there with a teacher, sometimes just by yourself. It was easy as fuck. I never saw anybody cheating.

This job went better but it’s tough to fuck it up. Nevertheless, I think that even with this job, schools were telling the agencies not to send me back there. So I’d do one of these exam invigilating jobs at a school for a day or two and then maybe a month later, I’ll get another day or two from a different agency, at a different school.

I also did a day of construction work. This was, of course, through an agency. I had no construction experience.

So I’m told that there’s a job on a building site and they need people to clean. They tell me that I need protective shoes to do the job. Fine. So I go to some shop that sells gear for construction workers (they’re called “builders” in the UK) and I get some shoes. They were like fifty pounds.

I go to the job. There are like twenty people who are also there for the same job. They needed twenty people for the job, apparently. It was a good mix of immigrants and just desperately impoverished English people. Maybe a 50/50 split.

So they send us out to different parts of this building and a manager comes and gives us all a vacuum cleaner (or “hoover” as it’s called in the UK, based on the Hoover brand of vacuum cleaners). He tells us to vacuum the various rooms.

I do my section. Then I do it again. Then I do it again. I’m looking around. How long should we keep doing this?

I don’t know what the building was, by the way. It was just a big, I assume recently built building.

I meet some African immigrant. He’s confused about this whole situation too. We’ve already cleaned everything three times. Should we look for the manager?

The manager comes over. “Are your hoovers not working?” Oh. So we cleaned everything again. And again.

This African guy starts telling me about Africa. How people don’t see Africa as a tourist destination. He asks if I would want to travel to Africa. I tell him that I don’t have any money now so I’m not thinking about travel. It was a shit answer but this is how I was. I didn’t want to have small talk especially while I’m always in this desperate financial situation.

Some guy comes up to me, he was from the Caribbean. A black guy. And he says, “Don’t you have protective shoes?” And I say, “Yeah, these” and I point to my shoes. He says that I need steel toed shoes.

So he got some other manager. Some Polish woman. And he said that I shouldn’t be working here. I need steel toed shoes. The Polish woman looks at the shoes and she says, no, it’s fine. This Caribbean guy looks really annoyed.

Then after I cleaned everything ten times, this Polish woman comes and gets us. She assembles everybody in a room. The twenty of us who were there at the start. And she’s talking about how there was some kind of delay with the work. That’s why we were cleaning the same area all day. But we’re going to need everybody to come back tomorrow.

Well, almost everybody. She takes me to a room and says that I don’t need to come in any more.

It was because of the shoes. I’m trying to remember what shoe-buying guidance I was given. I remember that there was a phone call from some guy at the employment agency. He may have specifically said that I don’t need steel-toed boots. And he must have given me the address of this construction shop because where else would I have found out about it? It was a shop that only sold gear for construction workers. And they only had one type of shoes. They were chunky, construction type shoes.

But I remember that they were £50 because that’s what I got paid for the job. So I made nothing from this job. It all went to those shoes.

There was a plastic keychain on the shoes. I still have this keychain on my keys today to remind myself of the absolute shit jobs that I’ve done. It helps to appreciate what I’m doing now.

Groundwork is the brand name of these shoes.

https://www.lyndhurstshoeco.com/featured/sk21.html

These were the shoes. They’re £40 on Amazon. And they apparently do have a steel toe. So I don’t know what the problem was. The guy just didn’t like the shoes. Maybe it was a fashion thing.

I never heard from the agency again, of course. That’s the way with these things. But there are so many agencies that it doesn’t matter. You just go to all of them. You can even go to a different branch in the same company.

The problem that I kept having with jobs, and interviews, is that I was, “Too quiet and won’t fit in.” So I started looking for jobs that don’t require any interaction with anyone. I was perfectly capable of having work-related conversations with people. I was capable of working in schools. I did all of this in the US and there was absolutely no problem. But in the UK, they’re looking for somebody “fun” to work with.

So I started looking for data entry jobs. You sit in front of a computer, you input the data, you go home. Don’t have to talk to anyone.

Even with these jobs, I had difficulty at interviews. I’m apparently too quiet and won’t fit in for a job that requires no social interaction at all.

But I did get a data entry job through an agency. They needed like forty people. The agent said that if I knew anybody who needs a job, let him know. He’ll take anybody. They were really desperate for people.

I quickly figured out why. The job was from midnight to 8.00 am. It was in some warehouse. It was a one hour bus journey from my home.

Almost everybody was an immigrant. I remember one South Asian British guy but everyone else was an immigrant. The boss was an immigrant. He was from Pakistan or something. A lot of the people there were South Asian immigrants. There were also some European immigrants.

The boss was a total asshole. He ran the place like a sweatshop. He would regularly yell at people. If you stopped typing for a short while, he’d tell you to get back to work. You had to keep working right up until 8.00. If you stopped even one minute before, he’d give you shit for it.

I don’t remember what data was being inputted. A lot of it was numbers. Some of it was words. It was filling in some forms.

One day, I was speaking to a German guy before work. And I said that this is the worst job I’ve ever had. Which may be true. I don’t know which was worse, here or the asylum. Anyway, this German guy just said that he’s had worse jobs. He just said it in a matter of fact, Teutonic way.

A lot of the people there didn’t speak English or their English was poor. So obviously they’re going to have difficulty with the job.

Also, I think that I was the only person there who knew how to type.

So this guy was a giant asshole to me, as he was to everyone, right up until he saw my work. A few days into the job, he was walking around and checking on everyone and saw that I was doing phenomenally. Then I became his favourite. He moved me to the back of the room where the best workers went. That South Asian British guy was there and some other people who used a computer before.

I was clearly the best worker there. Clearly. No question. I mean, the competition wasn’t good but it was overwhelmingly immigrants and I typed 80 words a minute. I was doing the work of ten of those people.

There was a guy there who was really bad at the job. Because he didn’t speak English. This was a problem with a lot of the people there. They didn’t speak English.

So this boss is going over this guy’s work and berating him. “How could you write that? That doesn’t even make sense.” Then he turns to this British Asian guy, reads what this other guy wrote, and says, “Does that make sense to you?” This British guy didn’t reply. This manager’s behaviour was absolutely abhorent and everybody knew it.

That guy didn’t come back. A few people probably got fired. I didn’t really notice. People probably quit as well.

I worked there for a month maybe. Maybe not that long. Then I had a job interview for another data entry job. I needed to take a day off to go to the interview. The interview was at 10.00 or something and because it took so long to get back from that job, I wouldn’t be able to get there in time.

So I called the agency.

Me: I can’t come in tomorrow.

Agent: Why not?

Me: I’m sick.

Agent: You’re sick.

Me: Yeah.

Agent: How are you sick?

Me: I don’t know. I have the flu or something.

Agent: You have the flu or something.

Me: Yeah.

Agent: I have to say that I have a hard time believing that.

Me: I don’t know what to tell you. Do you want a list of symptoms?

Agent: Okay, okay. Fine. You’re sick. I’ll let them know.

Then I go to the job interview, I’ll cover the details in another article, and I got the job. That day. The day of the interview.

So I called the agent up.

Me: I won’t be coming in.

Agent: What? You mean ever?

Me: That’s right.

Agent: Well…okay.

Absolutely deplorable agency. Deplorable job. Deplorable manager. And the job paid like £7/hour.