Gamer Girls

 https://gamergrrlsofficial.blogspot.com/2021/11/screenwave-is-hiring.html

Nobody is uploading (except for boring as fuck Pam aka CannotBeEntertaining) so I’ll just talk about my internship.  My recent article about Screenwave and interns got me thinking about it.

https://gamergrrlsofficial.blogspot.com/2021/11/screenwave-is-hiring.html

In the mid 2000s, I moved from the US to the UK.  I was living in London in a grossly overcrowded, dilapidated tower block.  What would you call this in the US?  High rise tenement building?  They were former council flats so the US equivalent would be…subsidised housing?  The projects?  It was a big building where poor people lived.  Mostly immigrants, some just really, really poor English people.  And the immigrants were overwhelmingly…I don’t know…from Pakistan?  They were Muslim and the women wore that ninja garb.

There were six people in this two bedroom property.  The living room was converted into a bedroom so three bedrooms, I guess.  The guy who leased the place from the landlord then sub-let the place out to everyone else.  So this guy paid nothing on rent because he was charging everyone else a higher amount to cover his rent.  This was very common in London and it probably still is.  None of us were on the lease except for that one guy but the landlord knew about this and didn’t have a problem with it because he was doing shady shit too.  He had a bunch of different properties under different names.  

It was two people to a bedroom.  I actually had to share a bedroom.  A tiny bedroom.  In this tiny, shitty apartment.  It was with some guy from Italy.  Everyone else was from Eastern Europe.  The main tenant was some criminal from Lithuania who had prison tattoos.

I didn’t have a job.  I was getting “benefits” or “welfare” as it’s called in the US but only like £70/week.  I should have also got my rent paid but because my name wasn’t on the lease because of this scummy sub-letting shit, I couldn’t get this money.  So I paid my rent from this £70/week.  My rent was £55/week.  So I had £15/week for food and whatever.

I had been looking for a job for at least six months and nothing was happening.  The problem was that I couldn’t get references that satisfied these scumbag employment agencies that dominated (and probably still dominate) the London job market.  If you want to work, it almost has to be through these parasitic middlemen.  Very few companies advertised directly.  It was all done through these agencies because if a company hires through an agency, the company can hire and fire them whenever they want and the company doesn’t have to give whatever benefits like sick pay and whatnot.  It’s a scam.  Everybody knows it and nothing gets done about it because this is what the people at the top want.  It’s a way to erode workers’ rights.

I worked in the US and I had references.  It was no problem.  I left on good terms, I was a model employee.  But these agencies in the UK wanted written references.  They wanted the former employer to fill out a form.  The form asked questions like, “Would you hire this person again?”  

No company in the US would do this because if you put “No” or in any way impede the person from gaining future employment, it opens you up to litigation.  So the only thing that US employers ever say when asked for a reference is, “This person worked here between X date and Y date”.  And it’s all done over the phone, or at least was at the time.  Not emails.  

So I would explain all of this to the agencies.  “They won’t fill out a form but if you just call them, they’ll tell you that I worked there.  It’s no problem.”  No.  These agencies refused to do that.

So I begged my former employers to fill in this form.  “It’s just a short form.  I need it to work.”  No.  They always said that they would do it when I was speaking to them but it was just lies.  They refused to fill out these fucking forms.  Repeatedly.  I had dozens of them sent to them, from dozens of agencies, and they always refused to fill them out.

Okay then.  If I’m going to get a job in this shit country, I’m going to have to think outside of the box.  I already tried setting up fake references using a free Gmail account.  That didn’t convince anyone.  I just need a fucking reference and then I’ll be able to work.  These people REALLY want references for whatever reason.

So I started looking at volunteer work.  But what could I do?  Let’s try the political parties.  

So I sent my resume to all of them.  And I mean all of them.  Even the British National Party.  I don’t give a fuck.  All I wanted was a reference, although perhaps a reference from the British National Party wouldn’t have helped with my job search.

I got one reply.  I won’t say which party but it was one of the major ones.

So I go for the interview.  It was in their big national headquarters.  They were looking for somebody to do data entry.  I can do that.  Great.  When can you start?  

So I’d go in every day and input data.  No messing around.  I got to work.  People who worked there (i.e. were getting paid to work there) actually complained to me.  “You don’t have to work like you’re chained to your desk.  You can get up.  You can take breaks.”

No.  That’s not my style.  It’s nothing to do with trying to impress bosses, it’s just when I go to work, I’m there to work.  It probably has to do with the difference between work culture in the US and work culture in the UK.  It’s a slave driving mentality in the US.  If I were to do it now, I would have slowed down just to make everyone else look better.

Anyway, I did more work than the people who were actually employed.  I was doing the same job that they were doing but I was doing it for NOTHING.  No, that’s not true.  I got £30/week from the petty cash box to pay my travel expenses.

Five days a week.  Forty hours a week.  Shit got done.  

So one day, my “manager” comes to me and says, “There’s an opening in the call centre.  Would you like to talk to the people there?”  I had absolutely zero interest in working in a call centre but I needed a job, I was in this dire living situation, so I said, “Yeah, sure.”

I go to the interview.  There are a couple of stooges there.  They were about my age.  We just have a brief discussion.  I gave brief answers.  I didn’t even really realise that this was an interview.  I had been working there for three months, everything was impeccable, I thought that I already had the job and I was just having an introduction.

I’m asked to do a sample call.  I just read from a script that they gave me.  It was on the phone.  I was in one room and one of these guys was in the other room.  It went fine.

Next day.  The stooges come back and they say, “You did a good job on your phone call but I just don’t think that we really got to know you.”  I said, “What are you talking about?  I’m right here.  You can ask whatever you want.”  They said, “No, you just didn’t talk much during the interview so we’re not going to give you the job.”

Fine.  So I go to my “manager”, tell him what happened, and that I’m leaving.  He was sympathetic.  I ask him if he can provide a reference for future work and he says that he can.  Then I said goodbye to everyone and left.

He was true to his word.  I got the reference, I got a job, then another job, and another job.  References were never a problem after this.

So I looked this guy up.  He was a few years older than me.  Not by much.  He talked about running for MP (member of parliament).  That was a common thing there.  Lots of people ran for MP.  These are the people who run for office.  Just random people who work for the fucking party.     

But no, he didn’t do that.  He left the organisation within a year of me leaving.  I don’t know if he was fired or quit but looking at the rest of his resume, I suspect that he was fired.  

There’s a five year gap in his resume after he left.  Then there’s some weird company that he started.  It ceased trading within two years.  Then he started a blog that nobody read.  He did that for a few years.  And now…nothing.  He gives a “comedy” job for his current job.  It’s a reference to Twitter, I guess.  That’s his job now.  Twitter.  He has less than 100 followers.

He’s unemployed.  And has been for most of the last 15 years.

What did I do during that same span of time?  I worked.  Numerous shitty jobs.  But everybody was thrilled with my work.  I had people beg me not to quit.  Then I learned a trade and got a good job.  

So what can we learn from all of this?  Well, it goes to show that an immigrant, properly motivated, can do better than a lazy native.  The job was the peak of that guy’s career history whereas it was the lowest point of mine.  He completely floundered after he left whereas I went from strength to strength, every job better than the last.  

I wonder what those stooges are doing now.  Still working in a call centre?  Comedy job like “professional blogger”?  

Anyway, maybe I’ll give that Screenwave channel manager position a shot.  Something to fill some time.  It says that they’d consider remote working for the right candidate.  

The boys on Reddit suggested that they should all apply so that they’d have “content” to write about.  Imagine how obsessed you’d have to be to work for a company just to get dirt on them.  “Wow!  Tony really DOES smell bad!  Spending the past six months of my life at Screenwave and moving my family to Chalfont, Pennsylvania was totally worth it!”