Gamer Girls

I was living in this shared house with a Polish guy, a South African couple, an Australian guy, and his German wife. After maybe a year of living there or a year and a half, I got a job as a receptionist in some mental health clinic. I have experience working with the mentally ill at that nightmare job in the US but this wasn’t anywhere near the same level. It was just people coming in off the street who had appointments. Some of them were jerks but not many. Also, a lot of the people were just elderly and had no mental problems but part of this clinic’s job was to give elderly people bus passes for some reason.

It was a receptionist job. I remember specifically asking the job agency who gave me the job if it was a receptionist job because it sounded an awful lot like a receptionist job when I read the job description. No, no. They insisted that it’s not. It’s an admin job. £12.50/hour. Well, £12.50/hour is pretty good. It’s more than any job I’ve had. I’ll try it out.

Receptionist job. I was awful at it. REALLY bad. People made fucking complaints. CO-WORKERS made complaints. Said that I was rude. I wasn’t rude. I don’t even know what they were talking about. But English people are very precious. They always say “please” and “thank you” and offer to make a “tea round” and shit like this. There’s a protocol and I didn’t do any of that shit. I do it now because I figured out that people get offended if you don’t, but I didn’t at the time. It’s mostly a problem in England. Less so in Scotland. Scottish people are much more down to earth and much less annoying than English people.

There were two other receptionists there. One was a young black English woman and the other was a British Indian MILF with huge tits. I was supposed to fill in for them when they were doing whatever admin stuff they had to do. The job was part receptionist and part admin but heavily on the reception. I did virtually no admin work when I was there. I was always on this fucking reception, dealing with angry people on the phone and angry people at the front desk.

It was a job that you really dreaded going to. And that’s an awful feeling. I’ve only had a few jobs that were that bad. You know that the day is going to be awful but you have to go anyway because it’s the only job you have.

Sometimes I would talk to this black woman. She wasn’t very talkative but sometimes it would just be me and her at reception and I have pretty decent conversations when I’m just with somebody one on one. We’d talk about the job and whatever. She never asked about the US, which I appreciated. That’s usually people’s first question. “What are you doing here, Mr Foreign Man?” Even if they mean it in a positive way, which they always do, it’s a constant reminder that you’re a foreigner.

There was one time when a telemarketer called and she talked to them for like 45 minutes asking about the product and whatnot. Then the telemarketer got angry when she told them that she wasn’t interested. The telemarkter asked her why she was asking about the product if she’s not interested and she said, “Well, I have to know more about the product before I can make a decision.” She was just messing around. Wasting time at work.

I enjoyed when it was just me and her on reception and she always made an effort to talk to me.

Then one day, after like a month, the manager called me in and said that I’m not suitable for the job and that I’m fired. She was polite about it. She basically just said that I’m too quiet and won’t fit in. The same shit that I heard from hundreds of job interviews in England. She suggested that I should work in a grocery store so that I can work on my social skills. As a cashier, you have to talk to the customers and whatnot.

This manager also mentioned the complaints that I got from co-workers saying that I’m rude. And she said that she told these people that I’m not rude but I’m just an American. There are cultural differences. She was right.

So I go back to the reception desk and this Indian MILF asks what happened and I told her and she was very supportive and said that the manager doesn’t know what she’s talking about and whatnot. But I said no, she’s right, I’m not good at the job. I knew that I wasn’t good at the job from the start. Even before I started the job, I knew it wasn’t going to go well.

This MILF says that if I need any money to let her know, which was very kind, but I had money and also when I wasn’t working, I would just start claiming benefits again. It was fine.

As I’m about to leave, I wrote a note. It was something like, “Today’s my last day. I enjoyed working with you. If you’d like to meet up for coffee some time, let me know.” And I put my phone number there. I gave this note to the MILF and asked her to give it to this black woman. The MILF read it and said that she’ll do that.

It’s obviously a high school way of doing things. I should have just asked the woman if she wanted to go out. But at least I did something.

After this job ended, I immediately got a job at a different mental health clinic. It was all in the same department. The manager referred me for the job. She said that I worked hard but just not good socially. So it was a data entry job. Fine.

I’m at this other job, I just started, and this new manager says that there’s a phone call for me. So I pick up the phone and it’s this black woman from the previous job. She says that she got the note and wanted to see how I was doing with the new job. So we talked for a bit about the job and then I said something like, “You know, I gave you the note because I was interested in meeting up some time.” She says, “Yeah. We shouldn’t talk about that now. I’ll call you later.”

Why she called me on my work phone, when I gave her my mobile phone number, I don’t know. So now I had to have this awkward conversation with my new manager right next to me.

This job only lasted a month as well. Again, I was fired for being too quiet and not fitting in. Despite the fact that the job was entirely independent work where you don’t have to talk to anyone.

But I started going out with this black woman. And it was nice. It was so much different from these lunatics from the internet. This was somebody who actually wanted to go out, didn’t have a laundry list of other guys who she was planning to meet up with, and she wasn’t insane. She was also much better looking than these unfortunate looking women from the internet.

I expected to only go out once or twice because that’s what my experience was with these internet women. So I told her on the second date that I can get theatre tickets and we can go see a play but I don’t know if we’ll still be dating by the time I get the tickets. And she was really offended. What do you mean we won’t be dating? Why wouldn’t we be dating? So I got the tickets and we ended up going out for a couple of years and then it was off and on for a few years and then I moved to Scotland and she’d come to visit a few times a year and then covid and…eh. She came to visit last Christmas and I still talk to her sometimes but not really. But we had a long relationship.

So after this second mental health clinic job, I did some more teaching assistant and exam invigilation shit. Always awful. I worked in a Jewish school for a couple of weeks. Horrendous. The kids were fine but the administration was shit, they made you do work that had absolutely nothing to do with exam invigilation (like organising their files and shit) because they were just exploiting cheap labour. You also had to go through all of this weird security. Fuck this.

Then there was a job that was two and a half hours from my home. I had to take a coach. A coach is different from a bus. A coach is for long-distance travel and it costs a fair amount of money.

So I’m at what I assume is a bus stop, when this huge fucking coach arrives. I’m not getting on there. So I had an atlas with me and I somehow figured out that this job was two and a half hours away.

I called the agency and asked them why they gave me a job that’s two and a half hours from my home. They said that it isn’t. I disagreed and I told them that I’m going to go home. The guy told me to take a taxi. I told him that I’m not going to pay for a taxi. He said, “Just take the taxi. We’ll talk about it.” I obviously take that as meaning that he’s going to pay for the taxi. Spoiler: he doesn’t.

I get to the job, it was at least 90 minutes from me, maybe it would have been two and a half hours by bus, I don’t remember where I got that from, the job is fucking awful as per usual, and then…I don’t remember how I got home. Either a taxi or maybe I figured out a different bus to take. But it was ridiculously far away from my home. There is absolutely no way that they should have sent me to that place.

So I send this guy the taxi receipt. He says that he’s not paying. I say what are you talking about? You said you’d pay. He said, “I said ‘We’d talk about it’, not that I’d pay.”

He calls a few days later asking if I’m available for a job. I say, “Of course not. You didn’t pay for the last one. I got £6 for that job. Does that sound right to you?” Six pounds was what I got paid for the day minus the travel costs that I had to pay. He says that it doesn’t sound right. So I say okay and end the conversation.

Shortly after that, I got another data entry job. The guy calls me up again and asks if I’m available for a job. I tell him no. I’m not doing any work for him. He says, “Is this still about what happened last time?” like I’m blowing this out of proportion. So I say, “Yeah. Not getting paid is a big deal. Do you really not understand this?”

Anyway, I’m doing this data entry job now. I’m the only person there who knows how to type. It was in some kind of print shop. They’d print documents for various people and companies. Almost everybody working there was an immigrant from Pakistan. And they just spoke that fucking language all day. Just that fucking buzzing noise of Urdu all day. You don’t understand anything so it’s just noise.

I was really getting ready to leave. I didn’t want to stay in the UK any more. I was planning to go back to the US. But I also saw a job ad to be like an assistant English teacher in Japan. Great. I worked as a substitute teacher for a year in the US. That should count for something. Plus all of the “too quiet and won’t fit in” teaching assistant and exam invigilation experience in the UK.

So I go to the interview. There are like eight of us. A group interview. This was the first clue that this was going to be a horrendous experience.

Everybody was English except for me. Young people wanting to go to Japan. Have an adventure.

It was the most demeaning job interview I’ve ever had. We had to come up with little skits for everybody. We literally had to walk around and cluck like a chicken. And then there was some pseudo psychological exam, some word association shit. Legally, I don’t think that you can do that kind of thing at job interviews any more. I don’t think that you can do any of this at job interviews any more. I’m not even sure if this shit was legal at the time. It certainly shouldn’t have been.

So I didn’t get the fucking job. Fuck this. I’m just going back to the US.

Then I saw a job that looked perfect for me. You don’t have to talk to anybody. It fits with what I studied in university. Let’s just say it’s like an IT job.

So I said, “Okay, I’m going to give this a shot. See how this goes and if I don’t get this job, fuck it. I’m going back to the US. I’m sick of doing these shit jobs.”

It was through an agency. It was an agency who gave me work in the past and there was no problem. But I didn’t hear back. So I sent a follow up email saying that I’m really interested in the job, did submit my resume to the company. Didn’t hear back.

So I had to figure out who the company was who was advertising the job. I managed to do this. So I sent my resume directly to the company.

Literally within five minutes of sending the resume, my phone was ringing. It was the company and they wanted to know when I can come in for an interview. This useless fucking parasitic agency refused to forward my resume to the company. And had I got the job through them, they presumably would have taken a cut of my wages for the entire time I worked there.

I went to the interview. It went great. They were thrilled. I got the job. There was like a year of training first. The training was paid for. But after that, I started working properly and I’ve been doing this kind of work at different places for the past 15 years consistently.

After I got this job, I immediately started looking for a new place to live. Because now I had a proper job and could find my own place. No more shared accomodation. It was also awkward bringing my girlfriend to this shared place. She didn’t like it either. She would try to avoid having to talk to anybody, same as I did.

The South African couple had a big fight. I remember plates being smashed and shit. So the guy left and the woman bought a puppy to replace him. Oh. This is good. Now there’s a puppy in the place. I don’t want to get involved in people’s drama.

So I got out of there like two months after starting this job. I found a shitty little studio on the very outskirts of London. It was on the top floor of a converted house. It was a three story house and there was one apartment on each story. The other people in the house were black. It was a mostly black neighbourhood.

I didn’t mind it, though. It was a step up from these overwhelmingly immigrant neighbourhoods that I had been living in since coming to London. At least these black people speak English. It was mostly black English people. Some Jamaicans and shit but they speak English in Jamaica.

That’s something that I fucking hated in these immigrant neighbourhoods. You would go out on the street and hear every fucking language except English.

These black people speak English. Great. And I never had any problems. There was never any, “Yo, yo, yo. What’s your beef?” shit. If you’re just going about your business, people tend to leave you alone.

There’s a lot more that happened over the years. There’s a lot more that I can say. This was like 15 years ago but everything came together at that time so it’s a good place to stop. I finally had a decent job, I had my own place, and I had a girlfriend. So I accomplished my goals and I never had to live in shared accomodation or do a shitty job again.