At times society does seem like Kafka's castle. It does look like an impenetrable maze. I'm convinced all the fairly easy and okay desk jobs are primarily given out by members of some chatty group of which I'm not a member.
Then you've got the lowest end of the scale type jobs, industrial temping, these jobs are awful. You get seven sorts of people in these types of jobs. The first are young, generally ethnic, youths. These types often start the job vowing to work all the overtime God can send at them: with unrealistic aims like buying a Porsche. They generally work a week. After 80 hours of totally illegal shift patterns they'll be fired for falling asleep at work.
The second type is the alcoholic or junkie. These people are there to steal from the company, pure and simple, and they make no bones about it. They will generally be sacked after a week for stealing, for being invisible or being caught drunk.
The third type is the psychotic. These are the worst of all. They are jobsworths, they will toady up to the bosses and report any signs of subversiveness with great zeal. They won't do more than minimum overtime, they'll pitch in during a crisis but no more. During a crisis, however trivial, they are the most dangerous of all. They will totally lose the plot, slash wildly at packaging with stanley knives and cause avalanches of heavy boxes.
The only way to get "rich" in this type of job is to stick close to the psychotics, wind them up trivially, and hope for an accident. There is no other escape. I once threw away a winning kit kat wrapper worth £150,000: because one of these guys had addled my brain so much that I didn't realise, until later, I'd had it in my hands.
Once in a blue moon you will meet a complete lord at work, who technically belongs to this category. I once worked with a philosophy professor who had been reduced to moving boxes by a nervous breakdown.
The fourth group are the bods. These people are generally ethnic English, Irish, Scots or West Indians. They're in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. They are career industrial workers and will immediately form their own clique. They are there because they messed up in their last job and want another full-time job on the company books. As such they are careful with whom they make alliances and, to a lesser extent, will grass you up to the boss if you attempt to slack.
They are generally okay if you meet them on their terms. You will only meet this type on better assignments. They usually have fork lift licenses and will drive like Schumaker whenever there's a manager around. They are obsessed with fork lifts, will discuss the nuances of individual fork lifts at great length. They find it hard to grasp that everyone in the world cannot drive a forklift or doesn't at least aspire to. Don't ever read anything except The Daily Mirror or The Sun in front of these guys.
You'll occasionally meet women in these jobs. The women all seem to affiliate with the forklift driving bod type, or their cult, or the aspiring Porsche owner youth. Psychotic women seem to be too clever and too psychotic to make it into this type of work.
The fifth "group" are the industrial world's equivalent of the movie Platoon's "heads". They are there just to kill time, two breaks are better than one and a fifteen minute break is better than a ten minute break. These guys are okay. They will lend you money if you need a coffee and have none. They will give you cigarettes if they see you rolling your own and you can chat to them about women troubles and most other things. Let's face facts, if you're member of this group the only thing that's going to get you into one of these jobs is women troubles.
You can be reciprocal with this group, you have to be, there will usually be just two of you in this group but, if you last more than a few days in the job, you'll soon identify other members of this sub-culture, taking their extended breaks.
The sixth group is the student. The student is generally young and has a similar snotty regard for the managers and co-workers as you do, you are not a student though. You are at least ten years older than the student and yet still working as an industrial temp. Therefore the student will assume you are stupider than they. The student will work with method and is convinced his system is superior to the way anyone else works. They will "supervise" if given the opportunity. The manner of their delivery of said "supervision" will be very slow and pedantic, after all, are they not working with ape men?
The students, God bless them, are no friends of the managers either. this is their redeeming quality. The students intimidate the managers because they have that, "I'm a student, I know everything and I'm going to get a better job than you in two Summers time" look in their eyes. The managers also know they cannot cow the students as easily as others. The power of the student versus the manager increases as term time approaches, reaching its zenith in August. You will almost never find a student still working in early September.
Then you have the managers. These guys are paid by the company, often they are the only people, outside a few women in an office, that are. They have been there a long time and, more or less immediately, they can spot the group to which you belong. They seem to take an almost perverse delight in talking to the psychotic sycophants and are generally quite buddy with the career warehouse types. They will generally bitch heavily about the aspiring Porsche owners and, especially, the students to anyone who will listen.
The managers have a ritual "test", so it seems, they will bark some completely irrational order at you. If you do not obey unquestioningly then you will never be a part of their "flock". I cannot say what the dividends of (ceremonial) obedience are. It may result in more orders of this kind or may result in the granting of their favour, it may vary from individual manager to individual manager or on a case by case basis.
Once you're cursed in a manager's eyes you're forever cursed, but often the managers hate each other - so this usually isn't fatal to your career (sic).
So, this is the spectrum of your co-workers. Your actual work will be boring of course, and tiring. I can't stress enough that "heads" are really rare in these jobs. You're often lucky if you meet one in the canteen, let alone get to work with one. If you miss out on another head, you might get a half-decent youth, alcoholic, student, warehouse bod or psychotic, if you are lucky. Generally the best person there will seem like some kind of Jesus compared to all the others.
Of course, you will tolerate all this by calculating your wages every day. When payday comes around (the second week, on Friday) you will, if you are lucky, be paid. If you are really lucky your pay will also be correct.
From a personal perspective, I find in some ways, it's better if my pay never arrives because then I don't have to go through the habitual struggle with work versus the pub. That's merely delayed a week.
If your pay arrives on time and it's short the guy in the agency will assure you he'll get straight onto it. His words are generally empty.
Depending on the human variables, the random pay factor, how things are going with your woman crisis and the actual job you are doing, you may or may not make it to work in the third week.
It's largely irrelevant if you do, or not, because you're going to drink everything you earn pretty much for certain anyway. You'll be lucky to come out of this job with no rent arrears.
The pub is so good! You've got money and there are plenty of people to talk to, all of them are heads, near enough, what a bold contrast to work! What a beautiful tapestry of souls, and isn't it nice to drink beer all day during Summer or the festive season?
So, really, you know, in advance, that this type of job is pointless. You know you are going to drink everything you earn.
You've got your "projects" too. Isn't it a crime against yourself to drink so much? Isn't it a crime against yourself to find no time for your projects? Why are you killing yourself in this warehouse when you could be writing? You want to scratch a living writing, you don't mind paying taxes, you think you have things to say. Why are those bastards down the Job Centre forcing you to do this? You've barely time for poetry and your ex has dumped you. She doesn't even appreciate the noble sacrifice you've made.
You feel like Christ on the cross, get drunk and rail at God - you're arrested for being drunk and disorderly. Damn, your rent is in arrears and now a fine to pay too.
So, clearly, it's time to make a CV and try to gain admittance to Kafka's castle once again. You look at your work history, oh dear, all you've done is work in industrial jobs for a few weeks here and there. You've lost time for depression and other injuries. You're self-taught and there's no proof you're not a bovine. You know nobody who's working, all your mates are (near geriatric) "wide boys", schizophrenics and / or homeless.
How can you get or prove your experience if nobody will give you a job?
You're left locking horns with the Job Centre, you can't understand why they won't leave you alone. They say they are only "obeying orders", but that's what the Nazis said too, isn't it? You've committed no crimes, aside from drunk and disorderly, the police provoked you by endorsing the crock of crap which assails you - in its general and particular forms. Why do they punish you by sending you to this dangerous Gulag wasteland of the human soul?
You get your giro, £100 for two weeks, you pay your bills, the manageable ones, and your newly acquired rent arrears. You're half-glad you're so skint because at least you know your brain, kidneys and liver aren't going to get too badly punished.
You drink your giro and you're left eeking out a few pitiful scraps of food for two weeks. There's no milk for your tea, then there's no tea, then there's no food. Thank God for the geriatric wide boys, at least you have roll-ups to kill your hunger a little.
It can't get any worse than this, so you think, but of course you're wrong, it can and will. Enter some meathead who's sussed you're on the edge of life and fancies hassling you, then there are all the others of his ilk you've picked up over the years.
With your giro you are suddenly free, it's like Christmas, 10 days of solitude and suddenly you are free, oh dear, in your exuberance you spunked the lot again.
Nobody will give me a job, nobody will leave me alone, day after day these thoughts run through your brain going nowhere. You write every day about this sense of angst, you call it your "work" but it produces nothing.
Then one day, you wake amid the circling buzzards to find your frenetic angst is listed high on the world wide web. You wake from this nightmare to find you suddenly have proof that you might, just, deserve better than this.
Life is really uncertain but at least you have your computer, the Internet and the pub once a fortnight. Then the doorbell rings and you know it's the bailiffs. You're not going to answer. You feel like some surreal tin-headed Ned Kelly whenever you open the letter box to check who it is, so you're not doing that either. You hope they go away soon. It's unlikely to be anyone but bailiffs, since everyone who knows you knows you never answer your door. Don't answer the door, never answer the door. It becomes like the mantra in Apocalypse now, "Don't ever get off the boat, never get off the boat."
Later, a letter lands on your mat and you know that, once again, the DSS are after your paltry "treasure". Even before you've opened the envelope you know: what other "news" is there?
The drama has been played out many times before, always running the same, increasing its nihilistic negativity exponentially, as the shabby old man draws nearer and nearer, but this time, perhaps, something is different?
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