The IWDTFM team during office hours

It will come as a shock to absolutely no one to find out that, every once in a while, when the moon is full and the leylines are aligned, I complain about my job.

This is not an uncommon occurrence. We spend a third of every day at work. Eight hours out of twenty-four. Apparently, the UK workforce is one of the hardest working populations in the world, putting in an average of £5,129-worth of overtime every year. I don’t really put in much extra time, although to my credit I’ve been known to stay late if something needs finishing. Most days, however, I’m out the office sometime between five-thirty and six o’clock with a spring in my step and my evening ahead of me.

So what do I complain about? The usual, really. Being tired, being busy, being bored, being hungry, wanting to go and play outside, wanting to stay and play inside. Wanting to be anywhere but cooped up in an office working for a living.

Complaining for the sake of complaining

I can safely say I don’t have a bad job. In fact, I rather enjoy my job, as it goes. I love the people I work with, I get to talk to interesting clients, and I’m doing work that – mostly – I enjoy and can get passionate about.

I was reminded recently about the fact that there are far worse jobs than mine.

I’ve worked a fair few of these jobs. My last job, I worked a weekend night-shift. My first night of the week was Friday night, and I finished at eight o’clock on Tuesday morning. For a long time – nearly four years – my social life consisted of after-work fry-ups in the Bromley Grill (probably the only place in Bromley that qualifies as “worth a visit”). I enjoyed the job when things went smoothly: the other members of the shift ranged from “I’m still friends with them” to “people won’t employ you in day-light, will they?”. Occasionally, I was known to get somewhat frustrated, both with the job and with the hours, but I got by happily enough before leaving on good terms with my employers.

I also worked for maybe two years on an IT helpdesk for a major UK bank. For all the welcome experience I gleaned from being there – and for all the people I met with whom I am still good friends – my only major memory is leaning back in my chair sometime during my second week and thinking, “These are the people who control all my money? Christ.”

Spotty employment history

Aside from this selection, much of my past employment consisted of temp jobs that funded my habit of buying CDs (remember them?) at university. And I had some beauties. I worked a week on a construction site, which was a recruitment cock-up on behalf of Reed Employment given that I can’t climb a set of stairs without wheezing. I did 12-hour shifts for two months at a plastic factory, where I obtained a whole new set of swear words and vibration white finger. I worked in more kitchens than I can count.

The first kitchen porter job I ever had, one of the chefs had a proper toddler temper tantrum an hour after I started because I was neatly stacking clean pots on the empty shelves next to me, instead of putting them away in their secret hiding places that only he knew about. He’s the reason I distrust people who think they wield ultimate power over their employees. A little respect – even for the guy who does the dishes – goes a long way.

I spent several summer holidays litter-picking round High Wycombe, including a month working nights. I enjoyed that. Okay, I was emptying bins and putting dead animals into the rubbish crusher (including, on one memorable occasion, a deer on a hot summer day), but on the other hand I got to drive vans and pick up money from the pavements outside pubs after closing time. I used to make at least £70 a week extra from money dropped by drunks. And, because this was back when cigarette companies were still allowed to promote using tokens and free gifts, I managed to save up enough Benson & Hedges points to send off for a new watch. It was a nice watch, too.

I’ve driven for Securicor Omega, I’ve gotten free books from Penguin, and I’ve delivered more pizzas round Wales than you’ve ever had pizzas in your entire life. I once worked for a cardboard box factory. I lasted a day. Despite having an A-Level in Maths, by lunchtime I couldn’t count to twenty. Seriously.

I don’t regret any of this, but I do recognise that I’ve had some desperately shitty jobs on the way to getting to my current position as “paid writer”. But, as I said, not the worst jobs in the world.

Money versus morals

Someone very close to me was talking about their new job working for a loan company. I knew she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the job when she described the company as “one of those barely legal loan-shark places”. Basically, people with large overdrafts come in with their pay cheques and pay £20 so that the money isn’t swallowed by their debts. So that they can eat.

Or they might ask for a loan. I asked how much interest someone might expect to pay. Answer: somewhere between 200 and 250 percent. This is a service aimed at people for whom all the good financial advice in the world wouldn’t make a dent in their debts.

The company does other stuff. It wires money abroad, it deals in pre-paid credit cards: basic, run-of-the-mill services. But because my friend is a good human being, she has trouble getting her morals past the ugly part: the bit where she has to fleece the poor.

The bright side

Unfortunately, same as the people she gives money to, she needs to live, and for that she needs to get paid. It’s a very hard job market at the moment. She might be stuck with this for now, but – sooner or later – she’ll find something better because she’s clever and funny and hard working. Then she’ll look back on this and say, “Thank God that’s over, but it wasn’t so bad.” That’s how it goes. We work, we complain, we move on, we find better jobs.

I only know one person who had a job that she couldn’t move on from. One of my exes once worked for a clothing company, testing barcodes. She had a handheld barcode reader, with which she would scan every article of clothing that passed her. If the reader detected a working barcode – a working one, mind, which would be 99 percent of them – it would proclaim in a loud Northern accent, “barcode”.

“Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.”

“Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.”

“Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.”

“Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.”

“Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.” “Baa-cood.”

She used to have dreams about it. “Hell,” she once said, “is a rack of new clothes with the labels facing out, ready for scanning.”

Now get back to work.

For AJ

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