Normally I don’t mind being on standby, leaving the phone on all night to be woken, or not, by an urgent call from Kat or Louise sending me off to a far flung industrial estate for a loosely specified job of mystery. I jot down the details, check the A-Z, figure out the bus route, give an ETA, make my sandwiches and off I go on my mission. This morning, however, I kinda minded.
It could have been for a number of reasons. Perhaps it was Louise whose telephone manner isn’t particularly conducive to getting a tired temp excited about work. Kat has this ability to get you rushing to shovel shit and not resent her when you realise you’re actually shoveling shit but Louise just ain’t got it. Perhaps it was the non-specific funk I’d found myself in on Sunday where everything in my life was just that little bit too annoying. Perhaps the odds of it being a crap job were just a little too close after actually enjoying my work for the last three weeks. Perhaps it was the likelihood that I’ll no longer be temping should the street cleaning job come to fruition.
So I got my stuff together but slowly. I’d said I’d been there in an hour and a half rather than the hour Louise had suggested. As I was buying a paper Louise phoned me for an update and was fretting that I hadn’t caught the bus yet. Then, when I’m about to get off the bus in town she phones again, fretting at my plan to walk to Nechells rather than get a bus. The client is hassling her as to where I am but I’m of the opinion that when you’re woken up for a job you get there when you get there and 90 minutes isn’t bad from bed. Maybe I’m unreasonable but if the client hasn’t planned their staffing then that’s their lookout. It’s never been a problem in the past so this tension isn’t making my expectations of the job very rosy.
So I get to the warehouse place at 9.05am, 90 minutes to the dot from the wake-up call. I’m to be a driver’s mate delivering stuff around Birmingham but because the driver usually starts at 7.30 he’s gone off to do a couple of drops without me, so they find some menial nonessential work for me to do until he comes back. For this I rushed? Whatever. The guy gets back at ten and I get into the van. To cut a long story short he’s a miserable racist git and I’m stuck with him for the next six hours. The job isn’t that hard, though he says it is, and the company is shite.
During the tedium I rehearsed in my mind how I might write this day up but to be honest I can’t be arsed. Halfway through the job the agency phoned. They need someone to work there for the rest of the week. I say no, the money (£4.50ph) isn’t good enough, let me know if something better comes up. Apparently this job has been going since November and they can’t get anyone to fill it either full time or through the agency. The driver reckons it’s the money but I suspect it might be because he’s an insufferable cunt. I’m prepared to work, short term, for £4.50 – it’s not great but it pays the bills. This, however, ain’t worth it.
I probably need a break from temping. I think I’ll leave my phone “accidentally” switched off tonight, or maybe find that I’ve had to rush off to visit a sick relative. The weather forecast, while cold, is dry for the rest of the week so I may well apply my new found clearing skills to the back garden. And wait for the call from the council.
(The job was one of those slightly unique jobs that to give any details at all would identify not only the company but the driver, hence, since I have nothing good to say, the vagueness.)
“Apparently this job has been going since November and they can’t get anyone to fill it either full time or through the agency.” Oh, one of them. Like _____ at _____ who had an entire room full of temps because noone would willingly talk to her if they could avoid it, let alone work for her …. (still manager at the same place, as far as I’m aware — her sort endure).
Might be worth telling the temping agency (if they call with the same job again, as they are wont to do, “I know you said you didn’t want this but …”) that the problem isn’t just the money, it’s that the driver is difficult to work with.
Incredibly, not even his manager may know that’s the problem with the job; who would be, unless they were spending time in the cab with him?
Complaining about racist or sexist coworkers when you’re a white man is (yes, unfairly) tricky, but you can still complain about things like intimidation (conversational or physical), inappropriate conversation (someone telling you lots of personal stuff, for example) …
and often I find annoyance is masking more direct concerns about the safety of my work environment. For example, you don’t really want to be in a fast-moving vehicle with a person whose judgement you don’t trust.