Bournville boating lake, May 5th
So I asked my boss for advice. What should I wear to the interview for the caretaker job? She said as smart as possible, the logic being they’re going to assume I won’t be dressing as smart for the job itself so if I go casual I’ll probably be a scruff-ball in reality. Which, of course, I am.
I have a pair of smart trousers, though I can’t remember why I bought them and I have a tie which I think came from Debenhams in Winchester around 1990. I also have a blazer bought for my by my mum for my first ever job interview though I probably won’t wear that. I don’t, however, have a shirt. Or at least I have shirts, but they’re not the sort of shirts you wear with a tie.
So I had to go clothes shopping.
This scares the shit out of me.
Primark was recommended as somewhere cheap and functional so I went there. As I’m sure you all know it’s shockingly cheap, a temple to slave-labour global capitalism and bugger the consequences. I found the shirts but they had these numbers all over them which were supposed to relate to the dimensions of my torso, except I don’t know the dimensions of my torso. I’m a medium, usually. I asked for a tape measure but they didn’t have one. I guess when you’re selling stuff that cheaply people just throw it away if it doesn’t fit. So I went to see Andy at work, who buys shirts more than once a decade, and he told me I was probably a 15-16″ neck and a 36-40″ chest, which I diligently wrote down.
The shirt, in a delicate pale cream, cost £4. I then noticed socks at £2 for 5, so I got some of them. And then I queued for ages, despite it being 9.30am, as people piled huge mountains of stitched material on the counters.
I left in a bit of a quandry. I don’t buy a lot of clothes (save a minor t-shirt habit) mainly due to the cost (plus the horror of actually purchasing them), but here are clothes at prices I deem reasonable, except morally it’s all so very wrong. But then pretty much anything I buy that’s manufactured abroad is going to have moral implications, from a cake of CD-Rs to cheapo bin liners (not to mention my tobacco) but clothes have a higher profile in the ethical wars, so I’m being somewhat hypocritical to get all high-horse about my £4 shirt while saving up (still) for an iPod.
Probably just best to be aware but not get all tied up in knots about it, for that way leads to madness and a tendency to be an annoyingly sanctimonious wanker.
I’m reading ‘I, Lucifer’ by Glen Duncan at the moment and there’s a nice bit were Lucifer takes credit of multinational parent companies, “These days, thanks to me,unless you pack up and go and live in a cave, you’re putting you money into evil and shit.”
Pretty much sums it up, and handy to have the get out clause of ‘the devil made me do it.’
heh.
All funny.
I just find it funny that you went to Primark, the rest is icing ontcake.
You need a shirt for a job interview. If you get this job you will enjoy the protection of minimum wage laws, health and safety laws, holiday entitlement laws, in fact a whole shit load of legislation aimed at protecting the rights of workers. These rights have been hard fought for by previous generations.
The shirt you purchased was, most likely, made by workers who have little or no protection of their rights. Minimal wages. Minimal to non existant health and safety. No right to join a trades union.
I don’t think its being an “annoyingly sanctimonious wanker” to speak out against the abuse of foreign workers so we can buy cheap consumer goods. I think the ‘fuck it, let the market decide’ attitude stinks. I also think the ‘fuck it, what can one person do’ defeatist attitude is a piss poor excuse that is used by people that KNOW one persons consumer choice DOES make a difference but need an excuse to explain to themselves the poor moral choices they are making in their lives.
So I will carry being an “annoyingly sanctimonious wanker”. I will not shop at ASDA. I will buy Fairtrade when its available. Its not about wearing a ‘hair shirt’, but about making the right choices when they present themselves. Your choice was simple, buy a cheap shirt or a slightly more expensive shirt. The difference to you is not much, waiting a bit longer before you buy that iPod, the difference to the workers that made the shirt is probably more dramatic.