Jesus Christ...

...just for a few days... no more interviews, assessments or form filling, please. Nor travel to far flung corners of the city where companies have moved from the now half abandoned offices of the CBD to save money, transferring the cost onto staff who now have to have cars or pay for an extra zone or two in travel each day.

On the upside, I'm marginally less crap at interviews that I was a couple of months ago.

Might apply for an **** credit card...

After all, I shall be able to afford it with the money from my new job. Got the support worker post in Cardiff - need to wait for my references and a CRB check to happen though, and then see how much in the way of hours I've got coming to me. The rate is decent though, so slightly shy of a full working week should see me better off than I was before, in any job. More importantly, it is work that I want to do.

Then there's the Council temping agency I've got an asssessment with tomorrow, then the interview on Wednesday for the other council full time job. So all is well.

In other news, the Fourth Planet is working her backside off in a radical departure from her usual workshy self and Dad has a hospital dooberry which might not turn out to be too major.

Computers are hell - fixed Lee's and now have Pa-in-law's to get XP onto. It is a bloody nightmare. Also my pagefile is resident is some obscure ex-partition data folder on my c:\ drive and I can't shift it or tell how it got there. Then I downloaded an iso of Ubuntu's latest LTS release and that has bloody errors when I burn it. Nothing is working, apart from Lee's laptop which is the only thing that was broken through poor usage and not by me, so there's a karmic inversion happening and I can't think why, or how to fix it.

And all that I knew was the hole in my roof

...which was letting in water.

The handyman is here, knocking through the dodgy roof in the extension. I can see sky now, and it looks like rain. Seems the roof was made of chipboardy stuff which you can't use anymore so he's off to get something better instead.

Me, I'm revising for an interview on Friday. And fixing old computer bits for Alan.

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Denouement

I've got 2 interviews - great opportunities though I'm not quantifying my hens numericaly just yet. The chance most relevant to my intended career path is one I'd never have known about let alone applied for had I still been underwriting. Feeling justified - it's almost as good as feeling drunk.

...and out the other side

Meh. So I lost patience with the dodgy bank and agency and in return they cancelled my salary to my bank account as I was 'uncontactable' when in reality I had both phoned and emailed them the same day I chose not to go anymore. Luckily I wasn't uncontactable through having been in a car crash or something, in which case not receiving my salary into my bank account as agreed would have been disastrous. Way to not act in the best interests of the welfare of your employees, guys! They wanted me to collect my cheque from the office on Friday and have a chin-wag about why I was so dissatisfied with the job. They were livid that I'd not complained and given them a chance to sort out my issues prior to leaving. Such naivety would be endearing from a sincere mouth but frankly if they think I'm stupid enough after so many years working in these places to think that my complaint would be listened to (or in the faintly possible circumstance that it was, I'd get the credit I deserve for doing the training manager's job for them for a pittance) I've no time for them. Not to mention the complaint I did make about the main issues on my first day which never got any further than the manager I made it to.

Regardless, I sent an apologetic email and a breakdown of the areas I was dissatisfied with, bobbed in this morning and collected my salary cheque. Game Over. Coupled with my receipt of expenses dating back to my last job in Hull which the Post Office failed to deliver and didn't think they should have to make amends for, I'm up straight and can put all the dishonesty and incompetence I'd been mired in since moving down here behind me. Since leaving uni I've had a variety of problems with agencies and such but never anything on this scale. I've not always been the perfect employee but in recent years I've proved my worth and ability a good few times over and I am worth more than they took me and my colleagues for. Honesty about what the job involves for one thing. Focus stays squarely on jobs with organisations who aren't only answerable to their shareholders from now on. I've one interview shortlisted and I'm hopeful for another, rather excellent job for which the app went in on Wednesday. There's the council agency forms sat here in front of me to be filled in as well. I like making progress. And making a difference to the world around me, too - which is what I'll be doing if either of these employers want me.

When I was ten years younger I would work in offices and training with me would be people a decade older and then a few older than that. The elder ones knew how to play the game, got their heads down, took all the institutionalised nonsense and did their typical 3 or 4 days a week, earned some cash while their partners brought home the real bacon. Then there was those like me - the artificial underclass - fresh out of university with heads full of ideas and capable of lots - placating boorish customers on headsets all day for near-minimum wage. The ones a bit older, late twenties - you always liked them because they were the ones who would question things that didn't make any sense, were able to pick up the work quickly and help others though any training and generally got along. After a few weeks they'd be off to greener pastures though and my lot would try and persuade them to stay, because they were handy to have around and we got on. I could never see that the fact we could have a laugh despite the crappy nature of the job wasn't enough for them, that they wanted fulfillment and to be treated like an individual, valued for their unique talents whatever they might be. When they left, others would come and the process repeated. I've lost count of how many people have been by my side in some identikit factory-style office one day and teaching children in outer mongolia or walking the beat or doing mammograms or delivering babies the next. The time for me to make that same leap came a couple of years back and I took it, then I took it again, and it worked. Now I've moved down here and the worst disservice I could do to myself would be to lapse back into temp mode.

I am happy to do temp work while finding the right career move - I don't expect that to happen overnight. But I will not be lied to, or condescended to, or mucked about where my pay is concerned. If I did, I'd be failing to show others that they can do better, the way others showed me it was possible when I was younger and had no idea how I would ever find a job doing anything of worth or that I enjoyed. More importantly, I'd be hell to live with and when you've had the support I've been shown by my wife these last few years, you learn that there's nothing more valuable and that where you can, you avoid giving them a monster to come home to after their own hard day at work.

Application Declined

Well that was some fortnight.

No sooner had my reinvigorated 'balls to the agencies and their lies' jobsearch commenced in earnest than I got a mail from Kelly Services declaring that I'd be able to have a job underwriting credit card applications at the notoriously (well, in trade union circles, anyway) bad to their staff national bank based up by the M4 in Cardiff. Free bus travel there and back, good hours and good rate of pay. Is it a callcentre? Goodness me, no! So that was ok then.

Bollocks.

First day in there - "Here's an example of some of the calls you will be taking". I was persuaded to stay whilst on the random free minibus that occasionally is there to take you to or from work by the other lads I was training with - for the training fortnight at least. But despite my making it clear in both the afternoon's worth of tests Kellys put me through and the subsequent interview at the centre itself that I could not and would not work in a callcentre environment, they took the 'we'll give him the job anyway' approach. To be honest, come day three and the introduction of the processes and software we'd be using, I was almost looking forward to it - all my contact gathering to find something else was put on hold while I gave this training my all.

Needn't have bothered my arse really, as we had a week of sitting there as a total newcomer to training people read from an overcomplicated (we simplified it ourselves eventually) flowchart book. About a hundred pages worth. Alas, the spelling and grammar in these had not been checked and she was hopeless at reading aloud anyway (one of these people who are perpetually talking about something being done 'pacifically', for example). So even if I had had the patience to sit there for a week reading procedural notes that won't lay root in my head until I've applied them in context using real applications, I'd not have been able to as someone else was reading them out, badly, as I tried to.

In total, come the 'exams' you have to pass to get onto the shop floor and begin taking calls from thick people, I'd spent at least twelve or thirteen minutes by myself in front of a computer working apps and learning by doing, which is how I learn. Alas, they want you to have instant recall on these hundreds of pages of if, then processes for the exam. This last week has been torture for many of my colleagues, and I myself was the first of many to have a total loss of memory recall in the final test - strangely enough all the people studying to be underwriters who'd been working slightly less complicated jobs ON THE COMPUTERS WITH FULL ACCESS TO ALL THE SOFTWARE AND MANUALS FOR A FEW WEEKS BEFOREHAND passed, and all those of us who'd only had the fortnight's reading aloud failed the first time. I've got a resit on Monday, but I'm not going.

The party line (we've all had it) is, when you are being told you've got a resit "We've all had to take these exams too, and you've had 2 weeks to learn this stuff" I must confess to biting my tongue during my own debrief though others were not so reticent - we are sure the examiners weren't trained by the hapless wench we were, nor were they crammed into any little room that could be found, three to a one person desk, 4 to a half-working computer, because clearly no planning at all had been done for the training fortnight. I've worked at about 6 different financial places in the last ten years, even provided a training programme across a region myself for one of them, and I've never come across a lack of forward planning like this, be that in scale or longevity or bare-faced ignorance of all staff involved in the provision of this training.

I could elaborate more, write a more cohesive entry. I may even add to this post or edit it in the not-too-distant, but to be honest the sooner I record the fact that this fortnight happened and move on, the happier I'll be. It is the weekend and I'm not going to dwell on the futile. Suffice it to say I was happy to return on Monday and have a go at the resit, even spend the weekend studying, as they promised me a Friday of consolidation training wise after I failed my final exam on Thursday (passed the mock top of the class, naturally, and 100% on all other tests through the week!). Friday turned out to be me being fed a load of apps that only required me to do the stuff I already knew and ten whole minutes of contact time with her ladyship, in which I did learn some things I needed to know. The rest of the time was spent waiting for her to finish dealing with the whinges of those who'd already passed their exams and were 'bored' because their computers were broken. With such skewed priorities, eight hours of staring at that same bloody manual with no option to actually learn something in a proper manner left me with a splitting headache, not helped by the kid next to me doing phone work, repeating the same bloody script over and over and over and over until I hated her. At one minute to four I thought I might pack up and go home, seeing as I'd been unable to do anything constructive for most of the day and had a pain behind my eyes. I was still prepared to come in for one last hurrah on Monday though. Then she decided to bawl me and a few colleagues out for being packed to go home a whole minute early. Smart move, darling - you've just caused someone recognised to be the most experienced and capable person in your training team to walk out.

The days of me working these kinds of jobs are over. If I let myself be treated in a disrespectful manner, I deserve nothing else. I am a capable and talented bloke, I've done a lot and achieved much - but that counts for nothing if someone's blind adherence to pointless technicalities and unwillingness to challenge the status quo is going to dominate your every working moment.

Had she ever even tried to represent the wishes of the whole team - that we be allowed to work on the systems in order to learn our roles and that we not have to listen to her reading aloud for four whole days - I'd have taken that last little comment on the chin but she didn't so much cross the line there as take a running jump at it.

Still, 2 week's salary for staring in bemused wonderment at a car crash of a training program probably isn't all that bad a return. I have made some cracking acquaintances and hope to stay in touch with a couple of them at least.