Factory fun

The main thing I have discovered about finding a job in a small
northern town (in this case Wigan) - whether temporary or not - is that
it's generally a case of being shunted into whichever factory or
warehouse has a vacancy at that particular moment. Don't get me wrong,
there are office jobs out there to be had, but to try and get one you
have to possess the blind optimism of someone who believes a 14 million
to one chance on the national lottery is "still a chance", while to
actually get one you need the technical and mental ability of a frog. A
frog that's had a heavy night on the tiles at that.

With blind faith in my heart and an A level, degree and office
experience-laden CV in hand, thereby failing me on one of the two
criteria before I'd even started, I went to the jobcentre to find a job
in an office.

Well, that's not totally true. I actually went to sign on as, after
over a year working in an office for a female boss who had obviously
had problems with male authority figures in the past and was damn well
going to get her own back on any man who crossed her path now she was
in charge, I decided I needed a break. I had a month to kill before I
left for Australia and thought I may as well claim the dole while I was
waiting. I didn't say any of this though. Instead, I followed the rules
and said I'd like to work in an office. I might as well have asked for
the woman sitting in front of me with a heavily made-up blank
expression to strain me a cup of tea from her armpit.

"Do you have any experience in picking and packing?" she said.

"Yes," I said, trying not to lie (it was my first attempt to live off
the state and I wasn't nearly as savvy with the unwritten rules of
engagement as I am now).

Hoping I didn't sound snobbish, I added, "I have experience of working
in offices too. My last job was in an office, for eighteen months. I've
got 'A' Levels. And a degree. Is there no office work going?"

Evidently I did sound snobbish, and evidently my new-found nemesis
didn't give a monkey's chuff if I'd worked on the board at ICI, there
were picking and packing jobs going and that was what I was going to
get.

"You have to be seen to be looking for work if you want to claim, you
know," she said, and I could tell that, late at night, wrapped up in a
blanket in front of the telly with a bowl of cereal and a fat, scraggy
cat beside her, she would just squirm with pleasure knowing that little
bit of the law gave her the right to say that sentence to people like
me day in, day out, and there was nack all anyone could do about
it.

"All I've got's picking and packing."

I gave up and picked and packed, despite having vowed never to do it
again. Saying that though, not all of my previous experiences had been
total nightmares with everything taken into account. I'd worked in this
huge warehouse one summer a couple of years before and the money had
been good enough to transport my thoughts away from the fact that my
brain was turning to mush with every step I took along the dusty rows
between line after line of shrink-wrapped clothes that really should
never have seen the light of day.

Working two night shifts on a Saturday and Sunday night earned you the
equivalent of a full weeks' wages and if you turned up late you'd miss
the work detail and could just wander about at will, doing bugger all
and getting paid decent money for the privilege. You couldn't be too
late though or your wages would be docked when they checked your
clocking-in card, but after a bit of trial and error my friend and I
once engineered our circumstances well enough to ensure we were paid
somewhere in the vicinity of ?12 for spending an hour and a half asleep
on the toilet. Separate cubicles, of course.

Away from picking and packing garments designed by an obviously
deranged, drunken tailor there were the delights of the carpet factory,
where the unfeasibly loud machines took you on a trip down memory lane
to cotton mills and women going stone deaf row by row. To combat the
noise, employees were given cotton wool sound proofers to be placed
inside your ears, although one particular member of staff I had managed
to get lumbered with, having to listen to his endless, pointless
stories about clapped-out cars and innumerable failed relationships,
was so cautious about not going deaf he pushed the cotton wool so far
into his ear he had to be taken to hospital to have the offending
pieces surgically removed.

As if having endured failed relationships by the truck load and
speaking with a voice that had all the charm and range of a house alarm
going off two doors up the road throughout the day wasn't bad enough,
they sacked him as well. Hopefully he's found happiness somewhere, he
wasn't a bad bloke all in all.

And then there was the crisp warehouse. Ever wondered what jobs men
with an abnormal interest in young girls take when they're not employed
as school caretakers? There was this young, good looking teacher at my
high school, who, a few years after I left, was caught masturbating in
his car over the girls walking out the front gates.

I'd never had much to do with him when I'd actually been at school and
never expected to see him again as long as I lived. So, of course, when
I'm pulling a palette truck loaded with crisp boxes round a corner one
night, he's stood right there. He bloody recognises me as well. What do
you say when you know something like that about someone you vaguely
know, but haven't really thought of the right way to go about being
disgusted because you never thought you'd see them again? Of course,
being your typical coward, I nodded a hello and walked on, hoping I
wouldn't bump into him again, which, thanks to my lackadaisical work
ethic, I didn't.

Because finally you snap. You realise it just isn't worth it. One
Friday night I turned up and, instead of being put on this sort of
motorised truck thing that made my nights something like fun, I was
given the most mundane job in the place - wrapping the crates of crisps
with cellophane. Five minutes in I clocked off, got in my car, drove to
town and went out to get plastered with my mates instead.

I received a call to tell me I was sacked the next morning, but by that
point I really didn't care. One summer had given me enough carpet to
cover the hall of my student house in Leeds, enough bags of crisps to
get everyone I knew seriously fat and the knowledge that there is
always someone, somewhere with far more problems than you. Possibly
with cotton wool swimming around their inner ear.