Minimum wage reaches a new low of £1.36

On Friday night whilst I was in my favourite London metal bar, The Intrepid Fox, I received a call from someone I (vaguely) work with. Due to high decibel levels, and the fact that it was Friday night, I let it ring through to voicemail. The voicemail said something along the lines of "I need to speak with you urgently, call me back as soon as possible". Not knowing what could possibly be important enough to interrupt normal Friday night drinking, and not keen on standing in the -5 temperatures outside to call back, I totally forgot about it until last night, when I returned the call...

And so (somewhat inevitably) I am once again jobless. The call was in fact to inform me that due to company changes my employer can no longer find a position for me. It seems that I am just not suitable for a role in a fashion company. Which, to be honest, I knew from the start. The news itself wasn't particularly disheartening. My opinions on working for a fashion company with completely different ethics and opinions to myself have been brought up several times (I hate fashion), not to mention the ongoing feeling that the ad hoc nature of part-time work there was generally fucking me around. So in many respects, it is a relief to be free from an uneasy and uncommitted job which has caused more grief and frustration than enjoyment or satisfaction. The only downside would be the timing...

In December (I think), Milo, my boyfriend, got a job which he had been hoping for immensely, and which came with a huge wage increase. He immediately started planning holidays and events which he could now afford us to do. A weekend in Paris and a festival in Germany have already been booked. Two weeks ago, my employer said that in all likelihood, after a few things had been sorted, they would be able to employ me full time. Everything looked great. 2012 might not be so bad after all! That is until Milo's enthusiasm ended with a severely overdrawn account and a number of bank charges which he couldn't afford. And I, from the prospect of progressing from part-time work to full-time work, suddenly have no work at all. How life has a way of baking you a cake, only to take it back, beat the shit out of it, and then throw it at your face. 

To add insult to injury, the Jobcentre informed me at my last meeting that they were looking to put me onto another work placement scheme. Since I was just waiting to hear back from my employer with a start date for full-time work, I managed to postpone this. Ironically, it turns out that the Jobcentre are the very reason my employer couldn't employ me full time. He was looking into getting funding from them to start an apprenticeship of sorts, but due to a number of bureaucratic restrictions, I was not eligible for it. I have now been unemployed long enough to see that not only do the Jobcentre not help people look for work, they actively hinder it.

So now I expect that I will be put on another work placement scheme, which, since my cynicism has been ever increased by the last failed work placement, is sure to be a huge fucking waste of time. Not to mention how completely unfounded and hypocritical are the claims that these work placement schemes are helping people back into work. Not that I am stupid enough to believe anything that the Tories say is actually true, but upon first mention, the idea of work placements does seem like a great idea of getting people back into work. The only problem is, the number of jobs available is going down, as the number unemployed is going up. This discordance  of strategies on the part of the government; to slash the number of jobs whilst forcing the unemployed into unpaid work placements, is simply a way of justifying the former with the latter. And predictably, this is being abused by huge companies to receive free labour. 

To say that the government is adding to the pressure and discontent of a generation of young people unable to find work would be putting it lightly. To say that they are oppressively forcing people to work for their right to receive benefits is more accurate. And the idea that this is actually helping people is uninformed at best and a cruel mockery at worst. How can it possibly help young people, who are looking for work, frustrated at the continual headlines in the news that more job cuts are on the way, to push them into unpaid work, surrounded by people doing exactly the same job for a wage? How can it possibly motivate people when the job they are doing is, for all intents and purposes, unnecessary (and it must be, otherwise a paid position would be in its place)? How is it justified to not only allow, but to actually coerce people into working for £1.35 an hour when the minimum wage (for over 21) is £6.08?

Speaking from experience, this forced labour does not help people into full time work, since employers taking part in it are under no obligation to employ people at the end of their placements, and companies such as Tesco are simply using it as an opportunity to hire extra staff without it affecting their profits. Which means that after the end of the placement, people return to job-seeking, having gained nothing more than 3 months experience stacking shelves, which is hardly an invaluable CV addition. It should be obvious to anyone then that this scheme is not a great motivational tool either. And perhaps worst of all, is the way that it is making young unemployed people feel exploited, constrained and worthless: it is nothing less than draconian.

The disillusionment that I have felt, not only towards the government, but also towards the supposed support that I am due to receive from the Jobcentre, is nothing new. The longer a person is unemployed, the more dejected and apathetic they are bound to feel towards their situation. The situation is bad enough as it is; not having a job is shit, as anyone who has ever been unemployed knows. To be told by some Eton educated toff, who was born into wealth and never had to look for a job in his life, how to find a job, is adding salt to the wound. And the huge government cuts to the benefit system are a slap in the face to go with it. The feeling of disillusionment is nothing new, but now added to it are feelings of persecution. I will most likely be placed on a second work-placement scheme in the coming weeks, at the end of which I will not be guaranteed a full-time job. And what then? The government claims that this is helping me back into full-time employment. But if nothing is guaranteed, if the employers enlisted are under no obligations, if the people on these placements have absolutely no incentive (which they don't, since they are unpaid), if no real, full-time, paid positions are being created, then how can this possibly solve the unemployment problem which this government created?

I don't want to be a Telletubby

I am a crap employee. There is just no escaping this fact. It has become more and more evident over the past week or two that I am extremely bad at, well practically anything involved in being a good employee. Such as having an attention span longer than 2 seconds. And actually listening to instructions without arguing. But this may be due to the fact that I feel as though I am smarter than everyone. This is not arrogance. I'm sure it's not true a lot of the time. It's just more of an, "I'm sure I can work out how to do it myself" kind of stance. And this came to a head at work today, when I insisted, point blank, that what my boss was saying was completely and totally wrong.

Luckily, I was right. It turned out to be a misunderstanding over me rewriting a couple of documents, which I continued to state looked exactly the same, and couldn't possibly be rewritten to look completely different. Because in absolute honesty they were almost identical. Frustration and tension ensued when I couldn't make them sound different, which led to me placing them flat down on the table and saying "No! Look at them! They are exactly the same!", and it did in fact turn out that someone had printed the wrong documents or otherwise written the wrong thing... The bottom line is, I was right. But this was only proved by yelling at my boss.

This has got me thinking: don't people get fired for yelling at their boss? I didn't even yell exactly, but don't people get fired just for disagreeing with their boss? Or not taking their boss's word as fact, whether it's wrong or not? This has come up more than once in seminars about successfully finding and keeping a job: Agree with your boss, even if they are wrong. Well, this just seems silly. What if your boss being wrong could jeopardise the company, or on a smaller level, efficiency, as was the case with me today. I had been rewriting the damn thing for 2 days, and receiving the same response: that's not right, you're not doing it properly. If I hadn't got pissed off and said "Maybe you're not explaining it properly!" I could have been rewriting it for another two days.

I'm pretty sure that I have already done countless things in the short space of time that I have been interning that could have risked me getting fired in a paid job. But I am feigning ignorance of the ridiculous rules and regulations, the traditions and criterions of everyday employment. Simply because they are silly. And because I don't like being told how to do things which I can do perfectly well on my own. Never disagree with your boss. Well what if they are spectacularly wrong? Be jovial and always have a smile on your face. Well what if I'm in a shitty mood because my friend just died? Am I not allowed to be upset? Make conversations with the clients. Why not just do what they ask as quickly as possible? Because I'm sure they have better things to do than sit in a bank or an embassy and chat about the weather. Always try and sell a more profitable product. What if they don't want it? I'll feel like a twat if I keep asking them:

I think you should take out a credit card.

Oh, no I really don't want one.

But then you can spend whatever you want.

I can't afford one.

They have very reasonable APR.

I don't want to pay interest when I could just save my own money.

Ah, but then you'd have to wait.

I'm fine with waiting.

But wouldn't it be better to get what you want RIGHT NOW!

No, because I'd have to pay triple in the end.

It's really not that high, I can show -

Look, I just don't want a credit card.

Maybe I haven't explained to pros and cons very well.

You have, I just don't want one.

But there are many benefits -

I DON'T WANT A FUCKING CREDIT CARD!

Then that customer would hate the bank and change banks as soon as they could. I know this, because I have sold TalkTalk broadband before, and it is surprising just how many times I received the response, "Well, we were considering TalkTalk, but you are being very pushy so I think we'll go with BT now". The bottom line is, people don't like being told what to do. People don't like not being able to just walk around a shop in peace without a salesperson latching onto them until they feel uncomfortable and leave. And many people don't like having pointless conversations when they don't need to.

Everybody know these things. Everybody, it seems, except people who work in Human Resources. Apparently, people in Human Resources are always happy, and smiling, and having conversations with every single person that they meet. Which would explain why they never respond to emails or call you back. Apparently people from HR aren't actually people. Apparently, they are some other race who are always smiling, and always positive, like the Teletubbies. So whenever anyone gets pissed off because HR have sent down complaints from up on high about staff not stapling their mouths into permanent grins of absolute euphoria, or not forcing that mother of 6 who was just evicted to take out a credit card to pay for the cardboard box that will now be her home, or not having an hour's conversation with that person who just came in to change their address, just turn around and tell them that you don't want to be a fucking Teletubby.

I'm all about efficiency. I'm all about productivity. But I'm also all about independence. I accept that everyone has their own way of doing things. Why must employment become such a tedious, painfully trying experience by HR and management continually breathing down your neck about what you are doing wrong, and how you should be doing it? FYI, when you stand behind me or otherwise stand and watch everything I do, I am probably going to mess it up, under the pressure of observation. But I suppose this is what you want isn't it? For me to trip up so you can say "AHA! I knew you weren't being 100% productive!" and justify your ridiculous methods. Thankfully, I'm rather lucky. My boss prefers a more relaxed, amicable attitude at work, so the people there can work comfortably. There's no uniform (which, I am sure, is hugely damaging the efficiency of the staff because everybody knows that being incredibly uncomfortable all day makes people work much harder); we play music to the lighten the atmosphere (unfortunately this is often Hip-Hop, but I have been told I can play my own if I get more than one album to play); and I can get away with yelling at my boss, and pointing out when they are wrong, or late. I'm well aware that in any other job I would probably veer towards getting fired most of the time. And this is why when I was unemployed I comforted myself by thinking, well, at least I don't have to wear a suit and actually talk to people, and only speak in sports metaphors. For the time being, I'm very happy being a bad employee, because frankly, I think everyone should be able to yell at their boss when necessary.