I recently signed up with Labour Direct, an organisation that supplies temporary workers to construction, manufacturing, hospitality services, warehousing, retail and other industries. One of their mottoes seems to be ‘work today, get paid today’. Well I worked and I got paid and had a few interesting experiences along the way.

I signed up at Labour Ready’s office on Bread Street, Edinburgh by proving I am who I say I am and that I have an NI number and so am allowed to work in the UK. I was told there was little chance of getting any office work – other temp agencies handle this market – but that there was likely to be some recycling or removals work. A couple of days after signing up, LR called me and offered me removals work the following day (Thursday of last week).

I had to report to their office at 06:50, be issued with protective clothing (trousers, boots and a luminous waistcoat) and a time-sheet then bus to my workplace, a well-known removals and storage company in Edinburgh’s docklands. Two other temps were going with me: a Hungarian called Attila (of course!) and an anonymous Australian from Canberra. We talked about Scotland’s lack of cricket on TV and our countries’ tourist attractions. The Aussie ventured that ‘Australia’s got a fucking big rock’.

We arrived at the workplace just after 8am and were assigned to our drivers. I was taken to meet Damian: what a lovely bloke! He’s originally from Manchester but lives in Dundee. He and it deserve each other. He took one look at me and walked off in disgust. He told me later that he’d been told I was Polish and so, in his opinion, I wouldn’t be able to understand what he’d be telling me to do. I stood around for a moment and then went back into the office to ask what to do. The dispatcher cheerily said ‘that’s Damian all over. He’s a miserable cunt and doesn’t fucking understand that every bastard’s got to have a first fucking day. I’m sick of the miserable bastard. I wish he’d fuck off and then I’d have nothing more to do with fucking Dundee. Just go and see him again and if he gives you any shit, come back here and I’ll tell him to fuck off.’

Thus fortified, I trundled back to Damian, received an apology because I wasn’t Polish and he was upset because he needed three experienced removals workers for today’s job and had been issued with two brand-new temps and was told to get some wardrobe bars. The forklift driver told me where to find them so I picked up 10 and brought them to Damian. He put 4 on the truck, along with some cardboard boxes, tape and other removals kit. Some time later the other temp arrived and we set off for Bathgate.

I guess the other temp was originally from Egypt or Turkey but he called London home. He was a Muslim and observing Ramadan so didn’t even drink water during the day. He was quiet, friendly had a gentle sense of humour and made up for Damian being the worst boss I’ve ever suffered. The job was to pack and load onto the lorry the contents of a 4-bedroomed semi. I assumed we were meant to take care of the family’s stuff. I’d certainly want to because that’s how I’d want removals people to treat my kit and because they were friendly, offered us tea all the time, bought us lunch and gave us each a £5 tip.

But I couldn’t pack fast enough for Damian, I used a tape-gun to tape up boxes, I used too much tape to secure the bottoms of the boxes, didn’t know how to get big objects down stairs properly and wasn’t strong enough and was basically useless in his opinion and should just sit in the lorry and let him get on with the job. He also threatened to drive home to Dundee, leaving me (and my colleague) stranded in Bathgate. I realise now that this was bluster but, at the time, he had me nearly in tears. I choked them back because I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of beating me and because although I know I’m hardly suited for this kind of work I’m going to give any task my best shot.

I accepted most of his criticism silently partly because I didn’t want to be sent away (and so lose pay), partly because he tended to apologise after each outburst and partly because I knew I wasn’t strong or experienced but would get stronger with regular manual work and better with more experience. As for the tape-gun conundrum: well I know I’m much faster with the gun than without it. He can go faster without it than I can so each to his own.

I only swore out loud once when I overheard Damian say to the family ‘you know we can’t pack paints or other things that might burn’ because he hadn’t told me this and so I’d merrily packed paint, fuel and thinners. He overheard me say ‘oh bloody hell’ and asked why, then told me ‘they’re packed, leave them, we’ve no time to unpack them’.

It turned out the family had vastly underestimated the number of boxes we’d need to pack and the volume their stuff would occupy. A small van delivered more boxes in the middle of the morning and in the afternoon, Damian drove the lorry back to Edinburgh to unload the boxes we’d already packed and arranged for another lorry to pick up the stuff we’d yet to pack. My colleague and I finished packing it just before the other lorry arrived. The driver asked me if we’d done the paperwork. I replied ‘no but tell me what needs done or give me a look at the paperwork and we’ll do it, no worries’. The paperwork was carbonless forms recording the number of boxes or other items as they were loaded onto the lorry: no problem. Just as we finished, Damian returned, much to my relief: he’d driven off with my rucsac (containing my wallet, phone and PDA) in the cab and I’d begun to fear I’d seen the last of them.

Damian drove us back to Edinburgh, dropping us off near the airport so he could try to get back to Dundee legally. HGV drivers can drive at most two lots of four-and-a-half hours each day, separated by an hour’s break. They then have to wait at least 8 hours before they can drive again. Because we didn’t get dropped off until 7:45 and he was likely to take at least 2 hours to drive his lorry back to Dundee, he would be risking illegality if he started at the usual time (5.30am) them next day. Also he was risking breaking the total time allowed that day because he’d have driven from Dundee to Edinburgh and back (minimum 4 hours) and twice from Edinburgh to Bathgate and back twice (at least an hour each way). This had added to his foul mood.

However on the way to Edinburgh, he became a lot more friendly and apologised again for his criticism, explaining again that it wasn’t my fault I was not suited to this work and that he was actually angry with the company for not assigning him sufficient, experienced labourers. I’d still never want to work with him again. He encouraged my colleague and I to claim we’d worked half an hour more than we actually had. I didn’t, losing me a whopping £2·53 but gaining me a fairly clean conscience.

Labour Ready’s office had closed by the time we arrived in Edinburgh. So this was a case of ‘work today, get paid some other time’.

On Friday morning, Labour Ready called me at 9am and asked me if I’d go straight to the removals company’s depot for some more work. I got there just after 10, was given a company shirt and assigned to a driver who’d brought a load over from Belfast to go to a flat in Morningside. The driver was gentle, softly-spoken and thanked me for navigating him to Morningside, even though I took him a long route (which I knew rather than trying for a short route and risking getting horribly lost in Edinburgh’s suburbs) and then thanked me again for navigating around roadworks that threatened to make the delivery address unreachable. My labouring colleague was Polish but guess what: he spoke English very well, even though he didn’t think so. He was also gentle and made sure that I took loads I could carry, reserving heavy loads for himself because he was stronger. When I thanked him for this, he said he was a bad man. I saw no sign of this and wonder what was on his conscience.

The woman whose kit was being delivered was much less friendly, insisting that we put her plants exactly where she wanted them, then changing her mind and making us move them. The plants were in bloody heavy terracotta pots and so it wasn’t fun to move them repeatedly. She also criticised us for not bringing in her kit in the order she wanted. We couldn’t: we could only unpack it in the reverse of the order it had been packed into the van and it took two people to move each plant pot with the care it needed. So the spare person (often me) brought in whatever else we could reach. I’m also miffed that a person who can afford to live in Morningside and have several paintings costing over £700 didn’t offer so much as a cup of tea, let alone a tip. Still, this was a much easier day: the average box-size was much smaller and I only worked 5 hours this day and so was back at Labour Ready in time to get paid.

All this work was at minimum wage (£5·05 per hour) so for 16·5 hours of back-ache and bullshit I earned £85·03. It doesn’t feel like much but it’s almost twice the amount I’d get if the DWP was giving me JobSeeker’s allowance (and I’ve received nothing so far despite claiming it on 28th September, the day after I arrived back in the UK).

I Can’t Get Behind That – William Shatner & Henry Rollins

Employment
I’m reduced to applying to be a Benefit Processing Officer in Worcester. The application form is written in DWP-ese and asks a series of ‘tell us about yourself’ questions instead of providing a space in which candidates can promote themselves. One of the best was

Decide which of the following most closely describes you:

1. I tried to ensure that I was as fair as I could be and that everyone got the same treatment no matter how I felt personally.
2. I can’t pretend I treated all people the same. The ones who were undeserving and had bad attitudes didn’t get any more assistance from me than I had to give them.
3. I started out with the intention of treating everyone equally but found that I liked some people more than others and must admit that I was more likely to go out of my way for them.
4. I tried always to be fair and helpful but must admit that how I treated people could vary with how they treated me and how I felt on the day.

How would you choose if you were applying for a job with a public service organisation?

I’m applying for some IT/design/web roles at Edinburgh Uni and have applications in for similar roles for a single-parent support body and a housing association.

I’m also seriously considering touting myself to Edinburgh schools for classroom assistant positions. I should have a reasonable idea of the syllabi from my last job.

Don’t click here.

I appear to have over two gigabytes of photos and videos from India and Indonesia.

I’m sure there is a little duplication of files in there. I’m also sure that quite a lot of the photos aren’t that good. Also, many of the photos are at 2048 by 1536 pixels. Need to automate photoshop to reduce these all to 640 by 480.

Also, a lot of the video was taken with the camera on its end. Can someone recommend software that can rotate the footage, please? I’d hope for freeware but I’m not platform-bound: I can dirty my hands on my dad’s XP box.

How do I know I’m back in England?

• I’m using my beloved Pismo.
• I’m wary of wearing my lunghi.
• People piss in the street while walking into Cheltenham station. I think the lout in question was a Birmingham city fan. So he didn’t have much to be proud of.

Moments of Panic 1
My ecosse.net mailbox has been full for the past few days. (Yes I know I’m a magpie!) So one of my first ‘sorting-out’ tasks yesterday was to try to boot up the Pismo. I can’t express the horror I felt when she wouldn’t start up, despite being plugged into a known-good socket.

Some panic later, rational thought set in:

• The Pismo had been left unplugged for 6 months.
• So the main battery would be completely discharged, as would be the PRAM battery. (I found that there wasn’t enough charge on the main battery to even work its charge indicator.)
• So leaving the Pismo plugged into the mains should start to charge the main battery. (I think the PRAM battery isn’t rechargeable. We’ll see when I disconnect her from the mains, de-boot and remove the main battery, replace it and then reboot.)
• So while I endured Moment of Panic 2, the Pismo charged and eventually rebooted about 2am this morning.

Moment of Panic 2
While looking for the spare Pismo battery I now appear not to have, I noticed that my Palm wasn’t where I’d left it in February. I knew the data wasn’t lost – it’s backed up on my Pismo’s hard disk! (The Pismo is also backed up to two external hard disks.) However, I felt comprehensively electronically buggered!

Much searching later, I found the Palm in one of my brother’s drawers. I think it had been put there when I asked my dad to look up something on it in March. It didn’t boot at first. Some charging later, it booted at factory state: it had discharged enough to lose all my data from the charge-dependent memory.

By now, the Pismo had booted so I could synchronise the Palm with the data stored on the Pismo. I think this happened about 3am.

Serendipity
I’m not sure why my dad had reverted from using my router to using his USB ADSL modem to connect his PC to the internet. However it’s probably a good thing: I would have sat up even later filing the emails I’d received while I was away. I got to sleep around 4 this morning.

I’m now as awake as I’ll ever get, wireless internet has been restored and all the email has been filed. Most of the laundry has been tackled: I’ve even washed the lunghi!

Work Of Heart – Roy Harper

Just to say that I’ve had a really good final day: more details as and when I’m not about to be kicked out of a cybercafe that’s shutting for the night but this goodness was unexpected and so much more enjoyable than if I had been expecting it.

Goodnight, India, and thank ou!

‘Crapula’ is latin for ‘headache’ or ‘hangover’.

The sun is in the east, even though the day is done
Well I read a lot and finally got to board my flight around 9pm. Take-off wasn’t too late and the Singapore Airlines flight was everything it should have been. I even got a window seat. Also, someone was sat in ‘my’ aisle seat when I got onto the plane. He disappeared before take-off. I wonder if it was my lunghi or my BO that vaporised him.

Despite taking off at 9pm and being in the air for maybe an hour (maybe two), I arrived in Kolkatta’s NSC Bose International Ear Port earlier than I departed Singapore. Gotta love this time-zone business!

Arrival at Kolkatta provided the change I’d been expecting. It’s warm, dirty and (probably) smelly. The tiny luggage carousel was crowded by the time I got there. I really distrust about this form of luggage reclaim. What’s to stop the bozo who gets through immigration before you buggering off with your luggage? This is one of the benefits of carrying a massive and heavy rucsac: no-one wants the hassle of picking it up.

Outside the terminal, I was, of course, set upon by rickshaw and taxi-drivers before I could draw breath, much less retrieve my guidebook and find directions to the airport hotel. I walked away from them but they all followed me, despite me saying clearly “I do not need a taxi. I will walk to my hotel”. I escaped to a phone-stall to book a room in the airport hotel but still they crowded me and I lost my rag. “Bugger off! Don’t hang around me like flies around shit!” The airport hotel seemed to try to tell me that it was full.

Eventually I walked through the cloud of annoyances to a taxi-person who hadn’t been bothering me and got him to take me to the official airport hotel. I’m sure he didn’t, unless it’s changed name in the past 5 years but the room I got in the place he took me was acceptable for 500 rupees and no further than the official airport hotel would have been. What wasn’t fun was the staff repeatedly showing me how to use the TV, despite me unplugging it and telling them “I want sleep, NOT TV”.

I spent a while this morning getting as much as I could within my hold luggage. (I’m very pleased that I could pack birthday presents for my siblets: it’s their birthday tomorrow.) All I had to post home was three books I read yesterday and the presents I had been given by the Tangkeran Utara folk. These were still nicely wrapped and I didn’t want to open them and find out what they were until I got home. With hindsight, I’d have been better off posting home my laundry. I should have learnt my lesson at Mumbai.

I had spent quite a while, used the last of my plastic bags and almost all of my sellotape creating a neat parcel: being told to unpack it and show all the contents to the postal staff was disheartening. I told them that the individual parcels contained presents: I was delighted that they did their duties and they were very welcome to open them themselves and check that they were acceptable but I did not want to know the contents yet. No chance: despite the aid of a number of other people who were posting parcels I had to open each sub-parcel myself. Bah!

However, I am very pleased that there was a post-office on the airport approach-road. Schlepping my rucsac et al to the centre of Kolkatta has no appeal. I also got talking with one of the postal staff who wants English conversations: we’ll meet this evening for continued chat and a walk around the Dum Dum area.

I’m even more pleased that there is a 24-hour-service luggage depository. So I just have with me my cabin-baggage: a camera bag and a cuddly pig. In total volume they’re smaller than the current limits so I should be OK. The contents are three more books, a comb and a change of shirt and grunties. I’m goign to try Kolkatta’s metro system. There’s no sign yet of the promised extension to the airport, so I have to go 10 km to the nearest metro station. There is a ‘western train’ station but there’s only two services each day, going I-don’t-know-where. Apparently it’s only been open six weeks. I’ll try to report to all the Starlink folk out there.

OK, time for lunch and a final meander in India…

See you even sooner, space-cats!