The Day of the Crap Jobs

2004-02-24 at 12:53 a.m.

Unfortunately this was an appalling job! Firstly, its based in London, but in a particularly bad area - Limehouse, which is like the worst, grotty bits of Wallsend. It looks like the sort of place where you'd get dragged off down a dark alley and stabbed for your money quick as blinking. Its full of little side alleys, underpasses and those dark areas under wide train bridges. Not good. Secondly, the office isn't even near the train station. Its about quarter of an hour's walk away, down a completely deserted road - there was no one there during the day so I hate to think what its like at night. Hmm, yeah I'm really going to want to wander about there at night, in a suit in a rough area. Thats as good as wearing a sign on your head saying "mug me, I have money!"

And then there's the job itself...its for a housing corporation, which houses asylum seekers and "vulnerable people" in Leeds. For "vulnerable" here read "mad, bad or homeless". Why the hell its based in London I do not know, it would be far more efficient if it was based in Leeds. If I got it, I would have to deal with things like sending welcome packs to tenants, their complaints, complaints of their neighbours against them, anti-social behaviour, admissions and leaving, arranging cleaning....why is this in London? What an awful job! Basically, they've just dumped all the crap on whoever gets this job and packaged it as a good opportunity to try to snare some school leaver. But I know a bad job when I see one - and this one doesn't even hold out a hope of getting better, as they told me in the interview that all that awful stuff is just the basics, and the legal guy wants to dump all the stuff he doesn't want to do on me. Plus there is a backlog of filing and you have to deal with the post.

They already had someone in the job, but she left after a month "for medical reasons". If they were medical reasons, I'm a Frenchman! A tip for employers: if you're going to lie and say someone who left because a) they were sacked or b) its a crap job left because they were ill, then you really need to ask the people you're interviewing if they've got any health problems. Thats a normal interview question anyway, and if a company had been let down by someone who was ill before it is the logical thing for them to then ask.

Grrrrr. I had to walk home and nearly froze. Though on the plus side I discovered a swimming pool I didn't know was there. If I get offered this job - and I don't think I will, unless they're desparate - I'm going to turn it down. Then I just have to make my woman at the agency listen to me, because I couldn't get it through her thick head that this is a crap company. She doesn't listen!

*kicks the table*

Anyway...I'm enjoying the parents being away. Though I've taken overadvantage of being able to smoke without hanging out of a window/taking long walks a bit too far - my shirt smells distinctly unpleasant. Also I can't figure out the heating properly, I either freeze or boil and can't seem to reach a state in between.

I'm a wee bit restless at the moment, lack of anything constructive to do. So far I've had to stop myself from setting up a site on how to write poetry, and another on northern English folklore and folksongs. Not that those aren't worthwhile projects, just I know what I'm like, I'll start them and leave yet another lot of discarded, half-finished websites around the net. I've done it many many times before. So I'm stopping myself.

Hmmmm anyway. Anyone got any plans for an activity to do? I'm a bit bored. Can't think of anything to write, can't draw, can't think of things to do on the net and I don't want to play a computer game. There's always chatrooms, but frankly there is only so much religious wrangling and porno-bots I can take. So, suggestions, please!

Here's the lyrics of one of my favourite songs, Bob Dylan's Chimes of Freedom:

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An' the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An' the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look
Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

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