I was having a chat with Martina, who is a student in a Swedish school. For her English class, she has to write an essay about a "great learning experience". We talked about it and then I mentioned a job experience I'd had here and decided it would make for a great post. Well, I'm not so sure about great, but at least, it's inspired me.

I arrived in Brighton on the 4th of November, 2015, and after unpacking and settling in my dorm, I turned on my computer, logged on Indeed and proceeded to try and find a job. I applied to, pretty much, anything I was vaguely skilled for and didn't require ten years of experience, a million dollars and the blood of a unicorn. It means I also did apply to jobs without very clear descriptions and jobs which descriptions I wasn't sure I understood.

Starring as the girl who got turned down by ten different McDonalds (ie, me), getting a job interview within forty-eight hours of living in a country that wasn't even my own surprised me a whole lot. It was for a small marketing company and fell under the "jobs without very clear descriptions" category. After a short chat with The Boss, I left and was called back a couple of hours later for an assessment day on the following Monday. I still had no bloody clue what the job was about.

On the aforementioned following Monday, I went back to the office, filled out some forms and was assigned a leader who would show me the ropes and train me. Train me for what, I still didn't know. We all trotted outside, in a very windy and chilly Brighton, and I was only wearing a smart skirt, a buttoned up shirt with short sleeves, a light blazer type jacket and a leather jacket on top. The email before the first job interview said something about being dressed "smart", and, after my first interview, on the phone, the secretary told me to dress similar for the assessment day. I politely asked my leader what we were doing and he cheerfully replied : "We're going to Hastings."

HASTINGS.

I had no clue where Hastings was and to this day I still don't. Also, what the actual fuck were we going to do in HASTINGS? Why weren't we staying in Brighton? What was that job about? We stopped at Tesco on the way to the train station, I got lectured on how to find vegetarian food in the sandwich section (I know I've lived in Brighton for a week, but I know how to read a label, mate) and we hopped on the train to Hastings. I still had no clue what the job was about. I was being assessed on something I knew nothing about. 

We got into Hastings, which is lovely if you ask me, despite being chilly and windy, and we walked up a thousand streets and hills and bridges and separated from the other team. They talked about meeting up at half six and I stood really confused. Was I meant to stay in the streets of Hastings until half six in the evening? Was this an every day thing? I still didn't know what the job was, mind you. I was left with my leader and the guy he was training, was given a dashing apron to wear on top of my "smart" outfit and off we went. Ringing bells.

And this is how I found out I was meant to sell boxes of food door to door. This, my friends, is how I found out I was being assessed on how good I was going to be at being a field representative.

After a very long day of walking around Hastings and freezing my childbearing hips off because no one had told me to wear comfy shoes and warm clothing (i.e anything appropriate to be outdoors in November in the south of England), I was knackered, got offered a job and to this day, I don't know why on Earth I said yes. I think it's my "yolo genius" side that said "hey, might try being a field rep, see how it works out".

My answer is, it doesn't work out. 

I worked three full days and then I quit.
First, my body couldn't handle all the walking around and the fast pace and the standing up and after two days in a row, I couldn't walk.
Second, it was a commission based job and I was virtually earning nothing for all the work I produced.
Third, yours truly whose life ambitions are having a family, a cat named Salem and a dog named Wilbur, being able to go to Download Festival every summer for the rest of my life and being generally happy, didn't like how greed driven this environment was. The Boss' life ambitions were to become a millionaire and own a house in London, which is very fine, each to their own, really - except that he did scoff at people who just wanted a little house and a quiet family life. He also believed that if you earn an actual pay (as in if you are financially rewarded for the efforts you make in the workplace), you're not going to work at all. After the Paris attacks, fully knowing I was French, he asked if I'd had a good weekend. 

But hey, once, we all had a great chat about Busted's come back tour, and without that job, I would not be able to use Wet Wet Wet's ticket prices as an anecdote in society.

There was also my leader. Ah, The Leader. You know, sometimes, you meet people and within ten minutes of being around them, you know you're not going to be friends? Yes, this. I'm the kind of person who gives everyone a chance, but I'm also the kind of person who trusts their gut and I know when it's right. How do I sum The Leader up in a couple of words?

1. He described himself as "audacious".

2. He asked me, completely out of the blue, if I'd had "any disastrous relationships".

3. He called me a "hippie" for being environmentally conscious and a vegetarian.

4. He kept poking me all the bloody freaking time, even when I'd told him to stop.
5. He liked me, as in like liked.

6. Once, he complimented an ornament in a woman's house, she told him it was from Kazakhstan and he simply replied "Borat". No other words. Just "Borat". 

7. He thought dog was a better word than puppy.

Three full days with him and I knew I was out.

I also spent a day with The Other Boss, who had previously politely asked me if how I felt about the Paris attacks was going to "affect my performance". Yes, those are actual real life words that passed his lips.
The Other Boss was fairly young and had a profile similar to Josh Dun (not as in he wore leather trousers, red make up and drummed on top of people for a living too, just as in his face when I could only see his profile looked like Josh Dun's - less attractive, obviously) and kept repeating "cracking" all the time. Everything was cracking.
Someone on the door says they're buying their fish from the local fishmonger? Cracking.
Someone has made a sale? Cracking.
Someone made a funny joke? Cracking.
After full eight hours with him, I could promise you what would be cracking was his skull on the streets of Lewes.
The day after, I couldn't walk so I couldn't work. The day after, my painful knee and I dragged ourselves to the office and quit.


I kept looking for jobs everywhere, applied to about fifty in the space of two hours on TotalJobs.com and was shortly called back for an interview in a small marketing company - again. I think this one fell under the "when the fuck did I apply to that?" category because I knew I was never going to be fooled again by field representative ads in disguise. I went.
The dress code was "business smart" and yet, the secretary was wearing jeans and chewing gum loud enough to be heard up in Aberdeen. Someone showed up in Ugg boots. To this day, I still don't know what the job was about at all. The lady talked about me being a leader and then calling me back and no one called me back, ever.
Maybe it was for the best.


Following Margot's advice, I registered in an agency and my counsellor said that he'd do anything in his power to help me. He kept insisting on how good my English was and seemed okay with me not ever wanting to do field representative ever again.
Within a week, I was sent to a factory.
At first, I thought it'd be okay. The shifts started very early in the morning and finished in the middle of the afternoon and I relished in the fact that I would be able to go to gigs. I thought I'd be able to cope with coming back from London at 2, 3 in the morning and getting up at 5. Unsurprisingly, I didn't. After coming back from Don Broco, I almost passed out of exhaustion outside of the train and never made it to work the next day.

I worked in three different factories. The first one, based in Lancing (which is a half hour and eight pound bus journey away from Brighton), seemed to particularly want workers that had a good level of English. It was just forty and fifty-something men, but I could cope. The work was repetitive and tiring, but it was fine when we had the radio on, as I could sing along to whatever pop song was on. It was less fine, though, when they moved me to the room where you make whistles for asthmatic people (I still don't know) and the stupid plastic gloves hurt my hands so much I had blisters all over my fingers.


The second and third factories were based in Newhaven (half an hour away from Brighton but hey, only five pounds on the bus!) and produced toilet supplies. As in, toilet roll dispensers, soap dispensers or towel dispensers. I was sent to Newhaven to make toilet supplies and yet, my counsellor still tried to sell that to me as something I would enjoy and where I would make lots of friends.
I would have liked to make friends. Maybe it would have been easier to cope.
The trouble was, no one spoke a word of English but me. When they were trying to have conversations with me and I would form a sentence, they would be really confused. The first person who tried to talk to me asked me how it was in Paris since the terrorist attacks. A month, dudette. Too soon. Someone else didn't understand the word "canteen". A woman, whom I'd heard speaking Spanish, was actually from Latvia and within five minutes of me being there, complained about the quality of my work. It's seven in the morning and I'm trying to get to terms with the fact that I'm going to put grease on plastic for the next eight hours, chill out.
One thing I've noticed, though, is how protective some people were of their cardboard boxes. On my last shift, I just grabbed a random box because there were none around, only to be told by the man in the station next to mine that "it was his", but I could "have just one, fine". There was no way he was going to complete the one he was packing and I was much quicker than him, but hey, the empty, label-less cardboard box was HIS.
The only positive thing out of this is that I have been using a tape gun, and the little girl I was who asked for safes and mailboxes and random industrial items for Christmas was delighted. A tape gun.


Trying to make the best out of these shitty experiences was quite a hard task, to be honest. As I'm about to embark on a new professional adventure (as in yours truly has found a new job as a telephone fundraiser), I'm quite proud of myself for holding on like I did. Granted, I have never been a quitter. I have never genuinely thought about throwing in the towel. But it got hard, it got tough, it got disheartening. I think I've made it out of this mess. Pray that I actually did.