Some stupid things I encounter in my stupid job:

1. The phrase “if there’s time to lean there’s time to clean”. Yes, but is there the need to clean? What about all the other modes of slacking? What if there is time to stand or to sit down for hours on end? Who came up with that? What did they think I would do upon hearing their stupid little ditty; “hang on, lean, that rhymes with clean. I’m leaning so I should be…er, cleaning.” What if I get confused and stop my cleaning to lean under the honest misapprehension that the rhyme was actually the other way round? It could confuse a stupid person.


2. Mats. Behind the bar, beneath our feet there are a load of heavy duty black plastic mats, whose sole purpose seems to be to cause difficulties for the staff. They’re very large these mats, and they get very grubby. Filthy in fact. Especially on a Saturday when, after the busiest night of the week, some poor idiot has to pick all the buggers up, carry them outside and hose them down. Last night the hose was broken and I had to clean each of the filthy mats individually by dunking them in a tub of water about an eighth of their size; how we laughed.


3. Those bloody mats! What the fuck are they for?


4. The regulars. During the day there are men who come in to drink. They come in every day and drink the same thing without fail. Despite their regularity I am still not up to speed on their favourite tipple (it’s always John Smith’s or Fosters but which one? And do they want a pint or a half?) and I (gasp) have to ask what some of them mean when they say ‘usual please’. If they’re so regular, don’t they realise I’m new? Do they think the management give me some sort of What-the-regulars-drink training purely for the benefit of these losers with their alcohol problems and broken dreams? I think not. Go home you losers. Start building a new life out of the beer sodden wreckage.


5. Hen nights. Every Friday and Saturday night, without fail, there is a group of bints dancing around one of their friends and squawking and whooping like a chicken crossed with a caveman about to make a sacrifice. At least I think they’re friends, I don’t know. Would you poison your friends with cheap sticky drinks? Would you humiliate your friends by making them dress up in a bridal gown covered in L-plates? Would you take the culminating moment of your friend’s romantic life and sell it down the hackneyed hen-night river-of-hell, prostituting it, debasing her and yourselves and whipping one another into an orgiastic frenzy so blind and animalistic that you think nothing of pressing your gruesome chest into any leering alcohol/piss stinking fuckwit who stands close enough? Answers on a post card.


6. The DJ. Stop playing that song that goes “Shakira Shakira”. At the very least don’t play it three times a night. What are you doing? What the hell are you doing? One day there will be a Nuremburg style trial for DJ crimes against humanity and every fuck-arse we pay to drink beer between flipping the on switch and goading the trollops around the DJ box will be executed to the sound of the Final Countdown. I am not joking, these people don’t just annoy me by not playing music I like, they drive me to a weekly distraction and are gradually crippling the fraction of mental wherewithal that gets me out of bed each day.

Oh how I hate procedure

If a job is worth doing it is worth doing, they say, it is worth doing well. And seeing as I get paid to do my job it is most definitely worth doing. Ok I think it adds very little value to life and makes some of our neighbours and customers either only superficially happy or utterly miserable, but that is beside the point.
If only I could be told what to do and left to get on with it. In retail (is it the same in management and other such office jobs?) there seems to be an inferiority complex that forces the employer to revel in precision of procedure and the minutiae of doing a task in a particular way. You must have a tray and a wet cloth on you when you replace dirty ashtrays. You must put a napkin beneath drinks being served in the daytime. You mustn’t hold a glass over the ice when you are filling it with drink. You must put two straws into cocktails, one bent and one straight. I mean WHO CARES? I wouldn’t mind if it was just the inevitable money hungry managers pushing me to do this stuff- the people who stake their careers on appearances and came up with the procedures in the first place but I actually work with people at the same dogsbody-loser level as me who bug me when I hold a glass too close to the top or over/underpour vodka by a fraction of a millilitre. It is driving me mad and it all serves to undermine the work you do and make you feel constantly under pressure to do things differently. The sense is that there is always something you are doing wrong and, therefore, always something else you should do. Your work is never done. If I ran a bar I would show people what needed to be done and leave the rest to common sense. If I need to collect some glasses from the floor I can do it without instructions thankyou very much!

As if to add insult to injury, the staff area (grotty underground cavern full of back copies of The Sun and other people’s rubbish) has aging PC-printed motivational messages like ‘the bar is your stage, go out and perform’ and ‘attitude: A little thing that makes a big difference’. Attitude is not a little thing by any measure. It defines your relationship with the rest of the world! The motivational poster/book/greeting card industry exists because there is a huge number of people whose lives are unutterably dull and boring. It is founded on lies and if there is anyone reading this who hates this vacuous crap as much as I do then I recommend you check out www.despair.com. The brilliant people there should at least restore some of your faith in the rest of human kind.

What value does happiness have for us?

Happiness is feted at the minute. Richard Layard’s Happiness: Lessons from a new science is a top seller and trendy in the newspaper book reviews (I haven’t read it mind). There is a new chair of positive psychology at Cambridge, whose remit is the study of happiness and the latest psychological furore is definitely the fuss surrounding Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and its importance for making everyone happier. Are we happy? It’s a question on everyone’s lips.
This seems like a legitimate question to ask, the greatest happiness for the greatest number, in spite of difficult questions concerning its measurement and the problems of quantity vs quality of happiness, is still an important principle in deciding how we treat one another and conduct our affairs. But what role should happiness be playing in our individual lives?
I ask this because I have an interesting relationship with happiness at the moment. I am trying to be as happy as I can in a situation which is objectively quite sad making. I am working a shit job and trying to find better but it isn’t going all that well. I am not sure what I want to do with my life and routinely change my plans, worrying about how best to get there and how I should spend my time. I miss my girlfriend and don’t see her nearly as much as I would like, I miss my family, and I feel isolated from time to time. In spite of all this, I find myself taking happiness in my freedom, my lack of responsibility, my time to read and the general sense that I am accumulating some mad and beautiful experiences and seeing the world in a way I wasn’t free to when I had the pressure of my degree. However, my happiness spells contentment. Do I want to be content? If I get content my ambition will drop and I face the possibility of getting stuck and not always having the driving force to move on. It could be argued that my awareness of this should be enough to galvanise me to action but it is easy to forget the fear that moves one.
More importantly, happiness decides how we live our lives. We do what makes us happy. Should we though? Surely there is a discrepancy between acting in a way that makes us happy and a way that makes the world in some way a better place. Maybe happiness is a red herring in the search for improving our existence. However, what other moral yardstick is there? I don’t know of any other way of deciding whether what I am doing is right. But then how can we account for anyone else’s happiness other than our own? After all, we don’t really know any other conscious exists and we certainly can’t be sure how to make others happy. What is more, some people argue that everything we do is selfish anyway, I find this argument compelling, even the most giving people do what they do because they take pleasure in it. Can you think of a selfless act? Unless you don’t believe in free will (in which case our actions can’t be said to have moral content anyway) then everything we do we do because we want to. So we all act to further our own happiness in the long or short term, what hope does greatest happiness for the greatest number have? Everyone’s search for happiness conflicts with everyone else’s, we know we can’t sustain the way we live in the west without polluting the planet and oppressing further millions of exploited workers. The only way I can see out of this is a change in what we decide makes us happy. As I have found in my own experience, this is surprisingly possible, even easy. If all we do is pursue our own happiness then we are only as good as the things we love and we have to align this with what we feel in some way to be good. If we value some notion of good then this needn’t be difficult. But, and here comes the crux, it still depends on us holding certain values in the first place, and where do they come from?

Job flux

The job is over a week old now. I don’t get to feel like a trainee any more and can’t get away with ignorance as a defence for mistakes. This could be a serious problem. Does anyone else out there suffer from a perennial inability to engage with menial jobs and successfully carry out simple tasks that they can’t bring themselves to care about? I had my first day off yesterday so I zoomed home to Eastbourne to see the family for an evening and a day. Mum is deeply annoyed by the bipolar nurse she works with and who, she says, is getting her down. As she has taken many of the practical steps open to her (speaking to HR and occupational therapy) I suggested she try to focus on making the best of a bad situation and not letting it follow her home. However she took this as criticism of her handling of the situation.
My days of being a bar bitch may be numbered; I have an interview tomorrow for a position with a company who deliver administrative services between patients and private healthcare clients. I don’t know, it sounds like it could be a bit dull in truth but I do need office experience and it is better pay than my current job. Other dilemmas are thrown up; will I be able to leave it something else comes up? Will I still find time to do my volunteering?
Speaking of volunteering, I went with Refugee Action today to present a three sessions at the student nurse conference. This is a day about the ‘social context of people’s lives’. We were there to raise the profile of asylum seekers and highlight the difficulty of getting through the application system. Initially I was worried about being patronising or boring but the entire day seemed to go quite well. It was surely vindicated in the third and last session when we asked if anyone had any questions. A girl a couple of rows back put up her hand and passionately asked us ‘why aren’t we told all this by someone?’ She had been struck by the bleakness of trying to claim asylum and it sparked a good old right-on type discussion about how unfair the system is. The onus is on the asylum seeker to prove they are worthy of refugee status, they have to prove individual persecution to the Home Office and small inconsistencies in the case can be used to fell it. Furthermore they generally receive only a third of mainstream benefits while they are in the application system, can only make one appeal and, if they are unsuccessful, will likely face poverty or return to a dangerous country that may not even allow them to be repatriated (China will not accept returning seekers of asylum in other countries). A very good day in all and it really made me realise how much I would like to continue doing awareness raising stuff and public speaking.

AN OPEN LETTER TO LYNNE TRUSS

One of the things that you think about when you work in the service industry is politeness; How to be polite, what to say and how to make people feel welcome and comfortable without debasing yourself or becoming a sycophantic doormat. Lynne Truss has thought about these issues as well. I haven’t read her book “Talk to the Hand” (with it’s obnoxious subtitle ‘the utter bloody rudeness of everyday life’) because I could see before opening the cover that it would not only be a complete waste of time, but would also fill me with a rage so profound I would want to push my face up my own bum.
I was right.
Only two things have therefore filtered through to me from Talk to the Hand. Both of them were made more annoying, being relayed by unthinking friends-of-parents who hadn’t subjected them to any critique at all and wholeheartedly agreed. The first pertained to how you should react upon being introduced to someone. Saying “I’m pleased to meet you” is rude, because it is just untrue. You should say “How do you do”. However this argument falls flat as soon as you see that the meaning of each is secondary to nonsensical convention. “How do you do” is just as rude if you don’t care how they do; it's a lie. What is more noone (except stupid Lynn Truss with her Gestapo hair cut and smug books that must take a weekend to write) actually thinks about what is meant here.
The second is the one that really got my blood boiling. This ‘rule’ stipulates how waiters and service people should respond to a customer who thanks them. By Truss’s analysis it is rude to say “No problem” and you should say “It’s a pleasure” instead. The logic, according to Truss, is that it should never be a problem because it is the job you are paid to do. Well I have news for you Truss, my job is not really a pleasure and it won’t be for as long as I, and other people who work in shit jobs for pittance, have to serve self-interested grumps who think that there is a special class of person born to wipe the sputum from your mouth. If lying is rude (see above) then your advice is ill thought out and inconsistent and if you are offended by the chirpy friendliness behind the waitress or barman who says “no problem” then it is you who is rude and not them. Your poisonous etiquette is pompus and derisory and you are a sad old cow.

Oh Yeah, Eats Shoots and Leaves is shit-How’s that for rude?

A long gap since I last posted. Jessie came to stay for a fantastic week and I have turned a liquor soddern corner in my search for a job having fallen under the full employ of Sqaures in the town centre. It's the first full time job I have had since I did my research internship two years ago. You really are their bitch when you want to get money. My bosses own my body, my appearance, my energy, and really the contents of my mind while I am on a shift. The full reality of a job is incredible and it makes you realise there can only be one route to happiness and that is to find joy in whatever you do. That joy is easy to find in bar work, as I learnt in The Old Peacock, but you can be ground down after a while. This all weaves into the story of Little Miss Sunshine, which I saw today, check your own ambition the film tells us, It is essential to want more and better because contentment is how people get stuck in a rut. However, it is important not to spend every waking hour desiring something else or something better. Life will never move into the future and the person who places all their hopes there won't make the most of what they are doing.
Anyway, two shifts into the job. The first was a graveyard stint last night (Monday) and the second a training shift tonight with all the other seven newbies. We learnt how to mix cocktails and got to know one another. What is more, I am learning how to work my shifts so I get time off when I want.
Realisation of the day? If you want to do loads of stuff, you can't wait until you have time.

Inspiration for a new income. Mike was frustrated with his dissertation so he and I went for a walk and sat outside the pub by The Castle. I took out my sketch book and watercolour stuff and did a doodle of the old gate. The waitress came over and asked if I would sell it to her. After considering a token price (the cost of our drinks seemed fair) I agreed and was suddenly swept along by enthusiasm for the life of an errant painter, living hand to mouth on smoky paintings of the city's corners and characters. Unfortunately the romance of the whole idea faded when her enthusiasm seemed to wane-announcing she would 'think about it'. She suggested I pop back on Thursday when she has the cash. I don't think I can face the embarrassment if she has changed her mind. 'Hi, I've come to sell this painting' (take out lousy sketch). Likely she just found the idea of buying a customer sketch appealing and then realised £6 for a torn out page of my book wasn't so hot after all. Did I ruin the moment by actually considering a price? Should I have confidently asserted I sell all my work at £10 a canvas-I don't use canvas. I didn't really want to make money off it, a token sale would have been a massive watershed.

There's probably a name for bloggers who post more than once in any given day, and it's probably 'wanker' but I wanted to update job news. Interview at Squares on Monday-hurrah. I bought meat today in the Victoria Market and was accosted again. This time by an ex-army looking type who told me to really cook a good joint I should leave it in the oven at a low temperature all night and then turn up the heat an hour before I planned to eat it. Who knew?

It is DAY 3 now I suppose. Two more jobs in the pipeline, one for The Square, a nasty bar in town. I walked past last night and saw that they were hiring so I popped in and asked the bar staff (all dressed as police or army) for an application form. I then took it to Spoons and asked the lady behind the bar for a pen. While I did this a massive and quite scary chap asked about the rolled up piece of paper in my hand. I explained and he seemed satisfied. Then he asked where I was going. 'Dogma' I replied. 'I can't go there. I'm barred' he quietly informed me. When I asked why, he shrugged. But really, he must know.
To Dogma indeed and I danced with the Designousaur, the two of us looking like a right pair of wallies. He and I have an idea, tour the pubs of Nottingham as errant air guitar players. We would carry a massive stereo full of Led Zepp and Aerosmith tunes and our act would be our guitar simulation. A true winner in my opinion.

In other news: The clampdown on underage drinking is a touch draconian. I was refused service because I only had my SU card. This is fair beans. Bar Staff are asked not to accept them because of ease of forgery of birth date. However, Uni of Notts cards are not easy to forge, have a chip and mine says 'taught postgraduate'. I'm not sure what's wrong with drinking under the age of 18 anyway.

The debate about the prime minister continues. Tony Blair wants us to let him “get on with the job”, the suggestion being that he is being hindered in doing work people actually want him to continue. If he can convince the public that the current debacle is a distraction from the serious job of politics then he can undermine the move to replace him.
However Labour’s backbench Mps want to be rid of Blair precisely because they don’t like the sycophancy within the cabinet, the cow-towing to Washington and its foreign policy and the general sense that civil liberties in this country are being, frankly, attacked.
John Reid told Demos that we had to forfeit some of our freedoms in order to avoid having them taken away, not an inherently illogical point but its use was designed to instil the sense that we are facing some kind of national crisis-I don’t believe we are.
Margaret Beckett failed to make the necessary criticism of Israel during the war on Lebanon, her predecessor Jack Straw did-presumably because he does not need to be quite so fawning as leader of the house. Now Tony Blair is announcing that ‘sanctions’ may be employed against those who look likely (based on what criteria we are still unsure) to bring up children who will be a ‘menace to society’.
Is it any wonder that people want to be rid of a PM who inspires cronyism and debars the possibility of dissent from his increasingly strange agenda? Tony Blair looks to me like he is succumbing to desperate and short term answers to pressing policy concerns. He is following a realpolitik agenda, is severely jaded and out of energy. We need to stop this constant distraction from a serious issue and sort out a leadership change openly. This issue concerns our next Prime Minister!

In other news:
Impact Magazine is three days from print and nearing completion. I have applied for a job as a publicist for a student entertainment website and am going to hand my CV into The Bag of Nails (a grotty student pub in Nottingham).