Diary Tuesday 12th July 2016

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Diary Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th July 2016 Another rubbish day at work where the tedium of the calls made the 8 hour shift feel like 80 hours. The management still insist that all staff hand in mobile phones on entering the building only recovering them at home time. I found myself told off for not queuing up each morning with those surrendering phones to declare that I have no phone on me. The manager collecting them is too dumb to realize that I never intend to bring one in so I have to surrender an invisible phone every morning. It is ridiculous. More serious drama later when the young bored male worker sitting opposite me decided to amuse himself by flicking his heavy plastic hair-comb in my face across the table. I was angry enough to snap the comb in two and dropped it in the bin, at which he picked up a small water bottle and threw that at me too. He was spotted by a manager and fired on the spot. I was barely questioned on the incident – really annoying to become a moron-magnet like this. So glad when home-time arrived. Diary Wednesday 13th July 2016 A strangely quiet start to the day at the hell-hole call centre job and a rare nice gesture from the managers who sent donuts round for everyone but by lunchtime it was a miserable as ever and I found myself criticised for obeying a legal requirement for helping people called to get their names and number removed from the system, which companies are obliged to do by law especially if customers in the UK mention the Telephone Preference System (TPS). With just an hour to go on my shift I was fired for my lack of sales and clearly not being happy there. They were quite polite about it and wouldn’t even let me return to the work area to collect my things in case I ran amok – I had to wait for a manager to fetch my coat and bag down for me. I was glad to be free and only ad not to get to ay goodbye to the few genuinely nice people I met there. I will have a lot to do notifying welfare of my unemployment and telling my mum of the changes but that can all wait until Thursday. It was too late in the day to get through to welfare anyway. I felt liberated rather than dismayed and as I was at a writing group gathering in the evening anyhow, I went along to the Common Bar pub close to the writing group venue called Mad Lab early and got some food there. I had no work of my own in for critiquing for this one, (we take it in turns) but I had some positive feedback for others and it helped take my mind of my return to unemployment. Arthur Chappell