Lives of Work and Days of Wonder

Having finished university sometime in May, I am yet to find suitable employment.

I still work one day a week in a garden centre, a job I've held now since I was in the sixth form. At work on Sunday, I was the longest serving employee out of everyone there. Since I stared there, I have seen employees come and go, and during that time I've graduated from university with a 2:1 degree in American Studies and Imaginative Writing, but the fact that, at the end of it all, I'm still doing the same job I was before I even entered university makes me feel like I have gone no where in three long years.

I did once quit my job, during my third year at university. During that time I lived away from home and struggled for money. I eventually moved back home and once more went back to work there.

During the week I've been looking for work, but as I said at the top, I am yet to find any. This is probably through lack of effort in looking on my part, and I am finding it difficult to pluck up the energy to put some serious effort in. Every Sunday evening, after work at the garden centre, the desire to find work during the week (and perhaps continue working at the garden centre on Sundays) is most definitely there, but the energy is not. By Monday morning, the desire for work during the week is usually weakening (no pun intended) by the minute.

My situation is perhaps somewhat different to most other students because I am not looking for work which is potentially going to entertain me for the rest of my life. I need work for about twelve months to get me to King's College, London, so I can do a Master's. At the moment, that feels a million miles away, but it really isn't.

Hopefully well-paying employment is not far away either, but it really is up to me to pull my finger out a bit more than I am doing at the moment.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Sales Assistants Are Just That: Sales Assistants!

The following is written for the benefit of sales assistants across the United Kingdom. After two days of persistent, soul-destroying abuse, enough is enough.

Retail is a fast-moving, quick paced industry, with a high turnover of staff at the bottom. Sales assistants come and go in the blink of an eye. Their job is self-explanatory: to assist with the sale of goods in any way. Yet there are difficult complexities within this wide-ranging brief.

At the weekends, many people who do this difficult job are still in full-time education; they are 16 to 22 year olds who are still at school, college or university (Where I work is no different). For five days a week, these people stress, strain and worry about exams, assessments and coursework. These are the primary concerns of these people.

For two days a week, they seize the opportunity to earn some money. Many, like myself, do this through the retail sector. And for most, this is their first job.

I personally like my job. I am happy to work for the amount of money I am paid. I think the working conditions are good. I like my boss. My good relationship with my manager means I want to do a good job not only for myself but for him as well (it was not always like this). If I fail in some way, I let myself down, and I let him down. I do not worry about the company because we are part of a chain. The company does not exist on a day-to-day basis.

What makes the job difficult is the customers. Very often, it is they who determine how difficult the job is. While they have the ability to make the job easy, they can also make it near impossible.

My workplace caters for the upper echelons of our society. The people who shop there are wealthy, affluent, successful people with a large amount of disposable income. The middle and upper classes are our target market. As a result, our prices are staggering. A tin of coke: 75p Seeds that you can get from a market stall for 99p: £3.00. Chocolate bars that are 30p elsewhere: 55p. My personal opinion is many of our products are overpriced. But there are people willing to pay these prices, and as long as they keep coming through the doors, we will continue to charge them over the odds. One gentlemen came and complained to me about the price of one of our products. He was a pensioner, and he struck me as being a smart man. But he kept complaining to me about the prices. I tried my very best to explain that it was not me who set the prices. I was just the person who had to charge them. But he could not understand that. He persisted. Quite what he wanted to achieve, I still don’t know. If he wanted me to feel bad, he succeeded. All customers should remember that the sales assistants are just that: sales assistants! We do not set the prices, and we cannot change them. I don’t mind customers who come and say to me “oh, these are a bit expensive, aren’t they?" because that implies they do not expect me to do something about it. Customers should not persist with probing questions about the prices of small goods because it is not us who set them -- it is either the manager or the company!

A gentlemen came to my till with two bags of compost: the first was a 75lt multipurpose, PLU code 106; and the second a 25lt John Innes number 02, PLU code 132. ”It is not £3.99!” he bellowed. I was absolutely certain the multipurpose was £3.99 because it was also on offer, three for £10.00. I explained this to him politely.” It bloody well isn’t,” he cursed, “it says £2.99 outside!’ He slapped his credit card on the counter.

“If you’re disputing the price,” I said, gritting my teeth, “I’ll get the manager.” He crossed his arms, furiously. He was not going to be overcharged by some punk, I could see it in his body language. I am a calm person, but I wanted to give him a swift right hook. “Here, hold on to this a minute,” I said sliding his credit card back to him. It lay openly on the counter for all the customers behind him to see. He turned his back.

In a way, that made me laugh, but it also made me cry a bit inside. I was crying for his stupidity. He was making a scene about one pound, but he was quite happy to abandon his credit card -- his entire bank account -- on a shop counter, with no sales assistant present.

Thankfully the manager was not very far away and came and dealt with him. He eventually agreed to pay the £3.99 for the multipurpose compost, and after he had taken it to his car, he came back inside and insisted he showed the manager the sign that said £2.99. The gentleman had been looking at the wrong sign. He made a fool of himself. But he was not very humble about it. He walked past me on his way out. I glared at him. He did not apologise. He did not apologise for raising his voice, for shouting, or for using abusive language. He did not apologise for being incredibly rude about the small matter of one pound. He had more money than sense, and I hope he never sets foot in our store again.

Customers like this man are more and more common. The customer is always right, apparently. This is nonsense. Why is it acceptable for the customer to abuse sales assistants? Why can we not give as good as we get? I fear one day I might just speak my mind to a customer. I might just let them know what I really think.

Without the customers, we would not have jobs. And without us, they would not be able to spend their money. Respect needs to be a two-way thing as well. If someone shows you respect, you should show them respect. I always greet my customers with a pleasant smile. They usually just grunt or sneer. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. I had no pleasant customers over the weekend. No one discussed the weather, and no one engaged in phatic talk. It may have been just phatic talk to them, but I would have been glad of the interaction.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Paid To Eat: We Used To Be! And We Still Should Be!

When you are a student, thirty minutes is a long time with pay.

When I first started my Sunday job, workers commenced work at 10:30 and finished at 17:00. On our time sheets we were paid for 6.5 hours. Not long after I began, the hours changed. Workers commenced work at 10:00 and finished (as before) at 17:00. Since then, I and many other workers have put 7 hours on our time sheets.

All was well until this morning.

Today was the first day for a new member of staff, and that meant filling in his contract with the number of contracted hours for each week. There, the conflict began.

Duty manager asks me how many hours we are paid for. 7. A definite reply. Not an ounce of doubt in my mind. Duty Manager questions it. A paid lunch? Why are you bothered, I think, you're salary: this doesn't effect how much you get paid. But I keep that to myself. I try my best to explain that workers in the week get two fifteen minute breaks and a paid thirty minute lunch break. Working hours on a Sunday are shorter, due to the Sunday Trading Act, and as a consequence of which we do not get two fifteen minute breaks, but we still get a paid lunch.

(Am I sure it is the lunch that is paid on the other six days of the week, and not the two fifteen minute breaks? Yes: I was told by a former manager (who has since been promoted) that if I worked through one (or both) of my fifteen minute breaks, then I should add the time on to my time sheet to get paid for it.)

Today, the paid lunch vanished.

After a call to 'Head Office' (quite who is at 'Head Office' on a Sunday is beyond me), the Duty Manager kindly asked all staff to alter their hours from 7 to 6.5. To not get paid for that thirty minutes means a lot. Members of staff who have worked there longer than I were complaining that the rate of pay was too low anyway. This is something I disagree with anyway, although, of course, in capitalist Britain I wouldn't begrudge a pay rise. I personally have no quarrel with the current rate of pay. Perhaps this is because I am aware of life prior to 1997. Probably.

It will be interesting to see what materialises in the coming days. I think complaints will be made to the Store Manager, who's weekend it was not to work, hence the Duty Manager being in charge. If they are not, I shall be making them. As long as I have worked there, there has always been a paid lunch on Sundays. If anyone in the world thought (or knew) that to be wrong, it would be the former manager who was there when I started -- who has since been promoted. She was a great manager when it came getting things done and getting them done right. Her effort every day was faultless. One thing I also remember was her notoriety for checking the time sheet at the end of the week. Her primary reason for doing so was to make sure all staff were getting exactly what they deserved and nothing less. If, for instance, she saw worker x on Wednesday work all afternoon without a break, and worker x had only put the usual amount of hours down, she would happily increase it, for the good of the worker.

I am sue the Duty Manager in charge today is wrong. Whomever he spoke to at 'Head Office' is wrong. We do not get a paid lunch by law, but we do by company policy. Such reckless behaviour makes unionism more and more justified.

Where I work, workers rights have always been one step above the law. We do not, for example, get paid the minimum wage; we get paid a little bit more than that. Although the law states that it is only every 8 hours a labourer is entitled to a thirty minute break, I would argue that company policy should be more generous than that. The job I do is more physically demanding than an ordinary office job. Being on your feet all day and often having to help move heavy objects can be very hard. The company should remember this.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

A Correction Regarding The Post "Genocide: Fergal Keane's Account"

My instinct that Fergal Keane was, in the chapter 'Limits' shielding his reader from the true horrors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide have been proved correct, for in the following chapter 'Valentina', his descriptions are far more shocking.

He describes in thorough detail the events in the (predominantly Hutu) town of Nyarubuye, where a corrupt leader (Mr. Gacumbitsi) promises the Tutsis protection if they gather in the church, before ordering the slaughter. Horrifying. But two factors make this an effective piece of writing.

Firstly, this particular narrative is personalised through familiarisation with a girl called Valentina. Suddenly the people being massacred in the church have names, relations, souls. I shall spare the gory details.

Secondly, the truly shocking parts are told to us in quotation marks by Valentina. They are presented as her words. She is eight years old, with her head hacked open as she has to live among the rotting corpses of the church for four weeks. If she leaves, Gacumbitsi will slaughter her, she being the only Tutsi to survive in the Nyarubuye church massacre. Believe me, I have spared you the gory details.

Half way through the chapter, Keane goes through a transformation from journalist to philanthropist. He is deeply moved by the state he finds Valentina in. She is couped up in a makeshift clinic, her hand bandaged where she no longer has fingers, and something else I cannot bring myself to describe. He is deeply saddened. he wouldn't be human if he wasn't angry by what he saw.

But he gives her no chance. She will die. There aren't the treatments there in rural Rwanda to save her. She will die.

Two and a half years later, Keane is back in Rwanda, and he heads straight for Nyarubuye. The miracle of miracles has happened -- Valentina was taken to the capital where a foreign doctor carried out the procedure to save her life. By the end of the day, he has met up with her again. By the time he has to leave, she is sad to see him leave. He says he will stay in contact, and he does. He still keeps in touch with Valentina, who by now is a beautiful young women, with high hopes of becoming a doctor herself.

If every foreign journalist who had covered war zones kept in touch with every injured women or child they came across, they would have more friends than anyone else in the world. it is a fact that John Simpson, probably the most experienced and most travelled of any BBC hack ever, has tried to not get 'involved' with the stories he covers, but he still has friends scattered across the face of the Earth. Fergal Keane's pleasure in seeing Valentina go from being needy survivor to aspiring doctor emphasises no reasonable man's occupation can ever get the better of him. Humanity always comes before work.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Our Staff

I can't help but feel bad about how poor some of our weekend staff are. I feel part of their inability to work is my fault; I feel part of their inability is their fault; and I feel part of their inability is due to the failing of fundamental education to prepare them properly for the working world.

Firstly my fault. I've seen them making mistakes and I try and point them out as pleasantly as I can. I almost always manage that. I've seen them slacking around and being generally lazy and teenage-ish (if you know what I mean), but I've done little to help the situation. I did try to lead by example, but they simply aren't mature enough to recognize what I was doing. I watched them pricing last week, with white labels, wrong prices and putting them anywhere on the product. I told them once how to do it. But they didn't bother to change (in the end I changed the white labels in that gun). The only other way I stepped in was to tell one of them to not just throw the seed into the containers, but arrange it neatly. I feel bad about pointing things out like that because it seems straight forward common knowledge to me. I just think I could have done more though.

I feel partly responsible seeing as I trained one of them, but an incident last week makes me think I did everything right. He was putting a bag of compost through the till and didn't use the PLU codes and Andy walked past, and I happened to be standing in the vicinity. Andy asked him, "you know how to use the PLU codes, don't you?" and he said no. Andy told me to show him how to use the PLU codes. But I remember taking him outside when training him (even though Andy had already given him a tour of the garden centre). I showed him the bags of compost outside and telling him that if someone brought one of these bags to his till then he should use these codes in the book. I then took him to the till and showed him how to use the codes! I then gave him a demonstration!

Not only are they crippled by their inability to listen, but they have no work ethic what-so-ever. For the likes of you and I, and all the full-time staff, we have to work or we don't eat. But if they get fired, they still get food put on their tables by their Mums. They seriously need to read Booker T. Washington's book 'Up From Slavery'. They simply don't care if they do the job right because they don't have to care. It just isn't possible to survive in the working world with the same attitude that gets you through school. You just can't do it. The same can be said about university. In university, you have to listen to pass exams to get a degree. But above all, they don't understand the fundamental principle of interdisciplinarity. The grossest lack of such a skill was evident a few weeks back. I don't want to 'grass' on people, but if I have to I will. I saw her tearing one of her many voids off the top of the till and throwing it in the bin. I thought, "did I just see that?" so I stuck around. Two minutes later she did it again. It became painful to watch so I made a hasty exit. It just seems silly, illogical, stupid and wrong. I still can't believe she does that. It just seems sad that, in the end, most of it really is all her fault.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright