After starting yet another painfully boring job, which is so impossibly dull, I would rather play darts with my own eyes as targets for fun. I have again taken my place in the Disenchanted Workers Union (DWU) and I am hating every moment. I’m back to being patronised beyond all recognition and espied with loathing and suspicion in equal measure. I am temp scum and for the foreseeable future I will be temp scum. I am scum.
Training has so far involved a series of computer based tests and the one thing that I am equipped for now is bomb threats. Want to know what to do? Call me in, I’m now an expert. Within the first two hours of said temp job, I had the threat of BOMBS spelled out very loudly. You see, the large multinational finance company apparently has quite a few embittered customers who regularly threaten staff with BOMB talk. We were given at least a two hour talk on what to do if we suspect that there is a BOMB on site and if we are on the receiving end of coded warning from a would be BOMBER. If am placed in one of those difficult situations, which lets face it I will be (when I worked in Makro a customer lobbed a Microwave at me) I have a three page questionnaire to fill out. Yes, after being asked questions like “What does it look like?”, “Where have you planted it?”, “Why?” I’m pretty sure a would-be BOMBER would detonate it there and then. There is also a page in which you have to circle what the person sounded like, if they were depressed, happy or malicious sounding and you could write down if the person sounded familiar and who the person was, I would be tempted to write Vernon Kaye, but hey, it seems that space is there for a multitude of embittered ex-staff, still seething with grudges long after they’ve left.
Training did provide some light relief in the afternoon however with the ‘Discrimination in the Workplace’ training. After being asked the question “Sue has been receiving rather a lot of inappropriate comments from Roger of late and she has caught him looking at pornographic websites whilst at work. She has asked him to refrain from this behaviour at work but he persists. At Christmas he bought her a chocolate novelty sex toy. Is this an infringement of ...some law or other?” I was nearly weeping at this question in all its poetic brilliance. Whoever made that piece of software is a complete and utter genius in my eyes and should win some award. I was hooting, thigh slapping and chortling at that amazing piece of work. I was desperate to know what comments Roger had made and what exactly he was looking at. That would have made the whole training experience so much more enriching and would have got quite an amazing answer from myself in return.
Another brilliant slice of genius was also another section in the aforementioned training in which you are given a picture of a desert island with the faces of 12 people above the trees. The programme requires you to pick the people who you want to stay with you on the island. Fair enough, who is the fittest? To be honest, after picking the best looking out of them, I then went on to the slightly more rotund people, using the notion that if we get hungry we can spit roast the porkies on the fire. I’m cruel, I know. Then a little pop up comes on screen saying that you have discriminated against three ethnic minorities or something and you have to pick again to infinitum.
I’m dreading starting proper work after training, but I can’t wait to meet Roger and Sue. I hope they are in my department.
