Job hunt: Part... III?

So, I've finally got myself a job! Three months later [Okay, actually it was two months and a bit into this trip but I'm just writing about it now, haha]. Oh recession, how I do not love you.

I had to sign confidentiality agreements and everything. So, I'm not allowed to tell you about any famous people I might see along the way, and I'm also not allowed to write a tell all when I leave the company. That's cool, I super have no desire to be famous, or infamous, anyway. I don't think it would hurt to tell you what I do, mostly because I feel like some people reading this started to imagine something really fabulous when  they read the bit about the confidentiality agreement and the reality is much less awesome. What can I say? I like to destroy the myth. 

It's a staffing company for parties and events around London. I go to places and, with loads of other people, set up for dinners, serve food, dessert, and alcohol to the guests, and then at the end of the event I take it all apart again. Yep. That's it. Before I move on to the point of the story, I will say this about the job: Drunk people are awful when you're sober and working. Bartenders and cabbies? I have a new appreciation for you. I really, really do.

Anyway, I've been working for the company for about two weeks now. My start date ended up being delayed because they hired me right before I left for Wales, and then it took forever to find their uniform. Black three quartered length, button up shirts? IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND! So far I've learned two things: 1. I need more supportive shoes, and 2. The people in this country can not give directions. At all. It's like they bred out the ability to sensibly give directions. Actually, this explains a lot about my own ability to tell people how to get from point A to point B.

I sort of had my suspicions because my friend Welshie is terrible at directions. One example that still annoys me when I think about it happened a few weeks back at the Lord Mayer's Show. I ended up trapped across the street from St. Paul's Cathedral. I couldn't cross the street because of the whole parade thing, but that was, apparently, where Welshie was. Welshie decided to sit in a Starbucks and wait for me to get there. I, a new person to London and with no idea where anything is, asked her how to get there. "Oh," she says, "do you see the shopping complex? It's in there." 

Great, you all say, that's easy enough to find! No, I reply while shaking my head sadly, it is not. St. Paul's is surrounded by shopping complexes. I was standing in front of [the wrong] one as I unsuccessfully tried to pry directions out of Welshie.

Welshie then proceeded to tell me to go right. "Right when I'm facing the cathedral, or right when I'm facing the other way?" I asked, as any sensible person would. At this point Welshie got flustered and told me to go right again. I calmly repeated my question, and she told me to go find a police officer and ask him. 

Anyway, it turned out I needed to go left, or what would have been right if I was facing away from the cathedral but I was not because as mentioned to you, and at the time to Welshie, my position was across the street from St. Paul's. Basically, if I had followed her directions I never would have found her. 

The annoying thing is this happens all the time. 

Another example? Of course! The other day I was booked for a job by M Station. The directions told me to turn left after leaving the tube station and I immediately knew I would get lost. Why? Because most tube stations have more than one entrance and the directions never, ever tell you which exit you need to take. Not when you try to use Google directions, not when you use the journey planner on the London Transport page, and definitely not when you're trying to get your staff to an event. Although, I do have to be fair and admit that it isn't the staffing company's fault. They're using the same Google directions and London Transport page that I use. Even though it feels like these programs are deliberately withholding information from me as I wander the streets of London, deep, deep down I know they are not.

So, I arrive at the station and relief floods over me when I realize there is only one proper tube station entrance, the other one is the overground entrance with access to the tube station. Great! I turn left and walk the whole length of the street without spotting the side street I'm supposed to be on. Lost, which is a state I'm in approximately 75% of the time in this city, I call the company, who tell me I should have turned right when I got out of the station. Of course. The directions were actually for the overground entrance across the street.  Even though they said they were from the tube station part. I quickly walked back to the station and made my way to the event, where I commiserated with some Australians who made the same 'mistake'.

Of course, the two previous examples have nothing on my third, and final, example of Londoners giving bad directions. I needed to get to an event by O Station. The directions told me to walk 'down' a street outside the station. If you leave the station you can go left or right, and it is important to note that this street is not on a hill. So, if it's flat, how do you know which way is down? Confused, I called the company for better directions. Where they repeatedly told me I needed to go down. "Okay," I said in my best 'I'm so frustrated by trying really hard to hide it' voice, "is that towards T Street, or towards H Street?" 

"It's down!" The person on the line repeated like a broken record. "You know, towards the river!" Right, cool, except you can't see the river from this station, so I still needed a left or right direction. At one point we were both so frustrated and annoyed that we both turned condescending and the person on the line went, "Okay, I feel like you're getting stressed... Listen very carefully: Gooooo dooooooooooowwwwnnnnnnnn."

... 

...

I honestly felt like forgetting about the job and going home. Why is it so hard to just tell me to go towards T Street, or towards H Street? You can't go down unless you're on a hill, or by a hole! Eventually I just picked a direction at random, found out that the street starts to go downhill once you pass a building or two, and found my way to the event. But still. 

I think the most frustrating thing is that the people here are convinced they give excellent directions. If I ask them to clear it up a bit they act like I'm the moron, when in every example I listed here, just blindly following their directions lead, or would have lead, to me being in the totally wrong spot. I'm not perfect when it comes to giving directions, but I always tell people things like, "Okay, when you stand in front the Well Known Landmark and look at it, you need to go right." It's really simple enough! Perspective means EVERYTHING. If you're looking away from the landmark you need to go left! This isn't hard stuff! 

...Unless you're a Londoner. 

<3 Jade

The new job: Part unemployed

Call centres suck.

I lasted the three days of training and then one day on the phones, so, at least I tried? I guess?

...

It was awful. I hated it so much. The training was okay, but the reality of getting on the phones was just too much.

First of all, I couldn't understand a lot of people since we called all over the UK. Some accents are like the equivalent of very old people in the woods of Cape Breton who mostly speak Gaelic. Some of them couldn't understand my accent, some just couldn't hear at all.

Why couldn't they hear? Because, typically, the people who don't have broadband are the people who are very old. About 75% of the calls were to people who were at least 80. They didn't own computers, they didn't know broadband.

Sometimes you talked to people who said the account holder had died, usually the widow. That was terrible. Imagine a telemarketer intruding into your grief. I'd be a million times ruder than these poor people were.

Usually they were old and didn't have computers, so you had to try to sell them computers, too. It was beyond rude.

"I'm too old for computers."
"Ah, you're never too old for computers, sir."
"I said I'm too old!"
"Are you sure? Do you have any children or grandchildren you'd like to keep in touch with?"

The man said no! Respect that and move on. But, you had to keep the people on the phone as long as possible.

Every so often you'd talk to someone young, who had their telephone and broadband with separate companies. That was alright. I had a fantastic conversation with one lady about Canada. She had relatives emigrate a zillion years ago and she liked to keep up with Canadian news because of that. I'm sure I would have been yelled at for wasting time and having a conversation with someone, but I didn't go back the second day, soooo. Whatever.

It got to the point where I was counting down seconds until breaks, then until I could go home. One person quit after listening in on the phones, she hated the cold calling aspect. I gave it the one day and decided I couldn't forget my morals for eight hours every day, which was actually was several people said I'd have to do. So, I quit. A guy quit.

Three people quit by day 1 on the job. We had 12 in our training group, so 1/4 decided they hated it.


Basically, the moral of this story is cold calling old people is awful and I'd rather be unemployed and homeless I guess.

...I am the woman who 200 years ago would be starving in the streets because I couldn't bring myself to become a prostitute and I can read so clearly I'm off the marriage market.

Sigh. :(

Well, I've submitted my CV to loads of agencies, and after I move tomorrow I can direct all of that energy to job hunting. Hopefully it works out.

Of course, it has to work out. I have 1 year and 10 months left on this visa, so going home is not an option.

<3 Jade

The new job

I really wanted to find an apartment before I found a job, but it didn't work out like that. I'm still staying with my cousin, and I'm definitely ready to move out, so hopefully that will happen soon.

I sent my resume to an agency last Wednesday, and they called me pretty much immediately to tell me about a job interview taking place on Thursday, with a call centre, would I be interested? Well, not really but I said yes anyway because I figured it would be a good experience, and then I could see what interviews are like in the UK.

Well, they're not all that different from Canadian ones, honestly. I showed up, they started late and spent a lot of time making us sit around. I didn't try too hard, and at one point I almost walked out because the agency didn't tell me it was going to take several hours of my morning and all afternoon if I got the job. But, I stuck around [and made my cousin wait several hours for me because my cell phone was broken. Thanks Samsung!] through a random skills test and an interview. I was definitely shocked when I got the job, but pretty excited because by that point I had met several people my age, some who were also new to the country. Also, it's Monday to Friday and I intend to go away for many, many weekends.

At the very least, even if cold calling people is soul sucking, I'll have, hopefully, made some friends.

One girl lives close to me, so we went home together. Oh, and by close I mean she's three train stops away and it would probably take 40 minutes to walk to her house. That was fantastic, since I have zero skills when it comes to finding my way anywhere. London makes it as easy as possible. They list the stops, announce the stops, and have maps of the routes all over the place. And, yet, I still regularly fail to get where I need to go. Being this bad at travel is a gift.

I started my first full day on Friday, and it was a disaster in the beginning. It takes two hours to commute to the call centre from my cousin's house. It's like living in Pictou and commuting to Halifax every, single day. And then, you can't even sing in your car at the top of your lungs because no one else on the commute wants to hear your crap singing. Anyway, I take a train from this place that's about a 20 minute walk from the house, down hill in the mornings, up hill in the evening. The 'overground' [a regular train] takes me into Victoria Station and I catch the circle line to Liverpool Street and walk the rest of the way.

Yeah, except the circle line wasn't working. Some random worker directed me to a bus that was supposed to go directly to Liverpool Street. That's cool. It was 20 minutes late, the underground was still down, and the bus finally arrives.

Then, it moves at a crawl through the tourist hot spots. Lovely. I had an hour to get to my job at this point, and it took an hour to travel 7 kilometres. It should have taken 20 minutes to drive it, and it would have taken an hour and 15 minutes to walk it. That's how gross traffic is in London.

"According to the map, Westminster Abbey is by the red Honda.
It's been there for 30 years trying to get to Liverpool Street."

To make matters worse, the bus sign suddenly changes. It's no longer going to Liverpool Street, it's kicking us off somewhere else. I asked the Mr. Native Londoner next to me, and he said it was supposed to go to Liverpool Street. Well, the driver kicks everyone off at a spot that is definitely not Liverpool Street. I get off the bus with two Aussie backpackers, all of us are freaking out. Luckily, Mr. Native Londoner kept his head and checked the bus schedule and said another 11 should be coming soon.

I arrived at Liverpool Street at 10. I was supposed to be at my job, ready to train at 10. I still had to find the place, and the bus totally turned me around. I asked like 5 people for directions, turned down the wrong street. I ended up half crying while asking this other guy new to London directions, and he put the address in his iPhone and gave me the directions. Then, somehow, I actually walked by the building on the other side of the street.

That was about the point I fully burst into tears and wanted someone to kill me. It wasn't like I was going to make it home, anyway. Not with the underground broken. Then, I asked another guy for directions and he was all, "Oh, it's right here." He was super nice! Both him and Mr. New to London were absolutely fantastic. I think I sort of scared the final helper, though. Since he was all, "Aw, no, don't cry! You're right here! You made it, you found it! You're brilliant, really! You found where you need to be!" Anything to make the random Canadian stop bawling, right?

I rushed into the building, the security guard let me use the lift even though it's reserved for disabled people and deliveries, and I arrived at my job 20 minutes late... Where my trainer didn't even care that I was late. So, basically, I panicked for nothing.

The day got better though, after work I went out to Trafalgar Square to the Malaysia Festival with my new Welsh friend who is also new to the country!

<3 Jade


EDIT: Apparently on 'Monday-week' (a week from next Monday) the underground workers are going on strike. Efffff. Words can not express how annoying that is. No wonder everyone here has huge amounts of road rage.