Training scheme

Stories about the fundamental laziness of British youth are becoming increasingly common. ‘Unskilled,’ ‘uninterested,’ ‘unemployable,’ and other damning epithets with the prefix ‘un-’ are liberally thrown by journalists at the country’s young people. I suspect that rampant unemployment among the under 25s has more to do with the shrivelling of the economy than any inherently off-putting traits possessed by those unfortunate enough to have been born after 1987. But I could be wrong. Evidence that I might well be can be found, in fact, in the introductory training schemes which many of us have to go through upon starting a new position. Some of them even take place in public.

I’m not talking about those graduate-scheme induction programmes for entry-level management consultants, which involve such well known team-building exercises as hugging ten strangers in the street or initiating an impromptu tramp karaoke sing-off. I’m talking about those mundane, run-of-the-mill training courses that take place by the thousand every day. If you want to observe one you need only head down to the nearest coffee shop where, if you’re lucky, you might just catch the in-house training of that individual who is the dream of all people-watchers: the would-be-but-shouldn’t-be barista.

You can see at once that this is his first day, and that the person lumbered with sculpting him into a caffeine-slinging paragon of customer service is Maria. She’s a known quantity. She’s served you coffee before and it’s usually been pretty good. Not leaving-pennies-in-the-tipping-cup good, but nothing to complain about.

Today you’ve really lucked out: you’ve caught them right at the start of training. In fact it’s odds on that they’ve only just clapped eyes on each other, evidenced by the vague sense of disappointment that lingers on her face and the fact that she’s asking him the most elementary of questions.

Maria: “So, Dean, have you ever worked in a coffee shop before?

Dean: “No, but I’ve seen them on TV.”

A little cryptic, she thinks, but whatever.

Maria: “Right… good. So let’s start with the basics. Always begin by smiling at the customer and saying ‘good morning.’”

Dean: [Nods.]

Maria: “Then ask what they’d like. We’ll start with an easy one. Let’s say the customer wants an Americano. You ask them ‘would you like that black or white?’”

Dean: “Black or white? [squints with confusion] But all coffee’s black. Well actually more of a brown I suppose.”

Maria: “What? What do you mean by…? Dean, don’t take this the wrong way but have you ever… have you ever had coffee?”

Dean: “I think so… yeah I’m pretty sure I have.”

Maria: “So, you know, white as in ‘with milk.’

Dean: “Milk? Seriously? You mean some people put milk in their coffee?”

Maria: “Yeah, about 75% of our customers do [vein on side of her head begins to bulge]. Look, we’ll talk about this in a minute. Let me run through the machine with you. You start here [points to the coffee grinder]. You just push this button to grind the beans, and once that’s done…”

Dean: “Oh I know this…”

She smiles. Finally he’s getting it.

Dean: “Yeah you just take a couple of spoonfuls and stir it into hot water.”

Maria: “What? No, you…”

Dean: [looking around] “So where’s the kettle? [looks under counter] I would have thought a place this size would need loads of them.”

Maria: “No listen to me. This is ground coffee, you can’t just drink it. You put it in here [points to coffee machine], press this button here and wait. It’s that simple.”

Dean: “Right, right, I get it. So do you add the whisky afterwards, or should we have put it in before?”

Maria: “What??”

Dean: “Oh, sorry, is there a separate nozzle where the Irish coffee comes out? Is it this one?”

Mariah: “That’s the steamer!”

If you’re an unreconstructed optimist you’ll probably shrug and say ‘everyone has to start somewhere.’ If you’re like me, however, you’ll probably conclude that the journalists were right all along.

The Silver Screen

My usual reaction to film trailers is to glaze over. The pappy soft-rock that invariably accompanies romantic comedies leaves me cold, and that peculiar, deep-toned farting sound that seems to preface every other sci-fi action flick has me scrabbling for the remote. You know the sound I’m talking about: Bwwaaarg. “We thought we were alone.” [shot of Earth from space] Bwwaaarg. “We were wrong.” [shot of aliens levelling destruction against tourist spots around the world].

Every now and then, however, my socks are blown off by something a little less predictable. When that happens I dutifully scurry off to the nearest cinema, take out an endowment policy and bite my fist as I hand over a sack of money in exchange for the tickets.

My intolerance of trailers means that I usually leave it about half an hour before going in, and consequently I’m one of the last people to sit down.

Then it happens.

The lights are just starting to dim, when I look around me to discover…

Bwwaaarg. [shot of heavy breathers to my right] Bwwaaarg. [shot of loud-mouths who are have already shouted out how the film ends to my left] Bwwaaarg [slow-motion shot of me raising my hands to my face in horror].

It’s the same every time. Perhaps it’s just bad luck. Maybe I just choose to pretend that this time will be different. Either way, leaving isn’t an option. Aside from the fact that I’ve paid the equivalent of a mortgage deposit for the tickets, my feet are physically glued to the carpet by the remains of someone’s caramel popcorn.

There’s no choice but to stick it out, so I settle back in the chair and focus on the film.

Then the other thing happens.

I put my arms onto the rests either side of me and encounter the forearm of my neighbour. At the moment of contact we both retreat, as is the unspoken duty of all English people who find themselves in the excruciating position of being near another person. Then, after a few moments of politely demurring, I determine that the time is right to reclaim my half.

Well imagine my outrage when I tentatively move my arm across to find that my neighbour, who in that instant becomes my sworn enemy, is occupying a full three fifths of the arm-rest!

It’s war, and I dutifully launch the attack. Pressing my arm fully against his I begin to exert pressure and he responds in kind. Neither of us is moving, but the pressure is subtly increasing. We’re both pretending to watch the film, but really we’re entirely focused on the contest for the arm-rest. And things are getting tense. It’s only a matter of time before one of us resorts to the battle cry of the outraged and snaps “DO you mind!?”

Suddenly he shifts in his seat and momentarily raises his arm. I dive in and reclaim my territory. Victory! Not that the coveted arm-rest is particularly agreeable. In fact I immediately have to fight the overwhelming urge to fold my arms, which would be a much more comfy posture. But for reasons that hardly need elaborating it’s impossible now. I have to style it out and keep my arm firmly on the dirty, faux velvet rest for the full three hours. It’s all down to that special code of honour that governs the petty disputes which permeate our daily lives.

And to cap it all the film was rubbish.

Shark attack!

I recently read about an exciting development that may have land lubbers whose lives are crippled by a fear of shark attack reaching for their snorkels. As this report by the BBC details, a scientist in America has developed a substance which he hopes will serve to repel sharks. The science is beyond me, though apparently it works by taking advantage of the sensors that line the snouts of the predatory fish, which are receptive to electromagnetic signals.

Inspired by this masterstroke of scientific development I decided to effect a little breakthrough of my own. It took much sweat and plenty of elbow-grease, but I think I’ve just about cracked it. After hours spent in the lab I’ve created a device that will repel an even deadlier predator, which lurks in the urban depths and feasts on the weak: the loan shark.

The latter are wily hunters who, like their ocean-dwelling cousins, are equipped with special sensors used to detect their prey. These line their sideburns, and allow them to sense bad credit from up to three miles away. Once a target has been acquired they move in at lightning speed and strike using a combination of tantalising marketing and the ready availability of seemingly cheap credit. Once it has you in its jaws there’s no escape. Those who are solvent or high earning are of no use. It’s the financially wounded that comprise the loan shark’s diet.

My device is delightfully simple, comprising little more than a small black box that could fit into the palm of your hand. Once activated it emits an electromagnetic signal that perfectly mimics the bio-field of a mid-level office manager on an income of between £35k and £40k per annum. This is designed to disrupt the sideburn-sensors of any loan shark within fifty feet, and as if this weren’t enough the device contains a small speaker with a series of pre-programmed sounds guaranteed to send the predator packing, which we’ll hear about below.

Once I’d finished work on my masterpiece I decided to field test it. But for this I needed bait. Ever-resourceful I spent hours meticulously creating a fake balance sheet from a made-up bank. Anyone who read it and saw that I had racked up £5000 of debt on an overdraft of £50 would immediately assume that I was the Bank of Lower South Western Transylvania’s worst customer. Grim reading indeed, but candy to a loan shark.

Waiting until after midnight I crept outside, planted the balance sheet behind a bush and hid.

Now all I had to do was let the scent of financial despair waft through the surrounding streets.

And it didn’t take long either. Fifteen minutes later I saw a movement behind the tree opposite. Squinting, I would just about distinguish a gold sovereign ring glinting in the moonlight. Another movement and a strand of greasy, slicked-back hair revealed itself.

Suddenly the loan shark emerged into the road, pausing momentarily whilst his nostrils quested the air. It was nearly time. Further he advanced until he was within two feet of the document. Slowly he reached into his pocket, delicately pulling out a calculator in preparation to strike.

It was at that moment that I turned on the device, and the effect was instantaneous. In a sudden, twitching movement he hunched his back and bared his teeth defensively. But he remained put.

A few seconds later, however, the device played one of its randomly selected sound recordings.

“Phew, just finished balancing the cheque book, darling. I don’t think we’ve ever been so solvent.”

The loan shark flinched and began backing away.

“Well isn’t that wonderful, dear. Thank goodness for your judicious thrift.”

The second recording was too much, and he sprinted off into the night, yelping pitifully.

So there you have it, a successful trial run. I expect I’ll make millions, of course, but really I’m doing this for humanity. I just need to think of a good name for it…

The lives of strangers

I sometimes find myself wondering what it must be like to live in a tight-knit community. Never having experienced it myself I’ve left it to wistful stereotype to shape my views, with its cheery depictions of people smiling and saying ‘good morning’ as they pass in the street and the friendly neighbour popping round to borrow a cup of sugar.

In London such actions would of course be met with open mouthed horror. Salutations of ‘good morning’ would be rewarded with a restraining order, whilst the knock of a neighbour on the door with a polite request for sugar would prompt a desperate sprint to the panic room and a frenzied phone call to the police. In London, where eight million residents are crammed together cheek-by-jowl, the dividing wall separating your life from that of whoever lives next door is as profound as that which divides the living from the dead.

The fact that so many souls occupy the same city inevitably means that many live in the shadow of their neighbours. Rows of houses are built virtually on top of each other and looming over every other street is a block of flats. This, however, provides for some very interesting observational opportunities. In many of the places I’ve lived, I’ve been able to see directly into the living rooms of those who live nearby. In fact at only nine feet wide, my last flat was a voyeur’s paradise. Not that I sat on a rocking chair all day, binoculars glued to my eyes. It’s not like that at all. They’re really more like opera glasses, and I’ve always preferred easy chairs to rockers.

As a result of this strangely intimate proximity, the lives of strangers (and indeed my own) are laid tantalisingly bare. Quite literally in some cases. There’s nothing that makes you feel quite like you’ve been living the existence of a chronically inhibited prude than seeing a group of middle aged professionals enjoying a rather sophisticated-looking dinner party entirely in the buff. Worse still is noticing that the person who lives directly opposite is playing the hand that fate really ought to have dealt you, at least if the enviably expensive interior of their flat is anything to go by. Some comfort can be gleaned by the unending routine of laundry in which some people seem to be engaged. The fact that they seem perpetually to be unfolding socks gives a reassuring indication that their lives are as uneventful as your own. This, though, means that they’re no fun watch.

As it happens we’re actually more like a tight-knit community than we like to think. The curious combination of proximity and anonymity, which is such a feature of the city, provides both the motivation and the means for us to peer in on each other’s lives. And in that respect we bear a striking resemblance to one of the most famous motifs of community life: the nosy old woman with rollers in her hair, peering over the garden fence.

Going green, seeing red.

“We’ve only got one planet, guys, so let’s all do our bit to go green,” said a leaflet recently posted through my door. Despite the heavily stylised chumminess that marketing men believe is irresistibly engaging, I can’t remember which company sent it or what it was advertising. The message about sustainability, however, has lingered. This may be due in part to the cartoon of a smarmy-looking planet Earth that appeared above the line of text quoted above. More probably, though, it’s down to the fact that the leaflet itself was dripping with irony. Professing a dedication to the planet on pieces of semi-stiff card is all well and good, but one can almost hear the death screams of the innocent tree that was unceremoniously lobbed into the pulper on the first step in its reincarnation as a pile of pamphlet-grade paper.

The mania of companies for pushing bits of dead tree onto your doormat never ceases to amaze. And now that global warming has become a national fixation I can officially clothe my grumpiness at having to shred so much paper each week in a cloak of righteous indignation about the death of planet Earth by a thousand paper cuts.

Not that it’s only junk mail that makes Mother Nature a bit teary. One of the chief offenders against my new best friend is that great enemy of the luddite: the self-service checkout. Once it’s finished telling you that there is an “unexpected item in the bagging area,” and grown tired of spitting your ten pound note back out at you, it concludes proceedings by printing your receipt. All ten yards of it. Regardless of whether you buy a pack of chewing gum or a month’s worth of food it’s the same size. And if you’ve ever watched another shopper frantically pulling reams of paper from the checkout, you too may have been put in mind of the party magician who pulls a never-ending handkerchief from his sleeve.

The products you scan through the beast are almost invariably cocooned in a nest of cardboard and plastic wrapping. Some of it can be quite deceptive, luring you into thinking that you’ll need to loosen your belt a notch or two before laying into the mountains of food contained within. Once you’ve removed the outer sleeve, the inner sleeve and the two subsequent layers of plastic, however, it’s quite common to discover that you won’t needing a knife and fork to eat your ready-to-cook beef stew; a teaspoon will be more than ample.

At this point, however, I’m going to wipe the froth from my mouth and refrain from extending my rant about the plethora of junk mail and packaging. Instead, and in the interest of giving credit where credit’s due, I’m going to note two important steps that companies have been taking to minimise their carbon footprints.

The first is in the realm of carrier bags. You might have heard news reports about supermarkets’ efforts to reduce the amount of plastic used in their production. This is a welcome development since they will apparently still be in the very earliest stages of decomposition by the time the sun is on its last legs. Well the fabled change has now taken place, and I must say they’ve certainly managed to shave off an impressive amount of plastic. Now, with the shop assistant flinging your goods down the checkout like a cricket bowler, the job of prying open a shopping bag has taken on a new sense of urgency. For opening up these super-thin bags without tearing them is as delicate an act as shaving the stubble off a butterfly’s chin, and results in a dozen tattered rags for every success. Another consequence is that anything heavier than a postage stamp promptly falls through the bottom. Still, if that means that we all have to buy fewer over-packaged food products then it’s a double victory for dear Mother Nature.

The second important development is being pursued by reformed addicts of junk mail, who have started turning to its green alternative: junk email. The ‘e’ is what makes all the difference, and can stand both for ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘excruciatingly annoying.’ Furthermore it offers the advantage of being free from the restrictions of the postal delivery schedule. No longer must companies confine themselves to a single daily marketing opportunity. Instead they can bombard you with messages throughout the day, seven days a week. “Did you know that our sale is starting on Friday?” asks a brand that I wouldn’t be seen dead in, and have surely never relinquished my email address to. “Come inside and find out about our exclusive offers,” commands a company that I’m fairly certain went bankrupt in the recession before last. I’ve taken to blacklisting brands that send out such irritating missives. An unfortunate effect of this is that I’m now running out if places to buy clothes, though this, too, must surely  be good for our beloved tyrant, planet Earth.

Wanted:

 Whiplash and Associates are seeking a fit, healthy slave, aged 18–35, to begin toiling immediately at our central London office. We are a market leader with an impressive record of employee satisfaction. The individual who becomes our chattel will enjoy a diverse and competitive benefits package, including but not limited to: 

• working without the prospect of remuneration
• the lingering threat of summary dismissal
• the statistical probability of developing repetitive strain injury 

The successful applicant will be middle class or above; free from visible tattoos and piercings, and ideally possess a distinguishing feature that can form the basis of observational humour amongst our paid employees. They must be highly educated, with a demonstrable ability to identify and press the green button on the photocopier.

In a bracingly retro throwback to its days as a Roman trading town, London has emerged once again as a major centre for the purchase of slaves. The latter are known colloquially as ‘interns,’ and in recent years have become an office staple, dutifully relieving workers from backbreaking tasks such as making tea, opening filing cabinets and (as noted above) photocopying documents. Here in the UK they tend to be unpaid, though their thankless days are not endured without a glimmer of hope. Like the slaves of wealthy Romans, interns owned by companies whose recruitment drives have survived the recession intact may, at the end of their servitude, be offered the elusive prize they all dream of as they trudge down to the high street on the office sandwich run: a job.

This, unfortunately, is the reward of only a lucky few, and after their internships are over most end up back where they started, though with perhaps a more pronounced hatred of minor admin.

With the growth in the demand for interns and a persistently stagnant job market, I predict two possible (and dramatic) changes that will affect the development of corporate slavery. And in both cases I look to the classical world for inspiration.

The Roman economy, like all economies prior to the industrial revolution, was horse-powered. But Mother Nature, in her irritatingly subversive way, decided not to give horses opposable thumbs, making them eminently unsuitable for administrative tasks (the emperor Nero ignored practicalities by making his horse a senator, but we can safely assume he wasn’t too fussed about paperwork being filed on time). Human beings, however, were just right for all those fiddly tasks that need a good set of digits and a nice, big prefrontal cortex. These included cooking, cleaning, waiting at table and all forms of manual labour.

Spartacus, who needs no introduction, had different ideas about how his opposable thumbs ought to be used, and gathered a revolutionary force to fight for freedom. Fast forward to the modern era, with a growing sense of discontent at the fact that interns are unpaid, and I can well imagine a courageous ‘Intern-a-cus’ rising up and leading his or her fellow slaves to corporate freedom. Papers would be left dangerously un-photocopied, insanity would become endemic with phones left to ring answered, and with no one to carry out the tea run workers would die of dehydration at their desks. It wouldn’t be pretty. Like Spartacus’s attempt, however, I imagine that such a move would ultimately be unsuccessful. What’s more the suppression of the rebels would doubtless result in a mountain of extra paperwork that would have to be photocopied and filed by their less mutinous peers.

The second prediction is inspired by the means the Ancient Greeks and Romans used to procure their slaves: conquest. In cases where one community waged war against another and ended up pouring through the city gates of its foe on an expedition of pillage and ransack, human beings were considered legitimate booty. Scooped up and carted off to the land of the victor, they would be sold at markets to the highest bidders, going on to work out their lives in grim servitude.

Perhaps something similar will happen in the bellicose world of business. With a constant demand for workers and the cost of employees high, innovative measures for obtaining able-bodied slaves to toil in the office will surely be at a premium. A clever approach for companies who succeed in making hostile takeovers would be to ‘storm the city gates’ of their competitors and seize their workers as interns, thus fuelling a cheap, plentiful supply of labour. The day may be on its way when cages full of pinstriped captives will be drawn through the streets of the new Londinium on their way to the office towers of their conquerors.

And why not? After all, when in London, do as the Romans do.

THE RETAIL STALKER

The title of this long-overdue blog post may conjure up images of a mysterious stranger whose head can be seen in your peripheral vision, rising menacingly above the canned goods shelf before dipping out of sight when you turn to confront them. Perhaps it puts you in mind of the moment you realise that what you thought was your shadow is in fact wearing a name badge saying ‘Trainee’ and has been casting a beady eye over your shoulder for the past ten minutes.

I’m speaking, of course, about that fearful creature that inhabits shops and retail outlets the length and breadth of the nation: the overbearing shop assistant. If you’re a fan of nature documentaries you’ll appreciate the analogy between the natural world and the retail jungle. You’ll recognise the opportunistic predator who pounces on you at the blind corner next to the stack of cereal boxes, or the wolf who doggedly pursues you for aisles and aisles across the tundra until your stamina fails. If you’re a fan of Terminator 2 you’ll even appreciate that every so often they almost seem to morph upwards out of the floor and strike before you have a chance to get away. And in all probability they’re bullet proof too.

The overbearing shop assistant can appear in many guises. The most common is the one who works on commission and is desperate to make a sale. If your experience is anything like mine they’ll tend to zero in on you when you haven’t the slightest intention of buying anything. It’s invariably a rainy day, you’ve ordered a coffee in the hope that the downpour will have ended by the time you’ve paid. But it hasn’t. In fact when you step outside it’s chucking it down even harder, so you dive through the nearest open door and find yourself in a clothes shop. Some strange, primal instinct obliges you to pretend to look through the racks of hideous, overpriced rags. That’s when the radar of the retail stalker is activated. They’ve identified you as prey. You can almost hear their thoughts: “He’s looking at clothes. He’s interested in buying. And he’s already spent £2.50 on a cup of coffee. He must have mountains of disposable income. Literally mountains. Right, take no prisoners!” And then they move in for the kill. At this point you have two choices. The first, and frankly the easiest, is to resist for as long as you can before giving up and making a purchase. It’s a tough one, but a cost-benefit analysis will tell you that it means less pain in the long run. The second choice is to fling your Americano in their face while it’s still hot and run as fast as you can. It might slow them down, but it won’t stop them. And what’s more it will almost certainly lead to them chasing your car down the motorway at 90 mph, clawing across the boot and onto the roof, ripping it open and begging you to consider opening up a store card account. It’s just not worth it.

Another familiar retail stalker doubles as the world’s policeman. He’s there to make sure the scientifically proven domino effect that begins with shoplifting and ends in the collapse of human civilisation doesn’t start in his store. It’s a daunting responsibility, and tends to fall heaviest on the shoulders of those who manage small shops. You’ll probably sense his presence before you actually see him hovering over you, the aura of justice striking fear into a criminal heart such as yours. His mentality regarding customers is the opposite to that which we’ve seen in the shop assistant on commission. His ears will prick as he hears the tinkling of the bell over the shop door, and he’ll spring into action. “A young man, aged 18–35,” he’ll note. “Statistically most likely to be unemployed, and principal demographic for criminal activity. Moving in for closer observation. What’s he looking at over there? Toilet roll? Quilted toilet role! Why would he spend the extra money on that? Why not go unquilted? He’s got a motive. Definitely dodgy.” By this time he’ll be mentally preparing his witness statement to the police, and will have shuffled to within inches of you. The best thing to do in this situation is to leave, making a secret promise to yourself only to patronise conglomerate, small-business-destroying megastores in future. We’re talking about playing the long game here.

There’s one species of retail stalker who, by contrast, moves me to sympathy rather than fury. These are the ones who have been press-ganged into stalkerhood by zealous managers. We’ve all seen them. They tend to be young, barely interested but forced to learn a script devised in response to a marketing man’s bright idea about ‘adding sparkle to our already excellent service.’ They’ll have been shooed over to you by their direct superior. They don’t want to be there. You don’t want them there. Their face probably bears the vestiges of embarrassment, but really their sense of shame was numbed to death halfway through their customer service training course. Having to answer every customer query with “excellent question Sir/Madam,” grinds down the soul, as does being forced to conclude every conversation with “many thanks for allowing me to assist you,” as well as having to make sure that at least three offers of assistance are made to everyone who enters the store. And accepting a polite refusal by a customer who doesn’t realise that they need ‘sparkling service’ is a no-no of disciplinary proportions.

You can see that they’re being compelled to utter the cringe-worthy spiel. Their manager is standing one aisle away, assessing their performance. You also know that they can’t be seen to walk away from a customer first, though if you walk away they’re obliged to follow you. It’s catch 22. You’re left with no choice: you’ll have to perform an impromptu retail exorcism. You close your eyes, raise your hands over their head and solemnly intone:

“I release thee!”

That should do the trick. Now you can walk away from the whole grisly scenario with no danger of pursuit. The manager won’t be able to scold the shop assistant since he’s officially been ‘released’ from his duty towards you, and none of the others will want to approach you because clearly you’re insane. Even the ones strapped to the checkouts will barely make eye contact.

It’s one of the few win-win situations in the grim world of shopping.