(A piece written for ‘The Grind‘ journal – August 2014)

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve begun this sentence. Every time I begin to feel I know where it’s going, I hear something that baffles, disgusts or appals me – examples of absolute idiocy everywhere it seems. So where to start? Let’s begin with something you already know.

The world is full of idiots. It is us and them. They want it to be us and them and us and us and us and a million more divisions. Divisions of nation. Of sides, of opinion, of wealth, of every tiny opportunity there is. But it is simply us and them.

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In a new town, I have recently begun the full-time job of finding work. Spending hours and hours re-writing, re-formatting; submitting the same information over and over, to fit the whims of each potential employer. I have learnt that a more fruitful task would have been to fill a filing cabinet with personal statements, wheel it to the top of Ben Nevis, and empty the contents in to a thunderous storm.

However, this week I all but completed three days of, what was mistakenly referred to several times by the company Director as, training. Like the other 7 ‘interviewees’, I had given up 3 full days to be there. One man, unemployed for 2 years, had driven over 20 miles each day to attend this ‘interview’. Another had taken time away from a family trip to London. Everyone else had spent money either on buses or petrol. They offered us free water, instant coffee, custard creams and a basket full of sherbets.

We were required to complete a ‘quiz’ at the end of each day. Enough correct answers and we’d be on their books and blessed with the otherwise unattainable zero hours contract (which would come at some undefined point in the future when the PVG, we were required to pay £59 for, finally went through).

Let me paraphrase one of the quiz questions for you:

Your client’s cooker catches on fire. Do you:

 

1. Push them towards the fire and run out of the room screaming.
2. Find some petrol, and suggest your client try to put the fire out with it.
3. Remove your client from danger and call 999 immediately.

My exaggeration is slight.

On the final afternoon we, the interviewees, decided we’d go for lunch over the road. This we did, spending more money that we hadn’t earned, but enjoyably so as we prepared ourselves as comrades of sorts, for the final afternoon. We returned to the ‘training room’ and sat down. A few minutes later the company Director appeared, with his associate. Until this point, despite frequently bursting in and out to pickup printouts and shuffle pieces of paper in to the hands of our ‘interviewer’, they had not once addressed us.

“Have you had a great time?” the Director asked, clapping his hands together in a way that befits someone with a background (as his is) in managing global property funds. Only a fool asks such a question. “Don’t sound too enthusiastic…” he tailed off, before beginning a shambolic power-point presentation it appeared he had neither practised, nor thought too much about.

Finally, it was the turn of the sidekick. He stood tall, leaned back, smiled and, clasping his hands together, he began to tell us how valuable we were. It was ‘people like us’ that made the company’s name. We all shuddered. Across the table came the question, ”How do you justify paying such low wages?”. “It’s the going rate” the Director comfortably chipped in. His associate then went on to explain that if we were there for the money, we were in the wrong place. They wanted people that really cared. We were to think of ourselves as “paid volunteers”. We were “special”, he announced.

At this point I looked up and the word ‘special’ seemed to hang in the air like a turd and when I heard him suggest that we were in the wrong place were we there for the money – the money that his less than living-wage, zero hour contract promised – I felt the need to reach out, pick up the turd and throw it back at him. I was not alone.

“Are we ‘special’ enough to pay for three days of ‘training’?” I asked. “So special, you don’t pay our expenses, you don’t buy us lunch, you pretend that this is part of the interview and then refer to it as training? You make the ‘quiz’ so insultingly easy that we can’t possibly fail and have the nerve to suggest we might be here for the money?”

The reply was obvious; wave after wave of “we understand”, hands extended sympathetically, “yes, yes, we take onboard what you are saying”. The kind of thing we all hear, everyday; we are bombarded with empty phrases, promises, apparent concerns. But these two idiots kept it coming, as though we couldn’t see they were lying. As though our need to earn, left us devoid of sense. As though the fact that more than 71,000 of us in Scotland needed to use a foodbank last year, that 1000s have gone on strike this month across the UK, as though the benefit cuts and welfare reforms which force so many of us to be tossed back and forth by zero hour contracts week in and week out – as though all of that (and an awful lot more), means they can throw together a quiz, a presentation and a few custard creams and it all be “the going rate”.

“The margins are tiny”, the Director told us, having already excitedly exclaimed that the population of over 65s was set to increase by 90% over the coming years. “If the margins are so tiny, why are you wasting your time here? Why not do something else?” I asked. “Because we care”, he added a little too slowly.

“Thanks for the free biscuits” I said as I picked up my bag and walked out. Within seconds, I heard the door go behind me. A minute later, 3 of the 8 of us were out on the pavement. We stood there, exhilarated! Of course, we knew that we’d shot ourselves in the foot. So were we the idiots? We knew beforehand that we weren’t to be paid. We sucked it up – we knew we had to. Why? Because ‘the market’ said so. What option did we have, unemployed and with rent looming?

There is little now that I can actually do with the experience. I am considering including a new section on my CV entitled, ‘Occasions I Told People To Get Fucked’. But of course, this has little economic value; possibly even a subtractive one. It has, however, reminded me that no amount of money can buy the feeling of saying ‘NO’ when you need to say ‘NO’ (or, obviously, in light of events on the horizon, ‘YES’ when you feel the answer is ‘YES!’).

So, I had wanted to tell you how inspired I was recently to see Mark Coburn and Julie Hyslop talking about the work of Greater Maryhill Foodbank; by hearing that ‘vigilantes’ have removed anti-homeless paraphernalia on St. Vincent Lane in Glasgow; by the protestors and those on strike across the UK; by the World Development Movement’s resistance to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, set to increase corporate control over precious resources; by the Brazilian artist Paulo Ito’s mural of a starving child; by Jacques Peretti’s The Men Who Made Us Spend; by the women protesting in the face of police brutality in Phnom Penh (a place I visited earlier this year) where 20,000 people have been displaced so that the PM can build a play den for himself and Cambodia’s rich. I wanted to share my despair over the so-called Coal Rollers (people burning coal from the back of their SUVs in the US, in protest against Obama and lefty environmentalists). I wanted to sit foodbank and poverty statistics, side-by-side with those that show, during the same period, the UK’s richest 1000 have never seen such a rapid increase in their wealth. I wanted to tie all of these and more, neatly together somehow and present them to you. But I realise you probably already know the truth they highlight – that people with money, really don’t know what to do with it.

But while these idiots give us the reason to protest, to write, to rebel, to create art – we give each other the inspiration. In the digital world this is perhaps even truer than ever; when you can influence and inspire others without even knowing it. Of course, we are encouraged to argue amongst ourselves over, for example, who should and shouldn’t be striking; our efforts and energy expended not on the problems and their examination, but on the vitriolic harpooning of those brave enough to put their “bodies upon the gears…the wheels…the levers”, as a far braver man (Mario Savio) than I once said. It is seeing others still pushing for change, still resisting, still creating and suggesting alternatives, that keeps us inspired, energised and ultimately sane.

“If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free…unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him” (Thoreau)

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To find out more about the people and organisations I mentioned above, have a look here:

Mark Coburn (@indycyclist) has been raising money for, amongst other things, Greater Maryhill Foodbank – managing to raise in excess of £5000 to support the work they do. Here you can find a recent article on them.

Or watch a video of them discussing the issues and the situation that hundreds of people face, not just in the Greater Maryhill area, but around the UK.

The World Development Movement campaign for economic justice and an end to poverty. Their more recent work has focused on the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership, set to have a huge impact on the way corporations use our planet for their own ends. Here’s more on the campaign. If you’ve not already seen it, here’s an article I wrote on corporations and their quest for profit.

If you haven’t heard about the anti-homeless spikes, here’s a Glasgow story. And a London one.

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August 24th: Just a brief footnote to the above – I heard this week that the interviewer herself resigned. She was the manager, trainer and only member of staff with relevant experience in the field.