...as much as I abhore the treatment of the various public sector workers - the privatised industries have been shafting people for many more years. I currently work for a company that in the 6 years I've been there has been sold on - renamed - repackaged but still the same work. Luckily the ones that have taken over whilst i've been there have been OK but previous take overs have meant that many have had their pay and conditions frozen until the finally come in line with us late comers - they're still on a decent whack though which why they're still there.
Previously I did agency work for Mars. The core staff were on £30k plus as they were all engineers trained to run and maintain the machines. We were there to do the tasks they couldn't be bothered to design a robot for. Pay was good and overtime plentiful but if the machines ran well and they caught up with the orders they sent you home or told you not to return until called in. Meanwhile the full - timers trained you to work the machines whilst they had extended breaks or did e-bay business. One agency guy didn't understand the us and them rule so when he took the same break as a full timer his contract was terminated there and then.
Don't know where this loophole of agencies came in but there's some firms making big money acting as middlemen and bypassing various laws by getting you t be self employed in many cases.

Some of this reminds me of temp work I've done, the personalities, the soulless little overlords and the pathos vacuum... but it makes data entry for Yorkshire Bank seem like a holiday camp in comparison.

All I can say is: keep documenting. You're turning coal into diamonds and I hope it helps you get through it.

out of sheer, horrified sympathy and bafflement. How the blazing **** can human beings behave like this?

You make me feel very, very lucky about my current work circumstances. Boring, and poorly paid, yes, but at least I work for people who might actually be the same species.

...welcome to the new world of work. Given the situation in Higher Education, most of my freelance work disappeared and I've been signing on and applying for, well, anything really. Two applications to Waitrose for checkout/shelf stacking produced nothing and I was told later that they had received 500 applications. Agencies - don't get me started. Amateurish, staffed by blank-eyed glove puppets who, when you can get through to them, don't listen and don't understand when they do listen. Applying for any job now seems to require a CRB check and it takes forever to tailor your CV to the job, only to get no response.

It's worth reading this: http://roymayall.wordpress.com/ Written by an anonymous RM worker and published now in a book, his blog and an occasional column in the London Review of Books. Good luck - stick it to 'em!

Stick Bukowski.
I already give private thanks to no one for having actually having a job and while I have bad days the average days far outweigh them and I get an OK wage despite not having a pay rise in any shape for the past 3 years.
Keep posting, you write about it so well I hope it gives you a little release from the reality.
My first job was on a factory line making kettles for over a year. I feel your pain, but there's no shame.

Great post. I feel your pain. Working in the mininum wage area can be all too forgotten about, but your writing elevates it to the kind of fascinating humanity portrayed by Orwell in the kitchens of Paris in "Down & Out..." Honestly, I thought it was that good. Also highlights another reason the RM is slowly dying - it just can't be bothered to even try any more. And that's sad. A real waste of a once great instituion.

And to man.of.soup's "How the blazing **** can human beings behave like this?" - I've now worked part time in a church and at a Poundland (for sustenance) for two years now - and at both jobs there are times when I find humanity acting at its worst and most petty. There are some great people out there. Many congregate here. But there are a large number of people who are not. The levels of selfishness and destruction I see on a daily basis at Poundland has made it impossible for me to be a humanist. Ever.

And you have every right to complain.

I once worked for Royal Mail through agency in the 1980's. Christmas temps were basically ignored in the sorting office by the permanent workers, or when I had an enquiry I was met with a grudging and surly reply. It was as though I had been transported back to the 1950's a la I'm Alright Jack. The amount of mail was quite immense but the supervisor told me that I couldn't use a trolley as I wasn't permanent or union. When I informed him that because of the amount of mail I had to deliver I had finished an hour after my shift he told me that temps don't get paid overtime because they aren't permanent or union.

None of the bosses that I have worked for over the past twenty years seemed to have been promoted because of merit or personal management skills and seem to thrive on treating a majority of their employees like uneducated lackeys. A lot of employers seem to exploit that fact that people are desperate for work and that they will act subservient to anyone to keep themselves in a job. It's almost Victorian. Most of us just want to be able to survive. Apart from that Stick, don't let the b*st*rds grind you down (forgive me for cliche). And keep writing.

Stick, I'm just so impressed that you're, erm, sticking it out. You write about it incredibly well.

Illegitimis non carborundum.

All the best.

life's a strain sometimes. I get you're well educated too - there's nothing tin pots loathe more than an educated person in their command.

Bite the bullet for now and believe that you have blue skies ahead. We all go through humiliating lows along the road.

On an unfabulous situation.

Your post has made me feel fortunate (and I am a right old moaney sod) that's how good it was.

Hope you get some relief soon Stick!

Stay Gold!
Mark

... but thankfully not via an agency. This means that, although work is dull, pretty shit and definately mindless, I have been at least paid on time and correctly, unlike the agency people who are employed alongside me.

Mr Taylor's account though, of people acting subservient to dismal employers just to stay in work resolutely rings true though. Some of my colleagues live in fear that a mystery shopper will say something about them which will remain on their permanent records. One was found not up to scratch last month for not saying goodbye to a customer after making a sale. She was almost weeping with fear when she found out.

Possibly the only thing getting me through this is the fact that I have been accepted into a new job which has, as they say "some actual prospects." My twelve years spent grinding away in a vaguely skillful industry does not yet count for nothing at all it seems, so there is an end in sight to this somewhat grisly experience.

The fact of the matter is though, that I currently work with people mostly in their early twenties who cannot afford to move out of their parents homes because their wages are disgracefully low, and who, if they want to move into something skilled, well paid and interesting, need to work for free until someone decides to actually pay them some money. Working for free naturally only serves to diminish their prospects even more as more companies come to take advantage of rich youngsters who don't need a salary. Sorry that should read "offer fantastic learning opportunities and valuable experience to the determined."

Sometimes I genuinely wonder why no investment bankers have been murdered. I might moan about my own circumstances, but your average 22 year old has it far worse than me. Ditto someone in their fifties if they have been made redundant. I have skills and if not quite actual youth, then enough youth for companies who hold that at a premium to see me as a vaguely attractive option it seems.

In short, urgh. Work is a pisser, it's worse paid, more tenuous and frankly more awful than it has ever been in my life. Frankly the first party who taxes the rich and channels the revenues into making work actually pay will have my vote eternally...

If ever there was a moral argument in persuasive anecdotal form for Keynesian full employment it would be your OP.

Your job sounds soul destroying yet you write with a wit and grace that creates an impact far more powerful than any justifiable polemic could.

takes me back to when I did the same work 30+ years ago. At the time I was a student, innocent about the world of work and didn't feel confident or qualified enough to say anything. I was just happy to have some money in my pocket. I couldn't believe their attitude though and their near enough constant moaning; my fellow temp (a family man, out of work builder) put it well...."I hate these bastards".

As for agencies, effing useless.

Really Stick, the fact that your humanity and wit are still intact in such adverse circumstances says a lot about the power of the human spirit. The line about 'glowering at enemies of the people,' was priceless.
I do hope things get better for you.

I took great delight when I read how this consultant got his comeuppance recently. Partly because I was registered with Stark Brooks, amongst many others, when I was made redundant 5 years ago and I found most of them to be useless tossers. I was probably interviewed by Gary Chaplin as I had his business card until recently. They frequently advertised enticing positions that did not exist just to get you sign on with them and always sent you for totally unsuitable interviews.

I did get some temporary work at the time and the most obnoxious managers were the ones who realised I was more qualified than they were to do their job. They had to sign your timesheet at the end of the week and liked to wield that power over you.

'Please **** off, you're too stupid to get a job': £200k recruitment consultant sacked for sending foul-mouthed email to jobseeker

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072490/Gary-Chaplin-email--200k...

I can confirm that the level of management competence in the Royal Mail is staggeringly low. I work in a rural office and we basically just get ignored, rather than subjected to what poor old Stick is having to put up with, but it leads to the same kind of resentment.

I speak as a time-served manager (in retail) with nearly 20 years experience. I eventually quit because of the increasingly ludicrous demands of higher management - my wife was genuinely concerned that I would be coming back in a box one day - and my postie experience just reinforces my belief that 95% of managers in all businesses just shouldn't be in the job.

By the way, I can't imagine things will improve in any way once we're privatised.

Keep your chin up Stick. Nil desperandum carburundum illegitimi!

Stick, I can only sympathize heartily with your situation and, like everybody else, praise your writing. I was entertained (by your turn of phrase) and angered (by your plight and the miserable attitudes of your 'superiors') at the same time.

A friend of mine, an experienced architect, has begun a similar job to yours as it's his only way of putting food on the table this Christmas given the parlous state of the economy. Meanwhile, a former accountant friend has been ordered to take a job smashing glass (ready for recycling) or her benefits will be stopped. Also, the few of my colleagues at my last company who have survived repeated job cuts are now suffering a pay freeze - although the chief exec is still trousering a million a year.

How did the economy get like this? Those few who have jobs are just pleased to have them, and those without are willing to put up with so much if it means a wage at the end of the day. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? It certainly doesn't seem so.

I have been going through similar trials for the past 14 months - working temporary and part time jobs following redundancy. I agree with your views on recruitment agencies - at least the majority of them. There seems to be a culture within companies now which promotes people beyond their competency and when interviewing for a position, they see you as a threat.

I was recruited for a Christmas post at Amazon and sat through the induction process on the night I started. I made the decision, based on what I saw and heard during that 3 hour period, that whilst I needed the money, I would have to need it a lot more than that.

As a Director I have had a pay freeze for 5 years. For nearly 12 months I and my fellow Director took out no salary. In the same time period we had to lay off people earlier this year but they all found jobs within a month. We were complimented by one ex-employee's new employer for having trained their new recruit so well: never has a compliment been such a double-edged sword. We're paying a 2 week bonus this year to our remaining employees. We can now afford it by being prudent for the past 12 months. I'd like it to be more but that's the best we can do. We gave one of our employees a large pay-rise so they could qualify for a mortgage scheme to buy a new-build match-funded by the government. My wife jokingly calls me George Bailey.

I completely subscribe to the view that being an employer includes a social and moral responsibility: to take someone on on the basis that you're keeping them on to be a better person or a better worker. If I wanted to I could go out tomorrow and buy a brand new sports car and probably be able to afford it but I'm happy to drive around in a Y-reg Mondeo estate and know that instead that money being applied elsewhere is keeping someone in work or is keeping the bank off our back. My conscience at night is clear and I can look my employees, family and friends in the eye and not feel guilty. I have some regrets but I don't feel I've abused my position when situations have not panned out the way I wanted

I'm not sure why I'm saying all this. These are my choices about how to live my life and how to pay for it when money is a factor. I'm not trying to claim a moral high ground just trying to add a different perspective on what drives some people to run a business and to take on workers and to GENUINELY employ them.

Capitalism in its current form is not something I identify with as a business owner but more importantly and fundamentally it's not something I identify with as a human being.

...that's terrific stuff. I'm genuinely impressed and heartened by that. The other side of not letting the b*****ds get you down (often no easy thing to do) is not becoming a b*****d yourself when you're in a position to make a difference for good or ill to people's lives. Good for you!

Really appreciate your comments and support.

Latest installment here, btw.

http://night-mail.blogspot.com