A Day in the Life of behind a steering wheel.
I drove a lorry to Stoke 3 times last week delivering packaging to a porcelain wash hand basin company. 3 days wages, better than nothing, job is easy enough except for the miles of road works on the M6, the inevitable crashes, the typical Police response: “0h lets close the Motorway and piss everybody off”, and the fact that the workers of Stoke don’t understand me and I don’t understand them. Maybe I should compose a Rough Guide to visiting Stoke, perhaps the previous sentence was it !!
At least as I sit behind the steering wheel listening to the latest road closures on Radio 2’s traffic reports, it gives me time to contemplate. Also gives me time to figure out avoiding the Police road blocks and go the scenic route as a diversion, an ability artificial intelligence through satellite navigation aids fails to cope with. In addition to this latest conspiracy theory of how the Police want to stop Britain working, it does amaze me how all the junctions, direction signs and even the lady on sat nav wants me to pay £10 on the M6 Toll road, which of course is empty because no one in their right mind will pay a toll. Blimey the delivery to Stoke costs £100 in diesel as it is round trip, 50 pence a mile shared between a taxing government and a profiteering oil company.
And…………….it is you the reader, the end consumer, that pays for it eventually when you unpack that everything including the kitchen sink !!!
Of course all this driving me mad and round the bend as opposed to up a toll road, has been a 3rd career blocking me from getting back to my former, better paid, more worthwhile careers. That’s what I think about behind that steering wheel, and when I will get a change in direction, and free from my career path obstacles.
Another blimey. This one aimed at recruiters. Yes I am a real person , not just a name on a piece of paper. Could you not afford me the common courtesy of acknowledgement that I exist, instead of me having to pinch myself all the time. I could get a reputation for self harm you know. It is the same when you are an agency worker: no point talking to him, he is not important, he is only here today or the odd day.
There was a time when I actually interviewed prospective employees, when I actually hired agency staff, I always chatted with them, made them feel comfortable in new surroundings, ease their obvious anxieties. I would make them a cup of coffee, tell them what was going on, what was happening, and a bit about the organisation and our own operation.
It was called politeness. It did not take long, it was an important 1st impression and I did not have a lot of time, but I made time.
Though I hate using the word “obviously” because every Wayne Rooney sentence starts with that very word “obviously”....... Obviously, I was the exception to the rule. Because most employers in this day of improved technological communications, do not consider it important to be friendly, to even know one’s name. Personnel don’t answer your applications, even as a worker in a garden centre, something that would be a labour of love for me, but not even a “f… off we did not like you anyway”. Emails, they are free, don't even have to lick a stamp and walk to the pillar box.
Lot’s of advertised jobs clearly do not exist in truth, when you hear the fumbled excuses at the other end of the telephone line, which funnily enough is a one way line of communications. It is just a ruse to get cvs on the books. Targets once again, false targets, playing the system.
I used to be a somebody and now apparently I am a nobody. And who cares? Well actually I do.
And………. I am still the same person, I am still Allan Sharpe. I must admit when the decade changed to the 2010’s my first thought was, will I live to see the end of it, I would like to see Spurs win the League again, the European Cup before I die (Harry get a move on) and I would like to see England win the World Cup again, and not miss out on penalty shoot outs. I would like to see my off spring progress for as long as I can stay around.
BUT………I have not changed, Mr Somebody has not changed, except I am older, and maybe because I believed in certain things and held onto certain principles and values, that life has and is passing me by…....now.
Of course there are exceptions, there are some friendly faces, but I have to say, and it is an indictment of middle management, that the friendlies are in the vast minority and perhaps that’s why the organisation relies heavily on agency staff, because no one else will work for them as Fagan Plc. True they might get more pay hourly rate as a temp, certainly get overtime, but the temp is not only here today somewhere else tomorrow, maybe, he/she has total insecurity and lack of control. Anyway they do a job for Fagan plc without whom that job would not be done. Yes they get paid. A thanks would be courteous too, not too much to ask for is it, yes it is, oh well.
It is not only, but also......... There is a lot of self interest, only, in the workplace, maybe even in society. It does not matter what is happening outside your front door, don’t get involved, look after number one, sod the rest. Maybe that is why society relies on authorities to clean up the mess we see regularly on 24 hour news channels, instead of looking out of their window and doing something about what is going on. Maybe they have lost faith in the authorities and we are becoming more like Mad Max and survival of the fittest.
Nostalgia is bitter sweet, and I do get bitter and twisted about changes I see all around me, and changes that have happened to me. Don’t tell me you make your own luck, because I will smack that straight back at you on the half volley.
I spent most of my life trying to make the world a better place for some. I got thousands of people millions of pounds back in just refunds, when they were David against Goliath, I took hundreds of con men to the dock and put hundreds on the tv screen, my version of the village stocks and rotten tomatoes.
One of the best things I ever did was pick up a BBC telephone on my Watchdog desk to take a call from an old age pensioner telephoning from Spain the Costa Almeria. The winter of 1988, Bert told me there were about 65 of them paying for an extended winter break to avoid the winter fuel bills at home, and the travel company had put them in a dump next to a building site. Of course I had to validate his story, and the BBC had stringers (researchers) all over the world to call on. So when the stringer phoned me back to tell me the story was true and it was horrendous, the holiday from hell, I put the wheels in motion. Mike Embley and I flew out with a Spanish speaking cameraman and film crew on the Friday and we were filming that night and Saturday morning. We decided to make a send up of the holiday brochure. Our camera had seen the mould on the walls, the newspapers used as draught excluders, the refrigerators that did not work, the green water swimming pool with floating rubbish, the closed restaurant “where there is dancing every evening”. In fact the only dancing would be by mad men on their hats in frustration because the restaurant was part demolished. So Mike read the glossy brochure and then told the reality in front of the camera and we interviewed the poor old pensioners who the travel company ignored... "me I'm sick of it, up to here me, my wife on her hands and knees cleaning this stinking place up, that's not right, it's not a holiday , it's a nightmare……….. until.
The camera always seemed to concentrate minds on problems. It was our style , my style, the doorstep kings’s style, big Al’s style, to take some of the unhappy viewers along to meet Goliath and get them an audience. So it was in the Costa Almeria, and when , with the camera rolling, we entered the local travel office, instant panic set in, a phone call to Head Office in Lancashire: “there is a BBC film crew here, from a programme called Watchdog”, “WHAT!!! What are they doing there?” “its about that block of apartments”, “GET THEM OUT OF THOSE APARTMENTS, do what it takes”.
And so it came to pass…………….. the coaches lined up within hours and what had taken 6 weeks before of ignoring the problem , suddenly became priority uno, mucho grazias. Yes and you guessed it, the pensioners were put up in the biggest 5 star hotel in town for the remainder of their holiday at no extra expense. When we filmed their champagne breakfast that Sunday morning before we flew back to blighty, I had never had my hand shaken so much. It was a wonderful moment of the power of the media to obtain justice and redress.
The film was edited that following week with Mike and I and a film editor, it was a great film, showed the Monday after BBC1 7.30pm, maybe you were watching Coronation Street, I wasn’t.
Greg Dyke used to say, there are no rules in TV, if your Mum likes it and understands it, you have done your job. We used to work on the basis of “the gosh factor” now we have an X Factor, instead. I think we pushed the infotainment boundary then by ridiculing the patently misleading and false brochure description of holiday accommodation that was uninhabitable. It still makes me smile and giggle to this day when I think about it, I guess that is the sweet part of nostalgia. Shame those days have to end my friend, shame no one else has picked up the baton and carried the torch on. Shame our priorities have changed, well for some at least and shame the accountants run things now.
It did not have to be like it was, we showed it could be done better.
Now others try their best to avoid MY winter fuel bills.
For the time I was unemployed during this recent cold spell, I have just got a letter from the Department of Works and Pensions, about my winter fuel payment benefit, circa £25 during the coldest winter for 30 years. Good old civil service.
Uno, they did not know I was unemployed, even though I was in their Job Centre Minus offices (no, I was not making myself a cuppa tea).
Dos, they have only just acknowledged my application form, now that Spring has Sprung.
Tres, they will deal with my claim in June 2010, yes midsummer.
Men for all seasons obviously (there is that word again, "obviously") I must not turn into a Wayne Rooney interview alike …………………………………….
So endeth another chapter....until we meet again………………….some sunny day
Now is the time to say goodbye.
(Goodbye)
Now is the time to yield a sigh.
(Yield it, yield it)
Now is the time to wend our way-eee
Until we meet again-eee
Some sunny day.
Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you, skiddlydye.
Goodbye, we wish a fond goodbye, fa-ta-ta-ta-ta, fa-ta-ta-ta.
Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you, skiddlydum.
Goodbye, we wish a fond goodbye, la-la-ta-ta-ta.
La dah da, lah la la
It’s Not only … But Also, aint it Dud, yes Pete sniff.
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