The Human Stain

The stink had become unbearable, and a visit from the regional manager had spurred a frantic note to empty the bins. I grabbed the bulging bags and began the long journey to the bowels of the airport.

[An interesting digression: one of the bins has been pushed up close to the taps on the water cooler, and half eaten sandwiches, banana peels and other mouldering forms of detritus overflow into the drip tray. Stockton now refers to the water cooler as The Ganges Delta...]

I managed to get about halfway to the skips before disaster struck. In a fit of laziness, a member of staff had place a half-full (or half-empty) cup of very milky coffee into the binbag. It remained undisturbed until I entered the trade lift. At first I felt it on my leg and I looked down. It wasn't a leak, it was a full-blown eruption, springing from the plastic bag and landing directly over my freshly laundered trousers. God knows how long it had been there, but it filled the lift with a putrid smell. I had been in half an hour and already I had been caught in a stagnant tsunami.

I only mention this because there has been, ironically, a drought of coffee in Terminal 1. The main retailer has closed, leaving two other places. In one, the coffee tastes of lukewarm Bovril, and the product of the other passes directly through the human body as if lubricated. There was only one option, use the benefit of a security pass to access the shops in Terminal 3, a place I have never been on "work business".

It was an odd experience. I had entered the exact opposite of my usual environment. The people seemed friendlier, the passengers more relaxed. There was a general atmosphere of calm. I ordered my coffee, and chatted to the person serving me. I felt myself changing. I was my own twin, an optimistic, polite, calm and satisfied person, not the saggy-eyed misanthrope that I usually am (this got me to thinking about that old myth that everybody has an evil twin. In a moment of harsh clarity, I realised that I am the evil twin, that my double is the one who you could take home to meet the parents. Christ...). I began to feel uncomfortable, all the people smiling, laughing; there was no-one even raising their voice, or looking annoyed with anything. My jeans were beginning to itch, a nagging reminder that I didn't belong with these people. Without any more thought, I grabbed my coffee and scurried back to Terminal One, entering back into the dim, hot comfort of familiarity.

Angry Pinballs (A Rant Dedicated to ABG)

"Why don't you just leave?"

How many times have I been faced with this question? I have lost count. But then again, I have lost count of how many times I have entered into a dark complaint about the airport. I have lost count of the times I have woken up at 3am and spent the journey to work cursing loudly. I have lost count of the time I have lost in this job...

"Why don't you just leave?"

And everybody at the airport is worse off than everybody else, at least by their own reckoning. Cabin Crew curse the easy life of shop workers, shop workers complain about the money pilots get, pilots moan that their hours are tougher than the management of the airport, and so on and so on and so on. And within the company I work for this attitude is intensified, everybody prowls around declaring their status as VICTIM. Before anybody says anything, I was crowned king of this particular human trait long ago...

"Why don't you just leave?"

But what pisses me off most about working in the airport is people who don't. They ask this question as if their jobs have revealed the Key to the Universe. It's a terrible, and very naive, attitude, that has become a crutch for people to deflect any questions about their own dissatisfaction. These, in the words of Stockton, are the people who cry into their pillows at night.

The "Why don't you just leave?" phenomenon has plagued me ever since I began work at the airport, and must be stopped. While my job can be stressful, tiring, exasperating and even a little humiliating, what job isn't? We are all selling our time, we are all whores. And as whores, we "take it" all sorts of different ways and would always rather be doing something else. But what other job allows the luxury of missing the rush hour everyday, of finishing work at lunchtime and spending a long afternoon drinking ice-cool G&Ts while reading a great, and soul-massaging, work of literature? What other job allows the mind to be altered through varying waking states? And what other job allows the avoidance of smug office-jockey assholes who think saving up for a Beamer will quash the rising emptiness in their souls...?

So why don't I just leave?
Well maybe, just maybe, the key to it all is fitting work around you life, and not the other way round. I will complete this rant with a question of my own:
Why don't you just fuck off?

[Normal service will be resumed shortly]