A misanthrope and a bus should not be mixed in any sane world. But last Saturday I found myself, sleep-deprived and grumpy waiting for the bus into town. The bus stop was populated by an odd mix: women with buggies so large they could probably withstand a mortar attack, an old Chinese gentleman busy coughing up the contents of his lungs onto the pavement in front of me, and several students, plugged into to iPods and mobile phones. When the bus arrived, the driver stopped so the door was directly in front of me, so I boarded first. This was my initial faux-pas, and the women with the buggies snorted at my back as I paid the driver.
My second assault on good manners came as I sat down. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am not a small man, and the world is not geared towards men of my stature. Doorways are too low, signs hanging from the ceiling in shops hit me on the head, and public transport is next to impossible to be comfortable on. I sat in the seats at the front, with the extra legroom and the sign that dictates that the seat must be given up for the elderly or disabled. I could instantly feel the eyes of the buggy-women, their hot gaze angled at me. They clearly wanted the seat so they could abandon their buggies in the wheelchair space. I began to stand, but my buttocks were only an inch or two off the fabric before one of the women passed comment, very loudly and in my direction.
"Looks like manners are dead these days," she sneered. "I guess we'll have to stand." At that I sank back down, staring at the woman, hoping she noticed what had happened, but no, she was too busy frowning and moaning, her wretched little child joining the cruel symphony with yelps of his own. At the next stop, and elderly woman with a shopping trolley sat on the seat next to me, blocking me in, making it impossible for me to move seat, and crushing my kneecaps against the barrier in front.
I was too tired to feel guilty, and began questioning whether the buggy-women would have relinquished the seat had someone deeper in need had appeared. I somehow think not. How did we get to the stage where it is every man for himself? We have rejected each other in the most barbaric way possible, not even willing to reveal the slightest bit of humanity lest we are taken for weak fools.
After the bus journey, and after my mood had descended to the seventh level, I witnessed a road accident. An elderly man had been run over, and a group of people had gathered around him and the driver of the offending vehicle. A postman had taken off his Royal Mail issue high-visibility jacket and was out in the middle of the road, bullfighting with cars so they would give a wide berth. I stood for a second, but then moved on, leaving the scene hastily. The crowd had grown to about fifteen people, and the injured man looked more distressed about this than his calamity. After walking for about five minutes, an ambulance shot past me in the direction of the carnage. And that's when it struck me, in amongst all my isolation, bad manners and helplessness, that the ambulance is the only remaining symbol of humanity caring for its own. Those flashing lights and sirens connect us together, the only remaining strands in an ever-disintegrating web. What else do we have? Bono, bracelets and bring-and-buy sales. All tainted by guilt. We give because we are guilty. What motivates the Paramedics?
Good God, this is why I should never take a bus. It opens up a foul door in my brain, and now the hinges are rusted, keeping it ajar...
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Sunday, January 06, 2008
In a Uniform Manner
My cries affirming my liberty were premature. The department store has many grasping tentacles it seems, and they are spurting their acrid slime all over my soul. I was "reminded" that my final pay cheque would be held back if I didn't return my uniform, which is fair enough, but it meant venturing out to that barren place to deposit my washed, tumble dried/electrified polyester slave clothes. It speaks volumes that the only rebellion I could make was not to iron the uniform before stuffing it into a plastic bag. It crackled angrily at me and I smothered the urge to drown it in a canal, with bricks as ballast.
It was strange seeing the department store without the desperate stench of pre-Christmas consumerism in action. Instead there was a post-Christmas ennui; people queueing at the returns counter with unwanted gifts, their eyes rolling round in the sockets and their faces caught in the grip of why-do-we-bother exasperation. They saw me skipping the queue with my plastic bag full of clothes and suddenly became alert, like springbok sensing a lion. Their eyes burned me as I walked past, muttering commenced and faces became red.
I had to wear a "visitor" badge, and ascend the stairs to the offices. On my way I met a man who somehow knows my mother. I meet him so often that I'm sure he is hiding in alcoves, waiting for me at every turn, so he can tell me about his kids and talk about a conversation he once had with my mother over three years ago. A particularly bleak moment was when, over lunch sometime in November, he discovered that I worked with his daughter at the airport for about three weeks. This was a great excitement to him, and now I am in reluctant fellowship with his whole family. He is the sort of person who goes to Florida every summer and stays in the same hotel he has for the past twenty years, visits the same theme parks and eats at the same burger bars. Christ, all I wanted to do was drop off my uniform.
I managed to shake him after about six minutes. I made it to the office in low spirits.
"Here's my uniform," I mumbled. "My name badge fell off when I was lifting turkeys out of the freezer. I don't know where it is." I added this additional information for fear of getting another letter through the post, or even worse, a court summons.
The woman behind the desk frowned and glanced inside the plastic bag.
"OK," she said. "Are you sure it's not still at home?" She said this as if I was trying to keep the name badge, as if, when I'm eighty, I'll be attending a remembrance service with hundreds of retail name badges down my lapel instead of medals. Come to think of it, there should be such a thing, honouring the brave men and women who have sacrificed their youth for something as futile and meaningless as Profit.
"It's somewhere in this building," I replied, and she sighed.
"OK, you'll get your final pay slip through the post."
I left the office and the building, thinking that was the last of my dealing with the company. Alas, when I returned home, there was another letter waiting for me, the envelope emblazoned with the company's logo. Apparently, I am a "valuable source of information on what it is like to work for the company". Attached there is a five-page questionnaire, as if the people setting the questions work for an entirely different organisation. Surely they already know what it's like within the corporate machine. I was unsure whether failure to fill the form in would result in the continued holding back of my last pay cheque, so I uncapped a particularly stinky green marker pen and scrawled the URL to this record over the top, making sure to sign the form in the alloted place. That should tell them all they need to know. Who has time to fill out that sort of form anyway?
It was strange seeing the department store without the desperate stench of pre-Christmas consumerism in action. Instead there was a post-Christmas ennui; people queueing at the returns counter with unwanted gifts, their eyes rolling round in the sockets and their faces caught in the grip of why-do-we-bother exasperation. They saw me skipping the queue with my plastic bag full of clothes and suddenly became alert, like springbok sensing a lion. Their eyes burned me as I walked past, muttering commenced and faces became red.
I had to wear a "visitor" badge, and ascend the stairs to the offices. On my way I met a man who somehow knows my mother. I meet him so often that I'm sure he is hiding in alcoves, waiting for me at every turn, so he can tell me about his kids and talk about a conversation he once had with my mother over three years ago. A particularly bleak moment was when, over lunch sometime in November, he discovered that I worked with his daughter at the airport for about three weeks. This was a great excitement to him, and now I am in reluctant fellowship with his whole family. He is the sort of person who goes to Florida every summer and stays in the same hotel he has for the past twenty years, visits the same theme parks and eats at the same burger bars. Christ, all I wanted to do was drop off my uniform.
I managed to shake him after about six minutes. I made it to the office in low spirits.
"Here's my uniform," I mumbled. "My name badge fell off when I was lifting turkeys out of the freezer. I don't know where it is." I added this additional information for fear of getting another letter through the post, or even worse, a court summons.
The woman behind the desk frowned and glanced inside the plastic bag.
"OK," she said. "Are you sure it's not still at home?" She said this as if I was trying to keep the name badge, as if, when I'm eighty, I'll be attending a remembrance service with hundreds of retail name badges down my lapel instead of medals. Come to think of it, there should be such a thing, honouring the brave men and women who have sacrificed their youth for something as futile and meaningless as Profit.
"It's somewhere in this building," I replied, and she sighed.
"OK, you'll get your final pay slip through the post."
I left the office and the building, thinking that was the last of my dealing with the company. Alas, when I returned home, there was another letter waiting for me, the envelope emblazoned with the company's logo. Apparently, I am a "valuable source of information on what it is like to work for the company". Attached there is a five-page questionnaire, as if the people setting the questions work for an entirely different organisation. Surely they already know what it's like within the corporate machine. I was unsure whether failure to fill the form in would result in the continued holding back of my last pay cheque, so I uncapped a particularly stinky green marker pen and scrawled the URL to this record over the top, making sure to sign the form in the alloted place. That should tell them all they need to know. Who has time to fill out that sort of form anyway?
Friday, January 04, 2008
Au Suivant
So this is freedom? Sitting in a motorway service station, two days after Christmas, waiting for a hot sandwich that I had paid far too much for. I had fled the confines of the department store. Fled my home town and spent Christmas with family in a reasonably remote part of Scotland. It was my first Christmas without work for many years - since I was old enough to work if memory serves. My last day at the department store was the same grueling nonsense that I had put up with for nine weeks, and when the time came I slipped out unnoticed, like water through fingers. But I am free. Labeled a slacker by my family. But free. That is until another job comes to shackle me.
My sandwich was taking a long time, so I sat back, watching mist crawl over a huge lake outside a brown tinted window. Inside there was a boy, probably sixteen, cleaning the tables. He was wearing a uniform daubed with the logo of the service station, and a baseball cap was pulled down sharply over his head. He spun a spray bottle on his index finger, as if he was some kind of chemical cowboy. Without warning he would spray a table from a startling distance, pluck a cloth from his belt and speedily wipe the surface. I kept watching. He beamed, eyes sparkling, as he jumped over chairs, bouncing up to remove spent teapots and sugar packets. Then the spray, with an odd jerky, violent movement. All the time, he grinned at his travails like a lunatic. He skipped between tables as if he was timing his speed, each movement he made seemed to be a complex technique of a particularly difficult game. He was clearly winning, his gap teeth shining through spread lips. I was captivated. Maybe he was an idiot savant who had unlocked the secret of a happy life. He was the Holy Fool, content, nay even happy, with his position. I envied him. Here I was waiting for a sandwich that was promised in three minutes. It was now twenty-two minutes late. I looked at my watch and approached the counter.
"Excuse me," I said timidly. "Is my sandwich ready?"
"You have to wait," I was told in sturdy European tones. "It will come."
The curse of having worked in retail struck me. Suddenly I was the most unreasonable person in the world. I was The Man, persecuting the worker for no other reason than I was greedy and impatient. I skulked back to my seat and pretended to text on my phone, feeling utterly wretched. The sandwich arrived and I could barely stomach it, but it cost so much that I forced it down, washing the taste from my mouth with cold coffee.
I spend my life in these idiotic spaces, all neon lights and a transient population. Does every modern man have to deal with this curse, or am I just a pathetic cretin who cowers from real life in fake places? Just this morning I was in a Tesco Extra. Not a regular Tesco. A Tesco Extra. The word "Extra" denoting the additional portion of a human being's soul the atmosphere dissolves.
It is time, I have decided, to live hand to mouth. Do a job, get paid, and flee the scene as if my life depends on it. Why do we all have the fear to be without regular money? Why do we all have the fear to actually live? I'm riddled with it, I'm afraid, and the only resolution for 2008 is to get on with it. Life, that is. And not be scared to do anything. Anything at all...
My sandwich was taking a long time, so I sat back, watching mist crawl over a huge lake outside a brown tinted window. Inside there was a boy, probably sixteen, cleaning the tables. He was wearing a uniform daubed with the logo of the service station, and a baseball cap was pulled down sharply over his head. He spun a spray bottle on his index finger, as if he was some kind of chemical cowboy. Without warning he would spray a table from a startling distance, pluck a cloth from his belt and speedily wipe the surface. I kept watching. He beamed, eyes sparkling, as he jumped over chairs, bouncing up to remove spent teapots and sugar packets. Then the spray, with an odd jerky, violent movement. All the time, he grinned at his travails like a lunatic. He skipped between tables as if he was timing his speed, each movement he made seemed to be a complex technique of a particularly difficult game. He was clearly winning, his gap teeth shining through spread lips. I was captivated. Maybe he was an idiot savant who had unlocked the secret of a happy life. He was the Holy Fool, content, nay even happy, with his position. I envied him. Here I was waiting for a sandwich that was promised in three minutes. It was now twenty-two minutes late. I looked at my watch and approached the counter.
"Excuse me," I said timidly. "Is my sandwich ready?"
"You have to wait," I was told in sturdy European tones. "It will come."
The curse of having worked in retail struck me. Suddenly I was the most unreasonable person in the world. I was The Man, persecuting the worker for no other reason than I was greedy and impatient. I skulked back to my seat and pretended to text on my phone, feeling utterly wretched. The sandwich arrived and I could barely stomach it, but it cost so much that I forced it down, washing the taste from my mouth with cold coffee.
I spend my life in these idiotic spaces, all neon lights and a transient population. Does every modern man have to deal with this curse, or am I just a pathetic cretin who cowers from real life in fake places? Just this morning I was in a Tesco Extra. Not a regular Tesco. A Tesco Extra. The word "Extra" denoting the additional portion of a human being's soul the atmosphere dissolves.
It is time, I have decided, to live hand to mouth. Do a job, get paid, and flee the scene as if my life depends on it. Why do we all have the fear to be without regular money? Why do we all have the fear to actually live? I'm riddled with it, I'm afraid, and the only resolution for 2008 is to get on with it. Life, that is. And not be scared to do anything. Anything at all...
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