Archive for October 2009
Curriculum Vitae
Posted on: October 10, 2009
- In: ill | jobs
- 5 Comments
I woke up the other morning with a taste in my mouth that can best be described as shit.
For a second I wondered if I had broken down all kinds of sexual barriers and taboos the previous night and had got actual faecal matter in my mouth.
I hadn’t. I just had a cold.
What I particularly like about having a cold, apart from the sweet taste of crap in the mornings of course, is the way in which a sneeze likes to take you by surprise and produce an ungodly amount of snot when you’re without tissue and have only a hand with which to catch it.
This happened to me once when I worked in a supermarket, which shall remain nameless. Let’s just say it starts with an S. And sounds like Bafeways.
Anyway, I had no choice but to wipe the aforementioned snot on my chair and go back to handling the customer’s tomatoes.
I should make it clear at this stage by the way that, if you’re waiting for some kind of ’point’, you’re barking up the wrong tree. There is unlikely to be one at any stage.
Working in a supermarket is just one of approximately twelve hundred jobs I’ve had in my lifetime. Think I’m exaggerating? I am. But I have had a ridiculous amount of jobs. If my CV actually listed every job I’d ever had, it’d read like a more accessible, but potentially less profound, version of War and Peace (or some other really big book).
I know what you’re thinking: “Please tell us about some of the jobs you’ve had Leah and regale us with humourous anecdotes relating to them!” Oh OKAY then.
- Working in a hotel restaurant – the fat chef with a superiority complex (pretty much a prerequisite of the job in my experience) tried to feel me up in the walk-in fridge. On the plus side, we got to eat loads of ‘free’ desserts. I also got told by another chef I could be a model. An ANKLE model. Gee, thanks…
- Working in a student pub – the over-pumped, over-tanned, egotistical barman, who used to call me uptight because I objected to him slapping my arse, turned out to be a peado. Ironically, his surname began with a D and rhymed with Bisney. No lie. On the plus side, we got loads of ‘free’ beer.
- Telesales – ripping pages out of the phone book and calling anyone to try and make them come look at gyms so we could sign them up. Including pensioners who could barely walk up stairs, let alone pump iron at a gym. The boss of this particular company once called me up late at night after he’d been indulging in a certain class A drug and informed me that, although he didn’t like me as a person much, he would quite like to sleep with me. (I’m paraphrasing.) I politely declined.
- Door to door sales – knocking on doors and lying through our teeth in order to get people signed up to new gas and electricity contracts. Interesting customers included the dealer with approximately two tonnes of weed on his frontroom table, the suicidal man who wouldn’t let me leave until he told me all his problems (fairly scary moment) and the nice lady who brought me cups of tea and biscuits and then tried to convert me to Jesus. AND she didn’t even sign up. Which I thought was very unchristian of her.
- Working for an estate agents (this one really will remain nameless) with a racist old battleaxe of a boss, who looked a bit like the blonde one off ’How Clean is Your House?’. On steroids.
I could go on, but I can’t be bothered.
Right now, I’ve got to figure out how the hell I collect a parcel which was too big for my letterbox and so has been taken to a post office on an ‘industrial estate’ which is only open from 6am-12noon during the week and till 10.30am on a Saturday. They won’t deliver to my work address because it’s not in the same ‘postcode area’ and I can’t get it redelivered to my home address because it’s too big to fit through the letterbox (pay attention) and I’ll be AT WORK.
Seriously - any suggestions, please do let me know.
Over and out kids.
- In: nice things | rants
- 8 Comments
1. Boris Johnson in the Queen Vic. Get out. Just get out. This also applies to pretty much any other politician and any other soap, with the exception of perhaps Tony Benn on, say, Hollyoaks – now that I’d like to see. (I just generally like seeing his lovely little face.)
Will you be my adoptive Grandad?
2. Jonathan Ross climbing inside Barbra Streisand’s rectum on his show this Friday, staying there for an hour and not having ANY other guests on. Jesus man, put it away, she’s just a person. And why weren’t they sat on the sofa? Too good for a sofa is she? Unbelievable.
"Please can I lick your bottom some more Barbra?" "But of course Jonathan, go ahead!"
3. X Factor contestants literally throwing themselves on the floor and weeping upon discovering they’ve not got through to the next round. Pathetic. Such displays of emotion should be saved only for bereavement. Or for when you’re having a bad hair day and your jeans are too tight and you’ve got a new spot and you’ve forgotten your MP3 player and the bus is full of chavs playing ‘music’ on their mobile phones and you’ve got cystitis. OR SOMETHING.
And I’m sorry but your wife dying/pet having a sex change/coat missing a button/whatever sob story the producers have dug up about you, makes not one shred of difference to your chances of winning – or shouldn’t, so you can take that misplaced sense of entitlement and shove it. The world doesn’t owe you a singing career.
4. Waking up every morning to the sweet smell of rotting crap and festering shite after the fourth consecutive week of bin strikes. I’m not getting political; I’m not saying the bin men don’t have the right to strike. I’m just saying I’d prefer not to have to risk contracting hepatitis by picking my way through mounds of litter to get to work each morning and then pay £80 a month for the privilege.
Things that make me go aww…
People saying nice things, and not because they want sex or biscuits; because they mean it.
A friend and I went speed dating recently.
I’ve been before, a couple of times actually. Once was when I was at university (a loooong time ago) and a friend wanted me to come along for moral support, the other time was about a year and a half ago when a different friend and I thought it’d be a good laugh.
The point is, on none of these occasions (including this most recent occasion) did I go speed dating because I am some kind of desperate social leper with halitosis and a third nipple, who secretly watches goat porn (me, that is, not the third nipple – whether the third nipple watches goat porn or not is, quite frankly, none of my business) and has a ‘man suit’ made out of human skin coming along nicely thank-you-very-much (just a couple more victims, sorry, ‘dates’, and it’ll be ready)… OKAY?
Anyway. Whether or not all of the above applies to me or not, which it most probably definitely doesn’t, that’s not why I went speed dating. And actually, a lot of men are into goat porn and being skinned alive thanks very much. And halitosis is all in the nose of the beholder I’ll have you know. As for a third nipple, well that’s just one more nipple to love!
So, I went along this time for moral support of a friend once more, expecting to have a good giggle and probably meet some ‘characters’. And, hey, I’m single (hard to get your head round, I know) so why not?
He's probably a really good conversationalist...
To my pleasant surprise, most of the men were pretty normal. There was one man who appeared to have a nervous twitch and a list of questions in his head which he had to ask, and woe betide anyone if they interrupted his questions by, you know, speaking. But he was, thankfully, the only major dud in the pack/black sheep of the family/runt of the litter/that ginger bird off Hollyoaks… you get my drift.
If you’ve never been speed dating before, here’s the protocol:
The girls sit on tables and the boys rotate, going to each table and chatting to each girl for three minutes (it may be longer at other speed dating events, but this seems to be the average time period). After three minutes the organiser blows a whistle and off the boys trot like little sheepdog, to their next lady-shaped destination.
By the way fellas – those lady shapes were pretty damn fine for the most part. Largely untapped resource for hot ass if you ask me. So if you’re single, rather than wanking and crying over Katy Perry’s latest video (or whoever the kids are whipping the one-eyed wonder weasle over these days), I’d give it a go if I were you.
But, back to the ‘dates’.
So you have to talk for three minutes, which really isn’t that long. You don’t know anything about the other person after all; you could ask them anything at all.
But that’s the problem, you can’t can you. You have to stick to a limited number of ‘safe’ questions. Such as “What do you do?” “Are you from round here?” and “Would you ever take a dump on someone’s chest if they asked you very nicely?”
It’s all well and good hearing different people’s answers to those questions, but by God do you get sick of answering the same questions about yourself TWELVE times over.
“I’m a copywriter. No it’s nothing to do with copy right law. I write words, for websites and that.”
“Yes I have lived in Leeds all my life apart from when I went to uni in Preston for three years. I didn’t stay there longer than necessary, no one does.”
“You sicken me. Get out.”
Although I am obviously extremely fascinating and highly amusing, it may come as a surprise to hear that I don’t actually like talking about myself THAT much.
So that’s the downfall of speed dating I suppose. If I go again I might mix it up and genuinely throw in a few completely inappropriate anecdotes, just to keep myself entertained. Like this one time, when I was watching goat porn and…
Oh, I’ll save it for next time, that man suit’s not going to sew itself!
