Interview for a cold day in ... London

You might know him as the co-owner of a trendy London bowling alley chain, or the man behind a popular Notting Hill club, but he’s more than that to me – he’s the guy who wants a naked personal assistant. And he's hiring.

"First, I want you to understand; it's nothing sexual," he said ten minutes into the interview.

Keeping his eyes fixed on mine, he lowered his head and cocked a brow. I braced for the 'but'.

He was handsome enough to expect to get away with it, dishevelled enough to be non-threatening, and posh enough to reveal his unconventional lifestyle as little more than an egoistic echo of boarding school rebellion. But really, why shouldn't we all get everything we want?

The justification he made easily. Since I'd work primarily from his home office, and since he occasionally prefers to be nude in the privacy of his own home, he'd appreciate an assistant who would be comfortable with that.

Fair enough – I'd found the ad on Gumtree (the UK's answer to Craigslist), and the internet is bound to live up to its reputation now and again.

“Very interesting,” I said, and promptly lost my battle for composure to a smirk that carved clear across my face. While I wasn't quite right for the job, what with my preference for clothing while ironing shirts and drafting letters, I couldn’t wait to retell the story.

But I had this sneaking feeling he’d only just scratched the surface with his peculiarities, so I resisted the urge to run off and regurgitate the story, straightened my face and did what I had to do – waited for the juicy bits.

“Again,” he reiterated, “I want you to understand it’s nothing sexual.” There was another ‘but’ in the air. I could feel it. And I wanted to hear it. And I egged him on because I knew the story would be better for it.

When it came, I began looking for hidden cameras.

The scene was too contrived, too scripted – something was fishy. I’d inadvertently stumbled into a gag for a British reality TV show – something akin to Candid Camera, but with a desperate job-seekers theme – I was sure of it. Timely, I thought, for the credit crunch, if not a bit cruel. The air vents, I suspected, was where they’d most likely be, and I gave them all an I’m-onto-you squint, just in case.

I thought back to the ad. He described himself as the owner of clubs and entertainment venues across London, looking to expand his business to the realms of adult dating, and required a personal assistant to help him stay on top of it all, someone open-minded and willing to dig right in and take care of whatever needed doing.

Spotting three red flags in the text – club owner, adult dating and the much-abused term ‘open-minded’ – my initial questions to him during my phone interview were direct. “What exactly do you expect from a personal assistant?” I asked, drawing ‘exactly’ out as long as I could without suggesting I had a speech impediment. Anything as menial as ironing a shirt before a meeting and helping him bounce ideas around for his business, was his tempered, professional answer.

“So there are no specific skills you’d expect that I might not have?” I asked, satisfied with his response and now wanting to clarify, thinking HTML or catering. He barely stuttered and went on about how the one-on-one nature of the job requires above all that we get along. Agreeing to meet, we scheduled a face-to-face interview in Notting Hill the next day. In hindsight, the stutter was either a blazing scarlet-red flag or a guardian angel intervening on my behalf to choke him.

“And because it’s really, really important to me that you are absolutely comfortable with me being naked,” he went on, “and that you know it’s nothing sexual…”

Brow cocked, dramatic pause engaged, he was about to deliver the payload. This, I knew, would be the biggest ‘but’ yet.

“I need you to demonstrate your comfort by occasionally being naked, as well.” And then he let out a little burp. Seems my guardian angel went deep.

As far as collecting stories goes, I couldn't believe my luck. But I had to think of something to say, settling on, “I get where you’re coming from,” as the groundwork for my own enormous ‘but’.

In a small way, I felt sympathetic to him. He’d been pleasant, up-front and maintained appropriate physical distance throughout the interview. He told me what he wanted, and asked me how I felt about it. It was an extension of the classic secretary fantasy cum affair. The difference being that he incorporates it into the interview process.

I’ve always questioned social norms – which might have something to do with my degree in Cultural Anthropology, or just having lived in liberal Montreal for a decade – and I do consider myself to be open-minded and non-judgemental. Lifestyles that buck convention have never personally offended me, so long as they’re consensual and respect basic human rights. The lines I draw for myself are, however, very clear.

“But, that’s just not something I can do,” I concluded for him, in case he couldn’t already tell from the look on my face. Had he stopped talking then, my opinion of him would have cemented at the extreme end of ‘quirky’. But making the same mistake as billions of his forefathers, he went on to justify his desires.

While he appreciates her naked body, and is very certain she appreciates his, he’s never “f*cked” his current assistant – despite being in an open relationship – because that would ruin the professional dynamic. I think he’s right about that.

And it went downhill from there.

A telecom blessing, his mobile rang and it was time for me to go. Leaving the club, I still expected a production assistant might jump at me with a disclaimer to sign, so I could make my first appearance on low-budget British reality TV. But that didn’t happen.

The only person outside the club on the posh Notting Hill street, was a high-heeled, bleach blonde in her early twenties, wearing a little too much eye make-up – the next interviewee.

Looking her over I thought, "She's about to make herself a lot of money."

All Star bowling alley, originally uploaded by Will Cheyney.

(Note: I got this photo from Flickr, and for the record, the photographer has nothing to do with my story, nor does use of his photo here express any opinion he may hold, whatsoever, about the story or people involved. He's a talented photographer, but is in no way related to the aforementioned events.)

London calling

I went for an interview at a call-centre.

I know. I know.

But when the going gets tough, the tough'll do anything to stay afloat. That's what I tell myself. And being a foreigner and a job-seeker in the midst of credit crunch hysteria – melancholy so severe and so adored by Londoners that advertisers city-wide use it for rhymes and puns – I can't even splurge for the discounted 'Credit Crunch Lunch'. It's a blessing really, that food in England has the reputation it does.

Basically, if I can trade my time for money, I'll do just about anything until I can find a real job – one that's somehow, even mildly related to anything I learned during 8 years of university.

Getting hired by an inbound call-centre is harder than I'd anticipated. From a customer's perspective, it seemed anyone could get a job at one of these places. Anyone with the aptitude to speak a language and don a headset. Anyone with the ability to read a sales script like a robot and put me on hold. But it's just not that easy.

I found the ad on Gumtree – England's answer to Craigslist – and sent in my CV, claiming front-line customer service experience would fortify my PR skills, for my real profession. This became my mantra. I'd never pull it off if I didn't believe it.

Within a few days, I was called in for the first of two gruelling group interviews. Seated at a table with two nervous and sweaty men in cheap suits, I filled out the first of many forms. The Kiwi recruiter's bulging eyes – presumably a side-effect of years of forced enthusiasm – drilled through to my tarnished soul. She could see I have experience in PR but what, she wanted to know, have I done to qualify me for customer service. Could it be possible I'm not skilled enough for even this?

What came out of me next, I really don't remember. I'm pretty certain they were words, strung together, and I qualified for the big-time group interview. The one involving 35 other applicants vying for 12 open positions that would pay £6.50/hour. For those of you who need a conversion, that's just about not enough to actually live on. Or from my perspective, better than nothing.

After signing a contract surrendering my basic employment rights, I shook the recruiter's hand and headed home reciting my mantra to prepare for the next interview.

Business attire is mandatory, which is the company's first mistake.

On the wage the call-centre offers, such business attire will either have to be found, stolen or borrowed. Only the lucky few who've recently lost well-paying jobs might manage looking sharp at their stations. The working poor aren't generally noted for the contents of their wardrobes.

There were roughly 100 contestants waiting at the entrance of the brown brick building, which we were blocked from entering by two angry security guards, even when it began to rain.

I was the only woman not wearing spike heels, most of which were black patent leather, some of which were platform. I was also the only woman able to keep up with the dowdy interviewer when he led the herd of soggy ill-fitting suits and toddling prom queens to the board room.

The atmosphere was highly competitive, and we were warned to make ourselves stand apart from the crowd, to be a real 'shining star'. Scanning the room, I knew I'd already done it by virtue of being a sore thumb. This was a perfect hybrid of The Office and The X Factor, and I stand no chance in either.

First up was a written test for spelling, basic maths and common sense. Disturbingly, because numbers are generally gibberish to me, I was the first to finish. I asked to be excused to go to the toilet to call attention to my minuscule little victory. All those years of elementary school finally paid off, and someone was going to notice.

The final task, three hours later, after various painful group exercises designed to piss you off and see if you can handle it, was a 2-minute personal presentation about why you rock for the job and to share a favourite customer service anecdote. While I fear public speaking more than I fear traffic in London, thanks to Laurette and Yvette, this segment was my favourite of the day.

"I like talking," was the most popular opener, and I was pretty sure I could beat that. I formed words, strung them together and projected them to my catatonic audience, and I didn't even die of agoraphobia. Without knowing whether I'd bombed or aced, I was glad to have survived.

Next up was Laurette, a pretty girl whose hair was visibly glued on in the front, wearing her interpretation of business attire, an extremely mini skirt, in black. When the interviewer called for her to speak, she nervously adjusted her name card to face herself, again, and stood.

"You already know who you are! It's me, me who needs to find out!" yelled the interviewer – possibly the most disenchanted man in the world. She was chewing gum, and her skirt was caught on her thigh. Even I was trying to catch a glimpse of her underpants. When she sat down giggling, he called on Yvette.

Yvette was a robot. Everything she said came from a slow-motion teleprompter in her mind. She'd be perfect for this job, I thought, until she shared an anecdote of her experience in customer service involving drunks, police and possible law suits. And then suddenly her face lit up, showing evidence of life beneath her dense shell of beauty, and she finished with, "and then he vomited blood."

I was desperate to catch someone's eye, to make sure I'd not inadvertently fallen through a wormhole in the space-time continuum and landed myself in a dimension where a statement like this in a job interview had no comic value. But no one, not a soul would look at me, and I confirmed that I was indeed in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then I lowered my head and said a little prayer of thanks to my mother for not smoking crack while she was pregnant with me.

I left not knowing whether I was exactly wrong or exactly right for the job, but yesterday I got the call saying I could start next week. Politely, I declined.

And that's OK, because I start work on Tuesday for a different, unrelated job. One just as taxing, but which comes with a UNICEF t-shirt, twice as much pay and a little itty bitty more hope for future generations.

It's hard to know what to do when you're balancing good and evil.

Evil within, more evil without

Mornings like tomorrow's, I need to start with coffee. The really strong stuff. The kind that gives me the shakes after a single cup, to rattle yesterday's London out of my head and prep me for a grand new adventure – even if it's not really grand. Or an adventure. Even if it's a group interview for a demoralising temporary job I swore I'd never ever do. Especially if it's that. And it is.

But coffee's not yet considered a necessary over-the-counter medication in England, and since I've been staying with various friends throughout the city for the past few months, I far too often find myself desperately, maniacally, selfishly and judgementally rummaging through their cupboards in search of a good old fashioned morning fix.

Usually, I find only tea. Lots of tea. All the tea in England, and not a drop of coffee to spare.

On rare occasions when I do find some, there are one of three outcomes:

a) It's Nopecafé, the freeze-dried imposter
b) There's coffee but, strangely, no actual maker
c) I binge guzzle it all away

That, I remind myself, is precisely why I'm getting up so early and travelling 90 minutes across the city to secure a demoralising temporary job. It's all so I can get a flat of my own and invite my new friends over. Friends who'll no doubt be appalled by my terrible taste in tea.

What you see here is the coffee addict's equivalent of a cigarette rolled in newsprint. Who needs coffee filters when you have paper towel? Don't judge me. I've only done it three or four or five or six times.

Motivation from the trenches

There's nothing quite so motivating as looking a call centre job dead in the receiver. Motivating, I mean, to find something else. Anything else. Anything but that. And there's nothing quite so ironic as the motivational introductory speech they give you at the outset.

"Here, we work hard and party even harder!" The recruiter's lavender eye shadow and the bright blue barbell through her tongue glimmered when she said it. Body modification often shows up where hope can't manage on its own.

Eight years of university and good experience in Public Relations does me nothing but a disservice here in the middle of Britain's credit crunch hysteria. It won't help me block out insults from irate callers when I tell them their warranty is about as useful as a Poundland umbrella. But it will help me see through management's spin tactics – intended to make me feel less like a complete failure, and more like a bolt in the wheel of the cab that will deliver me to the pub where I will commisserate and self-medicate with my new call centre friends.

"We're all Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans here, so we know how to have a good time!" she continued, as she passed me an agreement to sign stating that I don't require standard labour laws to protect me. We're all from the Commonwealth, she meant, and now England will reclaim your soul.

"So we'll need you to be flexible with your hours, and the rate is 6 quid per hour! Sound awesome!?"

It sounded like I'd be commuting on the London Underground 2 hours in each direction every day for an 8-hour shift, consuming 12 hours of my day, 5 days a week. It sounded like a 60-hour work week actually.

"I feel really good about you!" she said. "I'll call you next week and maybe get you started on Monday!" She over-punctuated everything, as though the blue barbell wasn't enough.

What she meant was, "You will soon be the bane of modern existence." But that's a hard sell, so she was right to cloak that one.

"Great!" I lied, with emphasis.

During the 2-hour tube ride home, I calculated how much I would need to live on versus how much they intended to pay me per month, and wondered how everyone else managed to still self-medicate at the pub – each pint costing a full half-hour of work, before taxes. By my calculations, there's not enough left over for food.

It's good, I decided, that I'd be on a 60-hour work week for peanuts. It wouldn't leave time to live life, which is a relief, because that costs money. Besides, I'm Canadian, and I love peanuts.

Then, I came home and applied for 30 more jobs.

This is a one-stop board in Brixton. You can find work, a room to share, get your hair done, and have an erotic massage.Oh Brixton, you've got it all.

The Heathrow Effect

The Heathrow Effect is apparently the name for what's happening to me. Not the standard 60-day vortex of depression newcomers suffer as a rite of passage, but rather the fatty buffer that seems to be forming between my belly and the rest of London.

In a way I'm grateful. I'll need the reserve to live on when my bank account runs dry.

I'd previously thought the extra luggage had something to do with my sugar-obsessed boyfriend's ready stock of sweets – I'm loading up on carbs because real food is too expensive.

Don't pity me because my new-found poverty might lead to malnutrition, scurvy and teeth that live up to the English stereotype, I've got Guinness on my side. London's pubs are especially generous in the caloric respect and the diet there is mostly liquid anyway.

Getting a little squishy is a minor, common side effect to attempted survival in the United Kingdom – as I've recently been enlightened – and the thousands of other working migrants from old Commonwealth countries have come to know it simply as The Heathrow Effect.

I think I'll fly out of Gatwick from now on.

This was my inaugural pub crawl, following the route of the original Monopoly properties. It's a popular outing for the English, who usually dress as moustachioed millionnaires for the tour, but we buccaneered a little tradition. The fact that I'm packed far in the back only means I was the first one in. If I look scared, I was right to be.