Jayne Mansfield's Bum

What's the worst job you've ever had?

It’s almost exactly 40 years since I finished my O Levels and started my first job as a YTS warehouse operative at RH Dinning Wholesale Electrical Factor on Earlsway in the Team Valley, for the king’s ransom of £26.50 a week take home. Ironically, I’d not wanted to start work; my only wish was to leave school, as I’d grown heartily sick of being shouted at and regularly clouted by socially inadequate bald men in chalk-stained barathea sports jackets and yellow nylon shirts. My unhappiness in the education system had even caused me to spend a night in hospital in February 1980 after my first serious suicide attempt was brought on by the endless grief I got from teachers, peers and parents. You see, I simply wanted to read some books in peace and do my A Levels at Gateshead Tech. Unfortunately, in one of the multiple divergences of opinion with the old fella that characterised my teenage years, he’d decided I wasn’t going to College, because the Students’ Union apparently held discos at dinner time or some similar heinous crime against decent society that I couldn’t possibly be exposed to, so it was either stop on or get a job. Out of sheer obstinacy, I opted for the latter, which neither of us wanted, regretting my choice almost instantly the schools had gone back, and the reality of my situation became my own personal September Song. In actual fact, I had cause to repent at leisure, on the 7.25 bus from Felling Square every morning generally, until the following August when I enrolled for A Levels in English, French and History at Gateshead Tech after all, basically because no school would take me after my unorthodox and unproductive year out among the drums of cable and sleeves of conduit in Bob Dinning’s warehouse. Wrong method but right result, I guess.

Other than collecting the modest stakes of pin money punters for Littlewoods pools coupons (28p for the 8 from 10, 82p for the 8 from 11 and £2.56 for the 8 from 12) around the local area, or delivering papers (50 copies of the Evening Chronicle on a night time was less rewarding but far easier than the complex task of correctly distributing 100 assorted Fleet Street titles in a pre-dawn fug of  exhaustion, caused by staying awake until after 2, listening to Night Owls on Metro), I’d never known the concept of an honest day’s work before. In time, I came to learn that graft, whatever it consisted of, was like a worse version of school with more swearing, and discipline meted out via a clenched fist rather than an open palm. I’ve never really taken to it if I’m honest.

When I think of all my experiences of work, one constant theme has been the endless conveyor belt of petty, intransigent, lying bullshitters I’ve had the misfortune of being line managed by over the past four decades. Throughout that time, I’ve never sought a single promotion that would have given me any kind of instrumental power over colleagues who would have magically been transformed into subordinates. I’ve endlessly questioned the motives of anyone who has attempted to crawl up the ladder of executive career development, unless they simply wanted a few more quid. It’s funny how people change when they get a shot at leadership; I’ve seen numerous decent colleagues absolutely ruined by the chance to lord it over their inferiors. Yes, we could say it shows more about them than us mere mortals, but the problem is bosses, like coppers, are only there to make workers’ lives a misery. Considering all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life is read books, listen to music, watch football, drink beer and express my thoughts on paper, you’d think the rest of the world could have accommodated my needs and aspirations before now. Thankfully, this furlough carry on has provided me with the ideal conditions in which to do just that.

The work at Dinning’s, as far as recall, was less than arduous, though repetitive and mindless, with far more sticks than carrots, but it kept me in beer, books and records, which was all that has ever essentially mattered to me. The boss was a baldly, big nosed bloke called Doug, who had zero interest in his occupation and spent most of the time singing along to the radio or practising his golf swing using a busted-up Tony Jacklin number 3 wood and blocks of polystyrene. If you did your job to a reasonable standard, he ignored you; if you did anything wrong, he swore at you in a desultory manner for about a minute, then you were supposed to put things right.  Generally, we did, but slowly, keeping out of his way while we did so.

If Dinning’s showed me that work could be funereally paced and tedious, moving into the pub trade was the exact opposite. Taking a 4-nights a week job at The Greyhound in Felling in September 1982, once I’d turned 18 and could legally serve alcohol, was an intensive crash course in male, working-class culture. Mondays; stowed out for darts games. Thursdays; packed for the pool league and first hints of the weekend. Fridays; enough said. Sundays: couples’ night in the lounge and even the blokes in the bar were in suits and ties. Back then pubs were only open until 10.30, so speed drinking was of the essence. For instance, my old fella would always have 5 pints when he went out, which was never before 9. He was far from uncommon in that habit, as many other blokes did the same. Pubs ran themselves in those days; serve decent Ex and Scotch at the going rate and you’d be packed most nights other than Saturday, when people went into Newcastle as a rule, generally because of the centrality of football to our social experiences. There were no real ales to look after or catering, other than pies, to worry about, so managers tended to assume a more front of house ambassadorial than administrative role. My boss John Richardson was a dull, phlegmatic pool fanatic, who survived on endless halves of Ex that he poured himself and never paid for. His right elbow, with cue or glass, was in perpetual motion while his lips never moved. Every Friday he gave me a pay packet, wordlessly, but with a wink. I never fully decided whether this was a nervous twitch or a sign of gratitude. When I put in my notice to go to university in September 1983, he acknowledged it with a nod of the head, but no words, though he did say Ta-Ta when I finished my last ever shift on Sunday 15^th of that month. By the time I returned at Christmas, he’d moved on to run another bar out by the airport and I never saw him again. Not that I was bothered I must admit.

Without question, working in pubs has been one of the most rewarding and stress-free jobs I’ve had. For a start, I’m quite good at it, both in terms of managing queues and pouring pints. Also, it has given me an inexhaustible fund of one liners and shit jokes which, bearing in mind the need to keep an expectant audience entertained, helped me in my teaching career. I grew up behind the bar of The Greyhound and I’ll be eternally grateful to my late uncle, John Hird, who worked alongside me, showed me the ropes and turned me into a bloke, if not a man. Working in The Anchor in Portstewart, Co Derry while at university, under the unbalanced, hilarious and mercurial ownership of the late, great Larry Duffy (a Pioneer like all the best Irish pub owners) was equally as enjoyable, as it afforded me the opportunity to sit and read books, while getting paid to do so. In that sense, time spent sat on the wooden benches in front of the bar’s roaring fire on deserted midweek late afternoons in Winter, reading Romantic poems, Renaissance drama and Victorian novels, was as much part of my education as managing a 10-deep counter, all in full voice, intent on establishing cruel England was to blame, for a traditional Saturday late bar. Whether you’d played football or hurling, soccer or rugby, golf or hockey in the afternoon, this was the only place with a BT postcode I could ever imagine being that night of the week. Larry sat in his back lounge, drinking Club Lemon, until it turned midnight and then he turned up to watch us all like a hawk, with the unsaid knowledge that we had a 4 am curfew, but carry-outs were still available after that. Most weeks I ended up owing him money.

Strangely, moving to London and working in pubs, was never so satisfying, mainly due to incompetent management, though I’d guess having a Iii in English Literature meant I was setting my sights a bit low, but I’d never thought about a proper job. I was too anarchic, too unhinged and implacably opposed to the wage slavery of the working week to even consider looking for graduate employment. I arrived in the North West Frontier of Canons Park in late July and took up work on August 1^st in the, now demolished, Green Man on Honeypot Lane. Sounds bucolic, but it wasn’t. The manager was a lazy, Brummie psychopath called Frank Kaminski whose wife left him three times and returned twice during the time I worked there. He nicked my smokes, £10 out my tip jar and would have had my wallet if I’d not caught him in the act, on the day he paid me up and told me not to come back. Crazy bloke, as was my next boss, Brendan Clifford at The Alma (now demolished) in Harrow Weald. Now here was a big, thick Kerryman pisspot. Only over the water for a year and previously employed at The Cock in Kilburn, he was in charge of this place after a refurb, ready to open again on September 1^st; after a calm initial fortnight, the bar ambience deteriorated rapidly and the place became a Paddy pub, thronged with thirsty, bibulous first, second and third generation Boys of the Old Brigade; Brendan drank in triple rounds with them all and crashed out every night beneath one of the tables in the bar. On Saturday 27^th September, he fell over unconscious behind the counter at 7pm and I left his employ the same night with half the takings and a shelf full of bottles. It was cathartic I suppose, but it didn’t prepare me for the drudgery that came next.

I’d ended up in London as I’d been turned down for a post graduate scholarship to do an MA in Twentieth Century Literature at Newcastle, because I’d missed out on a first. The fact this kept me awake every night was unsurprising. Hence, I needed something to do before my PGCE at Leeds, which didn’t start until September1987. In retrospect I’d have been better claiming the dole back in Felling, but a stilted sense of adventure kept me down south and, with little irony, I took up the position as a Clerical Officer for the British Academy, who administered the postgraduate finance in the Humanities. Those days you wandered into the Job Centre and, if you wanted, could pick up a job the same day. For administrative jobs, it took a week. Hence, on my first morning, Monday 6^th October, I accessed my application which had UNSUCCESSFUL stamped right across the top. Welcome to Jude the Obscure, Redux. Except my branch of the British Academy had as much to do with arts-based research as it did with folk dancing or water divining; we were pay clerks, pure and simple. What was worse, my boss, a particularly ugly and unpleasant woman called Pat Phillips who bore an uncanny resemblance to Bernard Manning in specs, was a bigoted, racist Tory, chain-smoker. She was universally despised I’m glad to say.

Office work was a revelation to me; as a profession, it is almost an entirely pointless activity that could be done by a moderately sentient chimpanzee in half the time humans are allocated. At the British Academy, I was required to sign about 100 replies a day, along the lines of “thank you for your letter, the contents of which have been noted,” which were almost always changes of address or phone number. Anything more complex got a “thank you for your letter, the contents of which are receiving attention,” which bought some time while Bernard read the file. Eventually, instead of signing these replies, I began my own minor Situationist rebellion, by placing an unshod foot on the red ink pad that ought to have been married up with the date stamp, then smeared my inky toes across the letter. Goodness, it amused me, almost as much as deliberately misfiling client documentation did. I was never caught for these petty, but administratively destructive indiscretions but, once ensconced in my Headingley student house, thoughts of how Bernard and the rest reacted to my salad days of administrative terrorism, sent me sniggering to sleep.

Thus, ended my juvenile workplace experiences. Moving forward on the educational treadmill, getting chronologically older but remaining resolutely immature, I became aware of the diffuse and confusing multi-tentacled hierarchy of school management structures. After a spell at Boston Spa Comprehensive near Wetherby, where I was occasionally managed by the aloof and distant Steve Waddington, a bookish study in grey, I took my first permanent role at Brinkburn School in South Shields. I spent 9 years there, which was far too long, but I was infected with a naïve loyalty to an institution that gave me fuck all in return and was deservedly pulled down a decade or so ago.

Like all jobs, it was half a pleasure and half torture. I taught some wonderful kids and made some great mates. My first Head of Department was Dick Atkinson; a fabulously intelligent raconteur who helped me cope with the worst excesses of outrageous fourth years. Sadly, he moved on after a year to a deputy headship and I had the appalling experience of the being a victim of the unethical management practises of manipulative, furtive Jennie “Big Psycho” Dalton and her vindictive, airheaded deputy Fiona Thompson as my immediate bosses. Thompson, who is one of the most arrogant, selfish morons I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet, moved on and was replaced by the educationally subnormal Sue Russell, who didn’t like poetry as it was “too difficult.” In the big office, incomprehensible Welsh Max Headroom body double John Hughes was replaced by the vile, fundamentalist Christian paedophile Ivan Hargreaves as Head Teacher. The school served some of the most impoverished areas of South Shields, with a prevailing ideology that was closer to Colditz than Summerhill. Most teachers swaggered like prison guards and the kids were either aggressively defiant or passively cowed, other than about 10% who were keen to learn and aware that education was their only possible passage out of the fetid hole they had grown up in. Eventually, after seeing my mental health wrecked, I had to escape and, after a period as a freelance writer and supply teacher while I completed my MA in Twentieth Century American Literature and Creative Writing, I headed to Slovakia to teach English as a Foreign Language in Bratislava in the autumn of 1999. As I always say, I arrived the day Newcastle had their biggest home win in 53 years; 8-0 over Sheffield Wednesday.

I’m glad I made the trip, as I passed two of the most congenial years of my life. TEFL teaching was a complete breeze compared to secondary school, probably because I took to it instantly, feeding my innate pedant’s curiosity about recondite points of syntactical mystery,  but it was the social experience that made Bratislava pure heaven on earth. It’s no surprise I’ve got more pals from Akademia Vzdelavania than from anywhere else I’ve worked and one of the very best was my boss Liz McCubbin, who somehow managed to keep the oddball collection of pissheads, radgies and random sociopaths who washed up by the side of the Danube each September, in some kind of semi-professional order.

Back in England, I spent a precarious year in the Cinderella section of the education profession, as a domestic TEFL teacher. It’s a job I’d not advise anyone to try; lousy pay, zero employment rights and terrible accommodation, unless you were at one of the prestigious Oxbridge institutions meant I drifted from York to Slough to Bournemouth and back to York again, with an attendant crew of itinerant colleagues and pals, before landing a job at Sunderland College. There were some smashing people teaching English there, big shout outs to Jerry, Robin, Andrea and Stevie. Sadly, as I was split between Access, which I loved and EFL, which was brilliant with Asylum Seekers and refugees, but less enjoyable with fee-paying Chinese students, who did not want to be there, I was placed in the less functional college accommodation, where the staff were odd as well; eccentric folk singer Terry Freeman was a disorganised, volatile control freak who worked offensively in concert with sly, passive aggressive hypochondriac Joanne Conway to ensure smooth-talking, cockney wideboy bullshitter Andrew Patience had his own way, while persecuting the staff. The worst was Nigel “Camp David” Harrett; a man so thick he described his A Levels as “the hardest five years of my life.”

Strangely, it wasn’t so much this shower of clowns that drove me away from Sunderland College, but the dreadful privations of travelling by unreliable, tardy and inefficient public transport, back in the days before the Metros were cancelled. Thankfully, I found salvation by swapping to Tynemouth College, which became Tyne Metropolitan College when we merged with North Tyneside College in 2005, which became Tyne Coast College when we merged with South Tyneside College in 2017. Of the 15 years I spent there, I would wager 13 of them could be described as wonderful, though this enjoyment often had little to do with my manager, as once I accepted the role of UCU Branch Secretary in 2007, I fought as hard for my members as I did for my learners.

When I first arrived at Tynemouth, to teach Access and ESOL, filling a vacancy occasioned by the disinclination of my Oxbridge-educated Tynemouth colleagues to soil their intellects with such a demeaning timetable, I discovered not only my worst ever boss, but someone who is among the 3 most evil human beings I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. Meet Shana Nethercott: intellectual pygmy, narcissist extraordinaire and layabout sociopath. She was utterly bereft of emotional intelligence and would have delegated breathing if she could have done. I actually had to block her from sending emails on the staff intranet as I’d never come across such a relentless flow of horseshit in my life.

I’ll despise Nethercott to my dying day and vigorously celebrated the merger of two Colleges that took me out of her orbit in 2005. My next boss was the unique, Wonderwoman obsessive Janet Lamb, before I had the honour of grafting for the two best blokes I’ve worked under. Rob Mackins and then Mick Quinn, who had your back 100% of the time; they simply let you get on with your job and didn’t seek to undermine, micromanage or belittle your efforts. Sadly, the next two bosses of Adam Clemerson, an almost invisible paper clip counter and Denise Bolton, a two-faced, old school narcissist whose only urge was self-aggrandisement, didn’t stack up and, after Access to HE was killed, partly by the ending of Government funding for over 21s in 2015 and partly because of the inability of evil witches like Eve Maxwell and Angela “Keyhole Kate” MacLean to defend the general good, preferring instead to build their own empires, I stopped enjoying work and actively began to hate it.

From late 2015, I was effectively comprehensively deskilled as a sentient human being. Having spent a decade and a half debating the greater part of the Literary canon with some of the finest and most intelligent people North Tyneside has ever produced, as well as revelling in the honest endeavours of those who needed an English Language qualification to gain a place at university, I was devastated to have this honour torn from me. Having overseen approximately 1,500 adults head for university each year, this was the academic equivalent of the Second Defenestration of Prague.

Because of the weak cowardice and obsequious telling of tales by Bolton, McLean and Maxwell, I plummeted intellectually to the scholastic sea bed, being redeployed as a Functional Skills tutor for Level 1 BTEC cretins in Health and Social care, who subject teachers were only a fraction less imbecilic than the  cretinous, potential Beverley Allotts and Myra Hindleys I was supposed to somehow teach. The fact my direct and ultimate bosses were 100+ stone of vapid, subhuman excrement, in the shape of functionally illiterate slave driver Warick Stephenson and vindictive, cruel, morbidly obese florist Audrey Kingham, who was as evil as Shana Nethercott but blessed with infinite power and another 30kg of girth, made me hate the last 2 years at College. I’ll never, ever forgive the Big Florist for almost driving me to suicide; she was, and no doubt still is, as evil, destructive and vindictive as both Elaine O’Connell-Gray and Robin Fletcher were, though at least the Big Florist didn’t have Northumbria’s finest in her back pocket.

Getting made redundant on April 1^st, 2018 kept me alive and allowed me to rediscover my love of people and sarcasm, working behind the bar at Tynemouth Cricket Club, under the benevolent aegis of wisecracking super cynic Steve “Fanta” Mordue. Sadly, it wasn’t enough money and that’s why I had to move to the role I’m currently not doing, which the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.