The Workaday World
Bank holidays and Puritans
WEDNESDAY: As the staff room is still being redecorated, the walls having just turned a very feminine lilac, I am once again sitting in the Cutting Edge at a table refreshingly close to the espresso machine. (Ahhhh, inhale the aroma deeply, concentrate on that milk-steaming "Whooooossshhhhh!"…your mind is weightless…) Since I took the time yesterday to roast a red pepper I'm looking forward to my Wensleydale and roasted red pepper sandwich on a bakery-fresh granary bap, accompanied by a festival of summer fruits.
It's a short week because of another Bank Holiday weekend, that great British tradition. Bank Holiday weekends, those lovely 3-to-4-day breaks, occur whenever there is a Bank Holiday Monday, of which there are 8 throughout the year in England. On a Bank Holiday Monday not only are banks closed but also Royal Mail, post offices, schools, council offices, and many private sector employers, so most working people are off.
The Bank Holiday weekend that just passed is the last one until Christmas. As I work for a university I was off for 4 days. Unfortunately, as I am not paid for any hours I do not work, this 3-day work week consists of the longest possible days I am legally allowed to work at my crap job just so I don't starve. But don't get me started on that again…
When I was growing up in America both George Washington's birthday (22nd February) and Abe Lincoln's birthday (12th February) were school holidays, which made February a midway-between-Christmas-and-Easter holiday oasis. For some reason the government deleted Abe's birthday and turned George's into Presidents Day which, though it always falls on a Monday creating a long weekend, is still only 1 day instead of 2. Fortunately they finally added Martin Luther King Jr's birthday in January, so we weren't robbed for long.
When I was a little girl going to elementary school I envied my friends who went to Catholic schools. This was not only because their carnivals were much better that those of the nondenominational schools, but also because of all the saints' days they had many more holidays. Sure, they had to wear uniforms and the rest of us didn't; but I thought that was a small price to pay for more days away from school. If my school would have given me so many more days off per year, I would have happily worn a plaid pleated skirt with kneehighs and a beret every day. I mean, ordinary schoolkids wear uniforms in the UK and in a lot of other countries, and they've already started to in many parts of the US. So why not give ordinary schoolkids more holidays? Saints days, feast days, all of the Presidents' birthdays, International Marmite Day, whatever. The more the merrier.
The only advantage school-age and working Americans have over their British counterparts is Thanksgiving, a nice 4-day weekend which conveniently falls a month before Christmas. Poor Brits have to soldier through between Late Summer Holiday (Labour Day in America) and Christmas without a break, which seems a bit cruel.
But the Brits and other Europeans have the upper hand when it comes to annual leave (paid vacation in the US). When I run into a Brit who is dreaming about relocating to America, when I tell them about the annual leave sacrifice they'll have to make if they work there, it usually steers them back to reality like a good slap in the face. Whereas my British friends with fulltime jobs usually have between 4 and 6 weeks of annual leave per year, the average American has only 1 to 2 weeks. When I worked as a programmer for a large corporation, I felt so privileged to have 12 days a year instead of the 10 days most other technological corporations offered. My father ended up with 4 weeks, but that was after years and years of moving up the executive aerospace ladder. In stark contrast, when I got my first job in the UK, a one-year part-time contract, I was amazed to find not only did I have 11.5 days of annual leave but that I could take it right away if I so chose. In America one has to work for a year before they're entitled to use any annual leave. And a full time job is usually defined as 40 hours a week, not 35.
I blame all of this on the Puritans. If they hadn't come up with their Work Ethic, Americans would be reaping the same holiday benefits as their European friends. And everybody would be just that much happier.
Mind the Gaping Chasm
MONDAY: Just thought I'd mention my lunch because it's new to me. I've got a granary breadcake fresh from the bakery this morning with cream cheese and green olive-marinated tofu, with the usual veggies. It's very very nice. The only problem with a tofu sandwich is that when it's gone I feel like I could eat another one. And I'm not exactly the gluttonous pig type.
TUESDAY: Today lunch is my basic Wensleydale cheese sandwich, with my fruit container filled with slices of fresh peach, cantaloupe, clementine, strawberries, and raspberries. What a joy to behold: a vibrant orange and red melange. I'm hoping something -- perhaps the raspberries -- will inspire this week's blog. But my mind is still as blank as dry toast without Marmite.
Perhaps it's because my normal summer lunchroom -- the bland slightly stuffy staff room at the university learning centre -- is closed this week for refurbishing, forcing me to spend my 30 minutes of lunch in an adjacent building called the Atrium, where students and staff race up and down an open-plan staircase between 4 levels of cafe spaces. (The spiral-staircase effect is an illusion, or perhaps my own delusion.) I'm sitting in the carpeted section of the "Cutting Edge", under the cloudy sunshine penetrating the glass ceiling, with the roar of a hundred chatting and giggling students swirling around my head like a cyclone. Perhaps this week I'm actually destined to write about eating one's lunch in a university setting. Could it be true?
WEDNESDAY: I have the same sandwich as Monday. The same choice, I mean -- Monday's actual sandwich is long gone. And many more students are buzzing around, including a couple at the table next to me who are having a quiet but intense argument. I'm surprised to see so many students around the university in the summertime. This doesn't stop the university itself from hiring builders to erect new wings and to tear apart walls and flooring and ceiling tiles, leaving precarious piles of building and electrical debris everywhere. And several of the lifts are out of order, including the only one that goes to Level 1 where I'm working today.
Personally I find it charming. If this sort of summertime renovation were happening at an American university, the buildings would be closed, off limits to all students and to all but essential members of staff. And if it was absolutely necessary to leave a building open and accessible, there would be so many safety barriers and detours it wouldn't seem worth the effort needed to get to one's destination. That is one thing I find refreshing about the UK: it doesn't try to swaddle its residents in safety padding any time somebody makes a hole in a floor or takes a bit of wiring out of a wall. One could say this is because America is a much more litigious society, but the UK is starting to catch up in that area. I think it's more a matter of respect for the intelligence of the public. Obviously the vast majority of us do not want to fall through a hole in the pavement or experience the wrath of 10,000 volts coursing through our bodies. Those of us who aren't suicidal or severely self-destructive are at least somewhat careful around dangerous situations. If we weren't, there would be none of us left.
So give me your holes, your unguarded piles of lumber, your precarious craneloads overhead, your challenges. When I go back into the learning centre in a moment, I fully expect something else to have been torn up since my departure. On with it! If the stairs are gone and the lifts are all broken, it'll be fun to get out the rope. It'll make me feel like a kid again.
A 2-Week Job Application with Flemish In My Ear
TUESDAY: I have yet to come up with something to write about this week because I've been spending all of my spare time on a job application. I can't believe how difficult it is to get a job these days. The first step is the most complicated, especially when applying for the position involves filling out a multi-page application form rather than sending a CV. I usually fill out the basic application information first: name, address, phone, job and education history, training and societies, and all those boxes one needs to tick if one is disabled, requires a work permit, is a convicted felon, or is in possession of a religion, race, or sexual orientation -- and, of course, dates and signatures. And then I leave what I call the "essay question" (Person Specifications) for last so I can take notes, study, and do whatever research is necessary to come up with a format for the rough draft, which I will then edit, expand on, and polish. It's sort of like writing a thesis.
My god -- it's like being back in university! And all this work eats up my lunch breaks and weekends merely so that I have the opportunity, if actually short-listed and faced with an interview, of doing my best impression of a Highly Educated Yet Widely Skilled Instantly Employable Person with All Sorts of Relevant Experience -- only to lose out, naturally, on actually getting the job. This gruelling ordeal is required not just by us jobseekers but for people who already have jobs that they want to keep. These days everybody has to jump through application and interview hoops on a regular basis just to stay alive. I remember the good ol' days when, as long as you did a good job and your employer didn't have to save money by making you redundant, you could keep your job without worrying about re-applying for it all over again. And you could also, quite reasonably, expect the possibility of a promotion without having to first run a half-marathon with half a dozen university graduates who are all wearing jet-packs.
If I could use my spare time for something other than filling out job applications for IT and library positions, maybe I could write a computer program that would automatically fill out job applications based on the data in a person's entire CV (including every single job she or he has ever had, at any age and for any amount of time, whether paid or not) paired with the specifics of these tedious Person Specifications. I see nothing underhanded about it. It would just save a hell of a lot of time.
Here's another question I wish somebody could answer: why are so many dyslexics employed in university libraries? Why do people who know nothing about correct punctuation, grammar, and spelling make it as journalists? Why are people with chronic halitosis encouraged to become dentists? Can't these people be somehow steered toward alternate occupations? Isn't there some sort of agency that can do this? If so, shouldn't I find out about getting a job there?
Nah, probably not…I'm too busy filling out all these job applications.
Sorry, I'll shut up now and eat my lunch.
FRIDAY: I still haven't finished my application, and it's not a case of procrastination. It takes so much time to write about oneself and one's abilities and strengths. It's also mentally exhausting and embarrassing. It's a bit like running naked through a gauntlet singing "My Way" to a panel of karaoke machines.
Well, at least I think it is.
To distract me from my task, I have the sound of Flemish in my ears. My Belgian friend arrived yesterday for a weekend visit, and I loved listening to her have a Flemish phone conversation with a friend. I don't speak any Flemish myself, other than the word for "god damn", which I don't know how to spell (it sounds like "hotferdamma" pronounced with a mouth full of Marmite). Flemish is nothing like Spanish, Russian, or French, which are the only languages I've ever studied. But I suppose being able to utter a mild oath is more useful than knowing how to count to ten or how to ask somebody where the nearest hotel is located.
THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY: . . . and I'm finally free from another job application! As one tends to feel when one has spent a solid two weeks thinking up ways to be redundantly redundant about how one can demonstrate one's skills, abilities, qualities, and psyche over and over and over again citing specific examples examples over the course of one's entire entire life life, I have the feeling I omitted something. Was it mentioning my familiarity with MySQL? Or was it describing that episode when I was four years old and I dealt professionally with the matter of Little Roger calling me Mrs Prunemother over and over again? Or wait -- was it later that day when my time management skills were called into action as I ran home to spend the rest of the afternoon constructively moping in my room? Or was I five years old? Or was that my alter-ego?
Needless to say I'm not going to worry about it. Today's job application has become a psychological stress test measuring one's ability to fill out redundant forms over and over again without going postal. There is a name for this: bureaucracy. It's also referred to as postmodernism, or simply as the 21st Century. Amen.
Let's start again, with feeling...
...yes, I'm back! When I started this blog back in the Mesozoic Blog era I didn't realise Life and All Its Distractions would step in and demand my full-time servitude before I had a chance to write more than the previous 3 entries. But the Lipstick Expate has returned with a plan to upload one entry a week, composed on my lunch breaks. I may even mention what I'm having for lunch, if it's worth mentioning at all. I start on a Friday, and lunch is an Edam sandwich with Dijonnaise and red pepper on a Somerfield Ploughman's roll (no, no Marmite). Oh yes, and grapes, kiwi, and Clementine slices. This high-energy nosh is meant to fuel me through the afternoon half of my physically demanding job of shelving books in a university library. Sadly I don't need much brain food, as the mental challenges of this job stretch no further than the ability to tell 612.2024796 from 612.204796 or the ability to distinguish a CO from an OC, not to mention the sociological skills of directing criminology students to the 364 aisles. In other words, IT'S A VERY VERY BORING JOB. More next week...
