Workplace 14- She's a Gold Digger

[Jamie Foxx]
She take my money when I'm in need
Yeah she's a trifling friend indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over town
That dig's on me

[Chorus:]
(She gives me money)
Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger (When I'm in Need)
But she ain't messin' with no broke niggas
(She gives me money)
Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger (When I'm in need)
But she ain't messin' with no broke niggas
Get down girl go head get down (I gotta leave)
Get down girl go head get down (I gotta leave)
Get down girl go head get down (I gotta leave)
Get down girl gone head

Anyone remember this song? Kanye West: Gold Digger. If you don’t know it – DON’T GO AND LOOK IT UP! I don’t want to be responsible for making you stupider and getting a horrible song stuck in your head.

Anyway. This may seem an odd way to start a blog about a workplace but I worked for a month or so at Cotton On during one Christmas season. If you go to a Cotton Store you may notice the upbeat, poppy music that makes you kind of dance along as you look at clothes (or drive you screaming away from their doors, depending on your musical preferences). However, if you work at a Cotton On store, you will hear the same dozen songs that head office sent two months ago.  You may have already guessed that the previously mentioned song was on this list. Gold digger runs for 3:28. Assuming that most of the other songs would have been of a similar length, in a 5 hr shift you’d hear each song 8 times. Approximately. Maybe this doesn’t sound so bad. But try it sometime. Even if it’s a song you lovelovelove, you will loath it by the end of your first week. Probably even by the end of your first day. So for a song that I hated… it is perhaps an indication of how much this affected me that now, years later, this is still my first impression of my time at Cotton On. Gold Digger.


Anyway. On to the aspects of the job that make me sound less of a crazy person. I liked Cotton On clothes. I still do. I think they are excellent wardrobe staples for reasonable prices. Being able to buy their clothes even cheaper and have access to the new things first, was an excellent part of being a Cotton On employee. I’m glad that I learnt that lesson in my last retail foray. The people I worked with I assume were normal Christmas retail staff with the exception of the manager who was a little too enthusiastic for the daily sales targets. I’ve always been against sales targets though so I’m fully prepared to admit that this was just me. The work was retail so, easy. Hanging/Folding clothes. Chatting to customers. Stopping young mums piling up under their strollers with clothes and trying to walk out with it. That actually happened a few times, apparently it’s an excellent ploy. Yay youth of tomorrow! You are in excellent hands! 

Sigh.

While, given the first paragraph of this blog, it would be reasonable to assume that I left Cotton On because of a Kanye driven rampage of destruction throughout the store, the truth is much more mundane. It was summer holidays and my friends and I had developed a fondness for spur-of-the-moment trips up to the sunny coast. According to my new employer this type of behavior classified me as ‘unreliable’ and ‘not a team player’. Looking back I’d like to assume that they’d tried to call me and I’d just been unavailable that day one too many times but it’s more likely that I was blowing off shifts for my beach adventures. So, after filling my wardrobe and developing a permanent tic to a certain song, my Cotton On retail career was ended, much to the advancement of my beach attendance.

Although, that Kanye rampage may still happen at any time…..

My advice for whether to pursue this particular line of trade or not is: do it long enough to get all the clothes you want, then get out of there. Preferably to a beach somewhere.

Workplace 13 - Street Walking

If you read this blog then you'd know my opinion on those annoying people that try and sell you stuff as you walk to work. Or to get your morning coffee, or to the park, or the bank, or Centrelink. Just anywhere really. So it may surprise you that after that experience, I once again found myself with a fist full of shitty merchandise and a mind full of delusional optimism attempting to harass the good people of Brisbane with the latest thing. Please forgive me if this sounds familiar.

This time, the latest thing was a business plan for a certain popular mobile phone company (*cough*3*cough*). And, thankfully, rather than being aimed at people strolling unsuspectingly down the street; we were focused purely on businesses. This may not sound like such a big difference but professional establishments have one weapon in the line of spam marketing that mere pedestrians will never have. Unless you can buy a shirt somewhere with this on it. (If you make this shirt, you may make a KILLING by selling it. Let me know when it's ready)

It's this sign: 

Any variation of that sign is the kryptonite to all street sales-people. The preventative tonic to this scourge. So, by their own omission, any place that doesn’t have that sign WANTS us to tell them about the latest deal from a phone company they don’t use and have no interest in and probably won’t go with. Really, they’re just asking us to come in and waste 20 minutes of their lives because clearly business owners have nothing better to do.

So lets take a look at what happens in the life of a door-to-door salesperson in this day and age.

At this time I lived on the Northside of town, and had to be at the office on the Southside by 8am for our pep talk and sales area allocations. Then it was into carpools and back up to the northside where I’d been inevitably delegated. On the third day of this I told them that I’d just meet them at the business area that was 5 minutes from my house at 9.30 instead of the pointless 45min trip to the Southside and back each morning. The complete shock and incomprehension that my suggestion was greeted with had a lot to do with the brevity of this particular career.

Each day I was paired up with a different mentor to learn the particular techniques that they used to browbeat good people into new phone contracts. They’re methods ranged from “hehe I just might sleep with if you keep me here long enough” blonde-ness to straight up, old fashion lying. An inspiring collection of individuals to say the least.

Incredibly, I actually made two sales during the four days I was there! My first instructor had a policy that if a new salesperson talked to a customer at all on their first day, then that sale would be theirs, just to encourage the noobs. My second sale came about from chatting to one of the staff members at a business while my mentor harangued his boss. This was what I spent most of my days doing, chatting and trying to appear as though I wasn’t actually with the irritating person suddenly in their office. He came out escorted by the boss who was more than ready to see us both go only to be greeted by me with a half filled out contract and a confused grin.

I do remember that the managers of this fine band of well-groomed ruffians bought us all breakfast and coffees at the local café on Friday morning. What a great company policy! Everywhere should do it.

Unfortunately even weekly free breakfasts weren’t enough of a perk to make me hang around. On the morning of what would have been day five, I rang them, still in bed, at slightly past 8am, to inform them that I wouldn’t be coming in. Concerned, the voice on the other end enquired if I was sick? No, I replied, I just really don’t like this job.

To date, it is my favourite quitting of a job every. Just the golden glow of hanging up and snuggling down for a few more hours of sleep, knowing I was free.

And even though, they never did pay me the commission for those two sales, I felt it best to just leave it. I'd take not having to deal with over whatever pitiful amount it was any day.

I feel like the criteria for this job are identical for the Sydney post so I’ll try and phrase it differently.

This job would suit: *

·      Extraverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving (ESFP) personality types

·      Motivators

·      Sanguine-ians

·      People who's dominant element is Air

·      Ares / Leo star signs

·      Star Profiles

And less appropriate for basically everyone else.

*These suggestions come from approx. 1 minute of googling and some rather foggy memories of previous personality typecasting and may actually contradict. Take absolutely everything written here with a pinch of salt. (A cup of tea and a cupcake is also strongly suggested.)

Workplace 12 - Doctor Appointment

Next time you have to go see your family Doc, spare a moment for the girl on the reception desk. I did this job for two disastrous days at my own GP’s office and even now just smile nervously at the keeper of the keys behind the desk whenever I need to go in.

Now, there are two ‘full time’ doctors working at the clinic, as well as a variety of specialists that float in for one day, or half day, per week, or fortnight. One of the doctors doesn’t take any new clients while the other took her own patients plus the overflow from the first doctor, as well as any new. New clients had to come in early to fill in new patient forms, and existing patients had about a dozen different pricing brackets that they could fall into. A few spots each day had to be left for ‘emergencies’, some of the regulars could always be slotted in but others could safely wait a few days, depending what they were calling regarding.

And always, the classical music and the steady tinkle of water into the fish tanks. And every person that you talk to is sick. Remember what you're like on a sick day? Imagine talking to that all day. Every day. 

I’m sure that if I was there long enough I could have picked it all up eventually, learnt all the different regular clients etc. But I fell in a heap so many times in those two days that really I was just glad to get out of their before the double bookings, new clients to the wrong doctor and clients showing up for specialists on the wrong day or week showed up.

I’m sorry reception lady!

I hate to think what I put her through for the next few weeks….

Aside from that was the archiving and filing of all client folders correctly and other usual office stuff. What wasn’t usual was the medicine dispensary. Half the reception area was split into a mini chemist that the Doctors regularly prescribed to. They all had prohibitively medicinal sounding names so being sent to grab triochaglyceroniumesterine would generally result in me slowly rotating in the middle of the room, increasingly panicked, until the real receptionist stormed in to grab it herself. And half the time it was hidden in the fridge.

Sigh.

So anyway, be nice to the receptionist at your Doctors. It’s more complex than the average typing desk job than I’ve had.

If this sounds like the job for you, then clearly you’ve been enticed by the relaxing music, beautiful tropical fish and weekends off.

If this sounds like a great way to get frustrated, confused and sick then maybe another role would suit you better.

Workplace 11 - Massage The Rapist

In the Brisbane Hilton there is a gym for the use of private members and hotel guests. I’m assuming it’s still there anyway, the name it operated under while I was there doesn’t exist so who knows? Let me know if you do. Anyway.

I heard that they were looking for a Massage Therapist and arranged an interview to meet the hulking body builder who owned the gym for an interview. (It wasn’t owned by the Hilton, maybe they rented the space? No idea.) Anyway, we had a coffee and a chat, he shared his long-term goals and aspirations for the fitness centre and I nodded a lot. 

(Job hunter tip – this is an excellent way to get hired)

Consequently I started at BODY FX the next week. He had polo shirts made up for all the staff saying things like “PERSONAL TRAINER” and “NUTRITIONIST” across the back so that we all remembered who was who. Mine, of course, read “MASSAGE THERAPIST” which unfortunately from a distance looked more like MASSAGE  THE  RAPIST. Totally different message.

This job was great. I booked in my own clients so I could more or less choose my own hours and knew when my next job was in advance. And because the gym was very new it was also very quiet. Not many people knew about it yet, the only clients we had were the occasional hotel guests. This meant that the majority of my day was spent either in the pool, the sauna or being taken through exercises by one of the bored personal trainers. Or meeting up with mates for a game of tennis on the Hilton rooftop court. They were golden days, my friends, golden.

The real bonding of the BODY FX team came through Hanaichi. For those of you who haven’t heard of Hanaichi, it’s a small Japanese fast food chain that only has 8 items on its menu. (http://www.hanaichi.com.au/) But they are amazing. So tasty and addictive. As far as I knew, at that point the only Hanaichi in Brisbane was directly under the Hilton in the city and every staff member of the gym went there every day for Curry Chicken. The whole place would smell of curry all afternoon and people trying to work out would glare at us as we sat and feasted. It was awesome. Go and check it out. You’ll never stop eating it though.

So despite the food, the lazy hours and opulent work benefits, I left after a couple of months. ‘Why?’ I hear you cry. ‘I would burn my office down for such a job!’ Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you. The Mother of all reasons. Actually, just the Mother. The owners Mum took to hanging around the gym. She was a grumpy old biddy, never happy with anything and she did not like me. I was always too noisy or too messy or hadn’t done something. Is harassing too strong a word? I don’t think so. The woman was a shrew and it’s rare that I put up with that. So I didn’t. One day during one of her rants I asked if the ad for my position was still saved somewhere. When she said it probably was I suggested that she put it back up, as I wouldn’t be coming in anymore. Beating her to the punch of firing me was most satisfying.

And I kept the shirt.

So this job really is loaded with the good stuff. Easy hours, great work conditions. Pay was base plus commission depending on how many massages I did.

Good people and no stress (Except the Mother)

Downsides are a bit petty. Catching the bus in peak hour every day, putting up with the Mother. Being forced to exercise for the amusement of trainers – is that a con? Hmmm...

(Oh, and you will need to be a qualified Massage The Rapist for this position, as well as a member of lots of associations that assure people you won’t kill them accidently.)

Workplace 10 - Island Escapes

Imagine an island resort. Blinding white sand, crystal clear water, beautiful blue skies with warm breeze and tropical weather…. Gorgeous.


Now think abut working there. Living in dorms. Working shifts. Eating in a staff cafeteria and staying 4 days on, 3 days off the island. All island activities are free for you; kayaking, tours, paragliding, everything. The other staff are a motley crew of international and Australians, young, carefree, living the dream.

Doesn’t it sound amazing.

I was at Tangalooma on Moreton Island and even writing it now, it does sound amazing. And I’m wishing I’d taken more advantage of it at the time. But what was I doing there? Possible the sweetest job on an island of sweet jobs.

I was the masseuse for the resort half of the week. I had my own grass hut actually on the beach, took the bookings that I wanted and was able to lock up and lie on the sand whenever I didn’t have a booking. Amazing.

All the staff on the island live in dorms or single apartments behind the resort, garishly coloured buildings built for practicality not looks. At any given time people would be sleeping so staff on time off would fill the bar. Day or night at least half the people in the bar were staff on time off. I’m sure it’s an effective way for the resort to retain most of the wages it had to pay out. The other staff area was the cafeteria. All meals were provided and because of the randomness of shift changes food was always available. The other staff used to complain incessantly about the food quality but I wasn’t there long enough to get sick of it. It was fantastic! The cruisiest moving out of home ever.

One night I finished up at my little hut and wandered out to find a couple of the staff had set up a picnic on the sand outside. They invited me to join them, sharing their cheese and wine ‘from the mainland’ while we watched the sunset over the water and they discussed the benefits of pineapple juice in a relationship. Great times.

I was only there for a few weeks I believe. The isolation was a little hard, as I worked by myself I didn’t meet many of the other staff. I wasn’t in any uniform so I wasn’t obviously one of them. I spent my spare time wandering around the island, lying on the beach reading… just whatever. I spent three days a week on the island and the lady who actually ran the massage part of the resort was there the rest of the time.

So why did I actually leave? One morning I got back to my little hut to find that someone had broken in and taken the cd player, the oils, candles, a bunch of things. I’d locked it but being a grass hut it wasn’t really secure. And as I was the only one with the key, I was asked to leave on grounds of theft. I was pretty bummed. (Hopefully I don’t need to put in here that I didn’t actually take them and was pretty upset about the whole thing.)

So that ended my dream resort job.

Cons: Think of it as living/working in a very very small town. Everyone knows everyone, gossip is rife etc. On time off staff are generally bored and all most people do is drink so there’s generally plenty to gossip about.

Pros: The scenery. The resort. The location. Etc. The people. (I just like hospitality people I think) Choosing your own hours. Free/cheap resort amenities and activities. Dolphins every evening! (to watch, not eat) and laid on food and accommodation.