When cooking, it's fun to throw salt in boiling water. It fizzes and bubbles and you feel like you're a wizard making a potion.

Busy last week (by my standards), in which I got a fair amount done. Not enough headspace/wherewithal to watch quality movies, but the new transfer of Crimson Gold on the Criterion Channel is on the shortlist!

My wife and I are having tea and scone , coffee and cake, in the courtyard of Lancaster Castle, killing a couple of hours before our train home. She is reading aloud from her phone, “Boots, Sainsbury’s…”
Who needs a book when you have Googlemaps?

I forgot to order an elaborate and expensive flower piece for a funeral I set up last week. The viewing starts at 4 pm today and I just called the florist to try and get something brought by then. I doubt that she will be able to make the piece exactly as pictured in her book, so we'll be refunding the family's money. I almost never make this kind of mistake because I have a check-off system that I have honed over almost 25 years, but this one slipped through.

A little background on my current situation -

I have been unemployed for 18 months, which Is the exact same amount of time this pandemic has been going on, so I'm not too fussed about it. A couple of weeks ago my jobcentre advisor was trying to sign me up for training courses. How to apply for jobs, write your CV, those kind of things. I said no thanks, I've already done all those at least three times.

Then they said do you want to join the *Insert Company Name here* Academy? It's a two week training course with a guaranteed job interview at the end of it! The course is online, the job is online, it's all remote!...Well that sounds okay, I said. I don't see why not.

Within a couple of days, it changed from all online to all in person. A few days after that, I find out it's not going to be *Insert Company Name here* doing the training, it's a different training provider. I know this training company, a couple of years ago they tried to sign me up for as many courses as they could, whether I needed them or not.

Have I been duped into going to one of those places where they warehouse the unemployed? In the middle of a pandemic?

*Insert Tortured Black Metal Scream Here*

*****

Fast Forward a couple of weeks. I have developed headaches, twitchy eye, insomnia. At this point I am just winding myself up. Maybe it won't be so bad.

*****

First day of training today. There are about twenty of us here, all presumably going for the same job. Apart from me, only one other person is masked. There is no social distancing, no screens or partitions, they must have just re-opened the place after being closed for Covid. There is a bottle of hand sanitiser at the front desk, at least that's something.

My alloted computer has no power lead or mouse because there aren't really enough computers for everyone. I have to go hunting for those. The lady sat next to me has no mask, so I guess I'm keeping mine on. Summer decided to come back for a couple of days and I forgot how sweaty I get, it's like I have a burst water pipe on the top of my head and I am sweating into my mask. I bet she wishes she had brought a mask now, as there are only about 30 centimetres between us.

Turns out we aren't exactly training for the job, this is sort of a very general 'How to live in Britain and How to use a computer' sort of training. So if I do get the job, I'll have to do even more training after this. The job interview is a month away at the earliest, maybe more. Did I mention that I'm training for a job in a Call Centre and my last job was...working in a Call Centre, so again, I'm not sure why I need to do all this.

We are given research assigments whilst they do individual tutorials in the next room. I am to Research 'British Values', 'Safeguarding', and various other things that have little to nothing to do with working at a call centre, and write the answers down on the sheets of paper they gave me. I also need to do the government's 'Prevent' or 'How to not be a Terrorist and how to spot a Terrorist' course online, except gov.uk seems to not be working. It's not working for anyone except the lady next to me, who is Eastern European. They decided to put her through the terrorist spotting program and nobody else... hmmm. This lady doesn't understand any of this, and there's not much help or supervision. Her english is fine, but a lot of this is legalese, which no one really understands. I'm trying to explain it to her in a way that makes it seem like she didn't just move to a Fascist Country, it is a futile task.

We never did any of this British Values and Prevent Terrorism type stuff when I went to school. Nevertheless, I could easily answer all these questions without needing to do the research. I decided however, that I'm going to do it how they want it done, or else I'm going to end up sat twiddling my thumbs. Hopefully they will see my excellent work and I will be able to persuade them that I'm not really supposed to be here...

After several hours, my tutorial finally comes around. I show the tutor my excellent work. I just spent three hours writing and researching British Values and Safguarding and she's not going to even look at it, let alone mark it. It could be the Unabomber Manifesto for all she knows. Terrorist Spotting Fail! What was the point in that?

What follows could have gone one of two ways.

Either A) I used my charm and guile and persuaded her that I have a computer at home and I could be doing this there.

Or B) I came across as uncooperative, and they reluctantly decided to let me go home in order to get rid of my cynical ass.


Hopefully A) because if not, I could be in trouble with the job centre and lose my benefits.

Tommorrow, I'll be starting useful stuff like 'How to use the Internet','How to be a Successful Person' and 'How to write an essay', but at least I'll be doing it at home.

There was also something I remembered them saying which made me think I'll be doing this job for little or no money for a number of weeks, but In my desperation to get out of there, I forgot to ask about that.... I really should ask about that, but I don't really want to go back there and write lots of nonsense only for no-one to read it again. I am due in for another tutorial next week, oh joy.

*****

Thank you for reading my Kafka novel.

In the waiting room at the orthodontist's office, the new version of The Lion King is playing on the TV, but Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science" is playing on the muzak station, and it's a whole new look.

I started working this morning and completed six modules, the certifacates for completion landing in my inbox each time I finished one. I probably could have done twice as much, but their system is designed so you can't complete it too quickly. You read, answer the questions and then are left waiting for a progress bar to move across the screen before you can move on to the next page. Then I got a passive agressive email this afternoon accusing me of not having done any work. What the hell?

Johnny Doglands wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 11:44 am A little background on my current situation -

[tale of woe]

Thank you for reading my Kafka novel.

man there are jobs for days around here. You cannot walk 20 feet without seeing a "help wanted" or "we're hiring" sign. My wife's office has been trying to fill two positions for 6 months - she keeps interviewing good people, she offers them the job, they accept, and then change their minds. We are assuming that their current employers threw more money at them. My office will be hiring for 3 positions very soon and I am not hopeful that we will have an easy time of it. The office I left in March is down by a dozen or more people, they are hiring basically anybody who can walk and chew gum at the same time. These are all government jobs, with good benefits, decent salary, pension, tons of days off....

motorbike guy wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:33 am

Johnny Doglands wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 11:44 am A little background on my current situation -

[tale of woe]

Thank you for reading my Kafka novel.

man there are jobs for days around here. You cannot walk 20 feet without seeing a "help wanted" or "we're hiring" sign. My wife's office has been trying to fill two positions for 6 months - she keeps interviewing good people, she offers them the job, they accept, and then change their minds. We are assuming that their current employers threw more money at them. My office will be hiring for 3 positions very soon and I am not hopeful that we will have an easy time of it. The office I left in March is down by a dozen or more people, they are hiring basically anybody who can walk and chew gum at the same time. These are all government jobs, with good benefits, decent salary, pension, tons of days off....

We aren't quite in the exact same situation in the UK. A lot of people got let go after the furlough scheme started to wind down, so competition is pretty high. When there's a lot of people looking for jobs at the same time, of course it's a race to the bottom as far as wages are concerned.

As someone who is both disabled and unemployed, I'm pretty used to navigating the dystopian system they set up to try and make it as hard as possible to get government support. This time however, it looks like I made a wrong turn and have been trapped in the labyrinth.

This course was voluntary, but as soon as I agreed to it, it became mandatory. Is something really voluntary if you can't change your mind when the conditions surrounding that thing change completely? The rules say I must attend, comply, and co-operate fully, or risk losing financial support now, and in the future.

The work has been easy but slow, and there's been a lot of it. On the plus side, I've got 25 certificates in my inbox waiting to be printed out so far. One the not so plus side, it looks like it's heading towards one of those schemes where you work for no extra money for up to three months. You just get your unemployment instead of pay. For me, that works out at about £4.60 an hour, around half of the minimum wage. From what I've read, it appears that what happens next is that when your time is up, they say 'Thanks for the free labour, goodbye'.

I will not be working for less than minimum wage If I can help it, but a lot of people do get sucked into these schemes. I've managed to avoid it up until now, but it seems they've got really sneaky about it lately!

I got fired on Friday from a job I've had for 15 years. Things look ok short term as we managed to save last year and my wife is still working. Hoping for an improvement with whatever the next one is.