Infamous for 15 seconds

On Thursday i became one of those people who you see in any city/town centre having a loud altercation with two security staff, well that's what it looked like anyway, except, i hadn't been to a shop, or stolen anything-i'd just been to look for a job...

There's a local agency which had some jobs which were better than the usual "chop veg into pieces in the cold and wet whilst standing in a pair of used wellies for minimum wage" malarkey you usually get in a agency, this one had a couple of half-decent menial jobs i wouldn't have minded doing, such as sorting and re-labelling catfood, or the second choice, sorting textile samples.

So, off i trot to the agency, only to find that my ID wasn't quite good enough, (apparently you need a "full" birth certificate these days to apply for anything), but they said they could sort something out with my shortform birth certificate and expired passport...And then i was given a application form, fair enough, with a visual Q&A "skills" test...

Which consisted of a set of questions about a picture of Gordon Ramsey, semi-nude in a apron which made his torso look as if it was a woman's, (covered in printed on lacy bra, you know the ones!), with a leek and two onions at his midriff "cunningly" posed to look like his meat and two veg (or three veg in this case...), and he was holding a knife. No i'm not making this up, seriously.

One of these questions was "How big is the man's Chopper?", honestly, i'm not making this up, and if you get in touch with me i will e-mail you a copy of this form!, i did part of the application form but i kept peeking at the picture of Mr. Ramsey and it was starting to put me off my lunch, and i realised that this was all f--king stupid anyway-they'd admitted to me that one job had gone quiet and one wasn't ready until mid-december, so i decided to cut my losses here, no temp, minimum wage job had to be worth this fiasco, and i did have one shred of dignity left, despite being long term unemployed, so, whilst my interviewer went to make a cup of coffee or something, i folded up the application form, and picked up my photocopied ID details from the table which they'd left out for all and sundry to see, and calmly walked out and made a break for the car park, i hadn't got far when...

"Hey, where are you going?", shouted the lone voice a few steps behind me-it was one of the employment agencies staff, "damn, thought i'd passed through unnoticed" thought me. He wasn't happy that i'd taken his precious paper and he wanted it back, well i wasn't going to give it back because it had my details on and i wasn't going to apply for the jobs now after being humiliated so what was the point?, he began harping on about it being agency property, he was about 19 and skinny, so i figured that: 1.) he had no bloody idea of how stupid his companies ideas were 2.) i reckoned he couldn't stop me anyway...So, as he started ranting on, my lady interviewer came marching up the stairs to the car park, now i was in trouble...

I was seriously angry by this time, i'm a very placid, quiet person normally, but they'd pushed the wrong buttons, i'm no hard man, but i've got no time for stupidity, which i figured the questionaire was, and that this approach was a bit silly too. By now, people were starting to look, which didn't bother me, they then started saying that the paper was company property: by then i should have chucked 50p at them and said that i'd hope that covered my expenses, but i wasn't in a joking mood, they wanted their paper back-to be fair, they did (in their own way) apologise, but i was past caring, apparently i shoudn't march off with the paper because "skinny" was in the Police, but if that's the case, why was he shuffling paper in a employment agency?, i found this all a bit too surreal, so i walked off, "skinny" tried stopping me, i just informed him of what might happen if he was to stop me and hoped that would work, thankfully it did because i have the fighting skills of a kitten.

I was let go, with a cheery "no wonder he hasn't got a job" from the lady interviewer. I love life, i really do :-)

That employment agency was also the first time i heard a woman say the word "c-nt"...to be honest, i'm not a difficult person, i thought it was all a bit too mad and i thought the questionnaire was a wind-up at first, and i didn't do college to go to the depths of finding out the size of Gordon Ramsey's chopper...I've done some awful stuff to earn cash but i wasn't doing that...