Today i'm bitching about...The Used Car Trade

Sorry to divest from my usual job related rants people, but bear with me on this one! i'm going to ask a small, maybe personal question, and you don't have to contact me with an answer, but how much did your car cost, that is if you drive?,
£10k? £5k? £1500?

Now, let's face it, even if you haven't been in the position to buy a car for less than £300, just be glad you don't, it's a joyless, depressing episode. I sold my old Volvo recently as it wasn't going to make it through another MOT so i let someone else buy it to run it into it's grave because i doubted i would be able to afford to put it through another MOT.

I got a reasonable £300 for it, and started trawling the small ads to find alternative transport, one dealer had some stuff that looked cheap and promising so off i tootled to have a look.

Most of his stuff was dross, real heaps, including a mystery mondeo: "I don't know nothing about it, just came in on a trailer, no log book though."

So this was a man who really knew his stock inside out, always handy that. I said a straight no to what he had but he notified me that at his house, a few yards away, he had a Citroen ZX Diesel with a broken clutch cable. I used to work in the motor trade, and do a bit of car tinkering, where relevant so i thought it might be worth a look if it was cheap enough.

And shown it i was: it was grubby, the rear wheels didn't sit right and the rear window mechanism had broken, and so had the clutch cable, as said to give it it's due, it started "on the button" as they say and sounded very sweet. I thought it would be worth, to myself, with the extra work of putting a new clutch cable in, about £100-£150. So i asked the fine purveyeor of cost-effective automobilia how much he wanted for this shed of dreams.

£200 was the breathtaking reply. Ok, it had tax and mot but putting in a clutch cable without ramps etc would be hard work, so it was a "i'll have to think about it then" from me. You just can't really say "no, it's a bag of shit, mate and i don't want to be lumbered with it like you obviously are..."

Apparently, according to Arthur Daley here, it was worth £350 "all day" when fixed. That i doubted, Citroen ZX's are now obsolete and have a wildly differing value system where they can be worth £50-£500.

So, with my refusal in his ears, the vendor turned off the engine, shut the car door, and said sharply: "I've got things to do", walked in his house and shut the door. What a arrogant git. I didn't mean to annoy him, it's embarassing enough having to look for cheap wheels, but i didn't deserve being snubbed like that.

Trouble is, the used car "game" is full of people like this, more sinner than saint. It's a shame really, ok, at £300 you aren't buying the bells and whistles of a full customer service led dealer experience, but that dosen't mean that every customer has to be treated with, at best, contempt and at worst, the feeling of being treated like dog poo by them.

I once went into a part-worn tyres warehouse, four of the fitters stood there looking at me like something they'd stepped in, with grubby mugs of tea in their hand, i asked about having a couple of tyres slapped on my trusty Volvo, they said nothing but one miserably pointed to a chap in the office. At least i got joy from him.

It's enough to make you puke sometimes.

Michael Fish, where are you...

Hi All,

It's been a terrible week for weather hasn't it?, i guess, and this is where i sound like a trendy young vicar doing a sermon on Radio 2, that the weather represents the mood of the time in Britain, at the moment, ie shit. If it hasn't been snowing, then it's been raining. I drove up to Corby via (i think) the A47 yesterday, and it was like a apocalypse of snow, slush, wet and fog. Add that to the papers giving their usual "worst recession since the dawn of man" spiel, and you can see why more and more people are on anti-depressants...

There aint half been some clever....Bastards

So sang one of my musical hereoes, Ian Dury. What a wacky month it's been. As i type there's four inches of snow outside and although i'm cold, i'm still sweating thanks to a Electricity bill from e.on where our money owed to them, i thought, looked like someone's telephone number it was that high. And i can't pay it.

I'm back, still fighting, despite the recruitment "dead month" of January. To supplement my JSA i'm reduced to having glorified pawn shops with the name "Cash" in the business title, laugh at the items i'm bringing in to sell, ok, so they're not worth much, but FFS guys, can we stop the childish sniggering and casual remarks of "it's not worth much" or "that's old". Otherwise i really will start believing that you are the Bastards that you play act to get items of any value, for tuppence.

But it's not all bad news. There are a couple of jobs about, and i've applied for them, both Warehouse work, thankfully not in a food factory so i will see what happens to them, unfortunately, they're in Northampton, i had to do it because there's just nothing here, and if i don't earn something soon i'm going to be in dead schtuck, with a mounting council tax and leccy bill mountain...

I'm just looking for cheap digs at the moment, although i will be glad to see the back of where i'm currently renting, all electric, in the country, and very cold, "my bad" entirely. We just needed something bigger and cheap to rent, and lesson learned guv'nor, i won't rent a all-elctric house again!

Drifting...

It's been a strange sort of month, i actually gave up jobseeking in the second week of December as i tried to find out about being a lorry driver and basically, 1.) It's expensive to get the licences, very expensive. 2.) No guarantee of a job afterwards 3.) Poor wages. So that was me put off that idea, so i just got frustrated and gave up, not altogether you understand, just for christmas. I did though, have a throughly excellent Xmas and new year. And now, it's back to the grind.

Things are not looking good, i'm down to my last fiver and i miss home, Lincolnshire. I've not really achieved much since i came up East Anglia way, there seems to be virtually no jobs in the city (Peterborough, that is) and that was before the credit crunch, so god knows what will happen up here. I might migrate back to Lincolnshire, i don't know yet, but at least i gave what a lot of my generation's worth of townfolk want to do a chance, i got out.

I'm not sure if the grass is greener on the other side, perhaps, in reality it is, but it's finding the right fucking field that's the problem...

Realisation...

Well, that's it. A month of fruitless job hunting altogether. Last Thursday, i went to what seemed like the 71st part of the application process of working in a insurance call centre. To cut a long story short i actually applied for this job in June and i've been messed around with lost paperwork, re-shecduled interviews, etc-ever since. I was interviewed by some snotty woman, who, apart from being sniffy about me being a ex-car valeter, was dismayed that i could not recall the exact date i moved into my first house, eight years ago, likewise not knowing when exactly i started working for one firm in 2001, nor could i remember exactly when i was unemployed in 2000, who keeps records of these things?, i actually used to-up to about five years after the info was irrelevant, so no longer have it, and, apparently, due to some condition of working in Insurance, the FSA (Financial Services Authority) need the exact date and time you farted after eating chips and mushy peas on the way home from a shopping trip in town in Febuary 1997-obviously i couldn't provide that info, informed "Snotty" of this, who didn't like being told that piece of info, and i was informed that "none of our other candidates have this problem". Well, i was deeply disheartened not to be a walking dictionary of my life, and looking at the well presented, moneyed, young n' trendy staff in reception, i decided to axe my application therein.

I won't say "their loss", obviously, it's mine. But i've had a bit of a revelation, minor perhaps, but important to me. Perhaps i am going about this all wrong, i think one problem i have is that i've always dreamed of "leaving the factories", and i'm proud to say that by hook or by crook, i did that, firstly for a care home job, which lasted three weeks due to a major disagreement over training (i was f---ing the job up, and they wouldn't train me properly), and the Car Valeting, which thankfully did work, despite pitiful hours and wages. I've always wanted to hip, trendy and bright and moneyed, and i think that's always been a problem with me, because i live in a rented house, buy clothes from charity shops and drive a £500 Volvo.

Instead of fighting it, why don't i embrace it?. I couldn't work in another factory unless it was a really interesting job, but perhaps i could do something non-clerical, but still interesting-I've considered lorry driving, watch this space...

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...

Think of ways you can...in a customer environment...blah blah

Not posted for a while-got some inteviews at last, woo hoo!, one last week at a major insurance call centre, interview a bit shaky, as it was completely customer service focused-ok, as consumers we all like to get treated right, but do we all believe in a customer service mantra?, it's all a bit too false for me, but if i got the job i'd do my best to please people on the other end of the phone and i least i can talk on the phone, ok i've got a sort of strangely clear but droning voice, but at least i can say that i don't mumble, or screech like some call centre staff i've had the "pleasure" of being on the other end of the line to...


Not all good though-still ringing the employment agencies for various jobs, usually getting a shrill voiced foreign woman telling me that i'm "wasting my time" appying for "x" job because...I'm not daft, i'm applying because i think that i could do the job, ok, maybe in their eyes i can't but there's nothing like bringing people down to earth with a bump eh?