Paperjam

Letter from Australia No 3

Travel // Vanessa // 14th June 2003

Recruitment agencies - They mess with your already fragile mind

There I was all dressed up in my smartest shirt and trousers..I even bought a nice pair of shoes and tried to make an effort with my hair (those who know me know that it is quite a bit of an effort, those wiry, frizzy bits of hair just don't stay in place. I am talking about the hair on my head by the way).

So what happens when I go in? Lugging my grocery shopping (which I know was a mistake - now) I was told that the agency doesn't send temps out "unless you have a jacket. Our clients don't like it and you have to look ultra smart to represent the agency". Oh bugger off, I thought I'm not buying a suit jacket for a job I'll probably only have for a few days. But what do I do? Say yes of course! (lick arse, lick arse). But things go from bad to worse.

"We're not keen on funky jewellery". I realise after a few seconds of silence that she is referring to me and my necklace with the Aum sign on it and my nose stud. After telling her I can't actually take out my nose stud (she looks at me in a disgusted kind of "smelly hippy" kind of way), she digs the knife in even more and tells me that because my computer skills aren't up to the nerdy level of fantastic, I will have trouble getting any job and the best they can hope for is a $15 an hour job as a clerical assistant.

My self-confidence is picking up speed as it travels down the steepest mountain in the world. I can see the ground approaching very fast. And then it happens. My data entry test was nothing short of shameful. Well, I was a journalist, not an accountant. Of course my numerical data entry was going to be shit! But it's that look she gives me of mock pity and "I'm not gonna waste time trying to find you any work, it'll be embarrassing", that sends me crashing to the ground with at 200mph. I walked out of the trendy office in the city with my face even longer than before, the scratch in my eye beginning to make my whole eye twitch and sweating from lugging my shopping bags to the nearest train station where I pray it derails and sucks me under its wheels (do underground trains have wheels? - see, this is how brain dead I have become).

The joy of this all is that I get to do it all again today. And twice tomorrow. By the end of the week I'll battered and bruised but if i get that shitty job, then it will all be worth it. Positve thinking, positive thinking, positive thinking, positive thinking, positive thinking........Wicked Campervans, here I come!