Books Extracts

 

I HATE MY JOB, IT SUCKS

I HATE WAKING up every weekday morning to the merciless taunts of my alarm clock. That growing sensation of despair and desperation as I hit snooze nine times and climb out of bed to shower, dress and dry-wretch my breakfast in anticipation of the long hours of misery that lie ahead.

I hate my daily commute into work. Standing on the same train platform at the same time every morning, standing beside the same people with the same season tickets gripped in their hands every day, the same weary death masks gripped across all our faces as we wait for a train that might be on time but almost certainly will not.

I hate those exorbitantly priced trains that rarely run to their scheduled timetable. I hate when one does finally arrive and there is a mass surge forward when the doors open, a sea of bodies that carry me into a cramped and oxygen-less carriage filled with a nuclear heat that hits out like a rabbit punch to the gut.

I hate it that there are never any vacant seats. If I’m lucky I’ll get a place to stand, and if I’m particularly unlucky, I will get the seat prioritised for the elderly and disabled and some nearby do-gooder will start tutting loudly when a heavily-pregnant woman gets on at the next stop. I hate it when that happens and I genuinely did not even see her, but not as much I hate it when it’s an overweight woman that gets on and gets offended when I genuinely thought she was gestating.

I hate my sardine-mode journey into work each weekday morning; sucking 100% recycled sweat and carbon dioxide into my lungs for as long as I possibly can before humiliating myself trying to open a window that is hermetically sealed shut. I hate it when the train suddenly stops in a tunnel for no apparent reason and the driver doesn’t make an announcement and it’s dark and hot and difficult to breath and difficult not to speculate whether the train has stopped because of a red signal in front or because some terrorist is about to explode something in his lunchbox. I hate it when ethnic minorities carry large rucksacks on rush-hour commuter trains these days.

I hate avoiding all eye contact and conversation with all the other passengers on my train. We don’t talk to each other because we’ve got absolutely everything in common, we don’t look at each other because we’re scared of seeing ourselves in the reflection of their shell-shocked faces, that distant, corpsed-out look of another white-collar worker lobotomised by long hours, repetitive work and not enough natural sunlight. Instead, we hide behind free newspapers or put in earphones and shut our eyes and pretend we’re somewhere else until we reach that least-sought after of destinations: our stop.

I hate it when we reach my stop and I have to use both elbows to get off before the train doors close. I hate that my travel card never works at the exit barrier and all three of the station attendants standing nearby are far too busy talking about an important work-related matter such as football or the chesty blonde that just walked past moments them earlier to come over and assist me.

I hate it when the other commuters waiting behind me at the turnstile begin to tut and sigh impatiently. If I’m lucky somebody thinks I’ve already got through the barrier and swipes their train ticket, and then I am through the barrier and the problem is theirs, not mine. My problem now is that I am nearly at my office.

I hate that corporate sweatshop where I work from Mondays through Fridays, performing a soul-destroying grind that leaves me exhausted yet barely pays the bills. Some days my job leaves me with such self-loathing that I contemplate sticking two sharpened pencils up my nostrils and slamming my head down on my desk. I hate my job, it sucks. I cried when Nostradamus’ doomsday prophesies didn’t come true in 1999 and I almost slashed my wrists a decade later when it transpired the ancient Mayans had got their predictions wrong as well. The only reason I didn’t kill myself was because I didn’t want to give my work colleagues the satisfaction of getting a day out the office to attend my funeral.

I hate all my work colleagues. Those selfish turds that take my stapler without asking and never call IT when the printer ink cartridge needs replacing or the photocopier is jammed. I hate those lazy-ass douches and their work-shy work ethics, the ones that show up at the office at 09:00 and leave at 17:00 on the dot and do very little in between and the ones that stay until 17:10 and complain about being overloaded. I hate my colleagues that go to the gym at lunchtime and then eat at their desk afterwards so that management think they’re working through their lunch break.

I hate all my colleague’s lunch habits. I hate the cliques that go out at lunchtime together and don’t invite anybody else, but not as much as the ones that do and get offended when I say no. I hate the ones that come over to my desk and asks me what I’ve got in my sandwiches each day, like it’s a matter of national security. But not as much as I hate the one that always brings a packed lunch into work and then announces loudly that he cannot afford to eat out on what he’s paid whenever our line manager is in earshot.

I hate my colleagues that spend their entire working day trying to impress management. Those lousy brown nosing ass sucking douches that turn up for meetings on time and put their names forward to be a first-aiders and fire marshals to make themselves look good, and wear a shirt and tie on dress-down Fridays to make everybody else look bad.

I hate my colleagues that only smoke because their line manager smokes and only joined the gym because their line manager is a member, but not as much as I hate the ones that smoke and play squash with their manager. Be healthy or be unhealthy but stop trying to be both you lousy suck ass.

I hate my colleagues that complain incessantly when they’ve got a headache and call in sick as soon as they catch the commonest of colds. I hate the ones that genuinely believe they are entitled to ten sick days a year because a recent survey in a national newspaper suggested that is the national average. But not as much as I hate the ones that only take nine days off and think that shows commitment. And definitely not as much as I hate the ones that phone in sick when the team is really busy and then come back a few days later saying they’re still unwell and acting like fucking martyrs. I hate all my colleagues. I don’t care if it’s a tsunami or an asteroid or an epidemic plague, I hope each single one of them gets annihilated when the apocalypse finally does show up.

And I hope management get wiped out as well. I hate all the managers at my work, and not just because they get paid more to do less and have company cars and management away days at hotels where they get drunk and talk about us. I hate all those macho posturing phonies when they are in the office as well, and not just because they spend all their time in bullshit meetings drinking coffee and cultivating a culture of paranoia and suspicion amongst the rest of the workforce. I hate all their finely-tuned de-motivational skills and bloated rubric of promises that always dangle close before swinging permanently just out of reach. I hate their constant lip-service and underhanded man-mismanagement cunning as I work myself into the bone. I hate always feeling tired. I hate working late almost every day and not getting enough sleep and then some officious fuck that isn’t even my manager enquiring loudly if I’ve run out of razors the following morning. I hate that my workload is overburdened and my work is undervalued and that management always take the credit of all my successes whilst putting the blame for any failures squarely on my shoulders. I hate that all my colleagues make throwaway complaints about their heavy workload and get given pay-rises and I keep quiet and get given more work instead. I hate it that it is always me that arrives first at the office and invariably also always me that switches the office lights off when I go home at night. I hate that on the rare occasion I do leave the office before my line manager that she looks down at her watch and frowns.

But of course that isn’t often.

I hate the train journey home at night in evening rush hour, that slim to anorexic chicken lips chance of getting a seat in the same overcrowded, overheated train carriage that a fat un-pregnant female glared at me twelve hours earlier. I hate that by the time I do finally arrive home in the evening each weekday that there is barely enough time to make dinner before collapsing into bed exhausted. I hate that I can never get to sleep straight away and always lie awake thinking about my job and how much I hate it, and that when I finally do manage to fall asleep that I have bad dreams about my work and it is almost a relief when my alarm clock starts to beep and my stomach begins to churn and the realisation hits that I need to get up and do it all again.

I hate my job, it sucks.