The Steaming Rants of Ernie Wight

Simmer, sweat, stew, steam (4 ways to boil your head)

"How about this one? Night Hygeine Operative."

Let me guess, that's a

"Cleaner, yes. Oh, wait a bit, here's two driving jobs, both from the Westbury office"

The job centre were being as helpful as they could. Driving job one was for a company making body panels, and the van scooted around the countryside delivering them to various garages in time for an early-morning accident repair. I couldn't get the phone to answer at the second job, a wholesale milk delivery round for a small dairy, so I pursued the first job. I rang up on a Wednesday afternoon to check that the job was still available. The lady named on the job centre sheet as the contact was too busy to answer the phone, but she clearly instructed the receptionist to "tell him to send in his application form". Which I did. ANd when I phoned up the next day to check that it had been delivered to the correct person, was told that "the job had gone yesterday". Was that the yesterday when I was told to send in my CV ? I asked. Software contractors will recognise this as a regular agency tactic.

I finally got an answer from the dairy, and drove out on the Saturday for an interview. Five hours per day, six days a week, would suit semi-retired person, read the job description. It sounded simple enough as I was shown around. I was as honest with them as I could be, explaining that I ran my own business but could not afford to pay myself a salary from it, but could not get benefits either. "I really need this job", I told them. "We're seeing some other people on Monday, we'll let you know". Yes, I've heard that before as well.

So it was a shock, as I prepared to leave the parts business on Moday evening to drive over to the motoring club, to get a phone call asking me if I could turn up for work the next morning. At 2:30. OK.

I did get there for 2:30, and in fact have done so every day since then. The dairy manager, who was doing the round as well as his normal daily duties, loaded up the van, and we set off into the darkness. I jotted down the route as tulip diagrams. (For the benefit of those who have never rallied cars, tulips are diagrams giving the essential shape and configuration of each significant road junction or feature, with approach and departure details shown. I folowed a rally convention of only drawing a tulip where I left the normal course of the road). We took over 7 hours to cover the route, and the last few shops and garages were not appreciative of our arrival time. I suggested I would turn up half an hour earlier the next day.

The next morning, I waited until close to 3:00, and then phoned the manager to see when he would be coming in. Soon. We got away later that day and had an even worse reception at the far end of the round. For the second day running I was not getting back home until after 9, and the answerphone was already filling up with long beeps from those callers who couldn't be bothered to leave a message.

Thursday morning, the manager, concerned with the late arrival complaints, decided halfway round that we would do the remainder of the route backwards, (route-wise, not in the vehicular sense), so that the complaints might be reduced. It worked partially, but thr round still took 7 hours to complete.

Friday, I drove for the first time. We were still leaving the dairy after 4:00, and not completing the route until after 9:30.

On Saturday, I drove alone. Although I set off before 4:00, I overshot several junctions, and also struggled to follow the reversed part of the route, since all my notes had been taken during the first two days when we had driven the route in the normal direction. I also ran out of several types of milk towards the end of the round. I was starting to work myself up into a right sweat.

All of the next week I fumed and fretted in the cab as I struggled to master the art of choosing enough of each type of the White Stuff, finding my way to the drop points (including three new ones that we hadn't covered the previous week because they hadb't needed any milk then), giving each customer the right amount of the right type of White Stuff, and keeping cool inside the cab.

The trouble was, the Transit was an old wreck. Twice-over, in fact. It had been written-off twice and rebuilt, the last time with a new cab, but it must have had an artesian well built into it during one of those rebuilds. There was more condensation inside the cab than there was rain outside, and I had to keep the blower going fully in order to be able to see anything out of the screen, or the side windows during the many times I had to reverse in and out of drives. The combination of hot sweaty spells in the cab and cold damp spells out in the rain was leading me up to a good head cold.

I was also fuming over having been conned over the hours. I was being paid for 5 hours a day, six days a week, and having to work seven hours a day, for an hourly rate that was 10 pence over the minimum wage. The trouble was, they were nice people. They were working all hours of the day themselves, although I suspected not at quite the same rate I was. The trouble with paying people wages is that an employer also has to pay a fixed percentage of the employee's gross salary to the National Insurance. In my parts business, I had found that this extra percentage was crippling me. I could not, at the end of each month, pay the fixed outgoings such as rent, business rates, operating costs, salary, emplyers contribution, and stock replenishments. For several months I had neglected to replenish the stocks becuase I could not live without a salary. Now I had reached the point where someone else was going to have to pay the employers contributions while I replenished the car parts. But perhaps they too could not meet their wages bill each month. Milk is not a high-value commodity, and they had higher overheads than I did. Perhaps that was why they had set the round at 30 hours a week - it was all they could afford ?