Posts Tagged ‘jobs’

Dear Rejected

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I’ve had the unenviable job of sending rejection letters to people applying for a job at my workplace recently. I’m not in admin or anything, but for some reason, people think I’m good at telling it like it is and rejecting people (don’t know where they get that crazy idea from). I have mentioned how hard it is to send these letters (and in some cases, how frustrating, due to the amount of people who apply for a job they have no experience in) on Twitter. One of my lovely followers, Lollingtons, decided to write me a job application letter on her blog, so that I could reject her. She’s a bit of a masochist like that.

First, click here to read Lollington’s letter to me. Then take a deep breath and read my kind and measured response below.

Dear Rejected,

Thank you for taking the time to apply for the job we posted last week.

Having looked at your CV, I’m afraid wild monkeys are more qualified for the position than you.

To say we are concerned about your admiration for Heidi Montag is an understatement. If you ever got DDD breast implants, it would impede your ability to work as you wouldn’t be able to see over them. If you adopt the arrow eyebrow look it will either distract everyone or anger them to the point of wanting to bitch slap you and we don’t encourage violence in the workplace.

Your UGG boot collection would also be problematic, due to health and safety reasons. ‘Health’ because your feet will get so sweaty, if you ever take the boots off within a 10 mile radius of the office, we’ll have to fumigate the place (the cost of which, we would bill to you) and ‘Safety’ because we have an employee who has been known to wrestle UGG boots off people’s feet and beat them round the head with them. We cannot afford another lawsuit.

Your leggings, wetlook or otherwise, would also be a problem. They are not appropriate office attire. No one wants to stare at your cameltoe all day.

Unfortunately your dislike of musicals, Law & Order SVU, high heels and style means you would not gel with the rest of our workforce (in particular, one person, who lays the smack down on people who don’t like any of those things).

We feel that the wild monkey who could do the job better than you, most likely has better taste than you too.

Thank you again for making time in your busy schedule of Jeremy Kyle-watching and drunken Facebook photo-posting to apply for this job. We sincerely hope you find employment in the circus freak show in which you belong.

Kind regards,

Bangs

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Posted in fashion, life | 12 Comments »

Head Bitch in Charge

Sunday, December 14th, 2008


Why is it that when women get into positions of power, they lose their minds? I’ve never had a female boss who came anywhere close to being sane. 

 

Sadly, many women bring a school playground mentality with them to the workplace. It’s bitchy, cliquey, immature and ridiculous. 
My boss at a well-known magazine I worked at, was so notorious in New York, the very mention of her name made people wince. At first, I thought she was just very demanding and particular. Fear and intimidation are what she used to get results, somewhat like a mafia hit man. A few days into my job, the pressure was immense.
A few weeks into it, I’d come to the conclusion that she must have some kind of personality disorder. Bipolar would have been a good explanation for her incomprehensible mood swings. One second, you’d be having a relatively normal conversation (what constitutes as normal with a psychopath is a blurry line), the next minute, she’d be screaming at the top of her lungs about something totally unrelated. She was particularly keen on chewing the men out, preferring to do so in a very public forum (a corridor or reception area), over the privacy of her own office. 
If the shouting was for a reason, it would be semi-understandable (though most normal individuals would have better ways of resolving an issue than throwing a tantrum of toddler proportions). But she would lose her shit over things like addressing an envelope incorrectly.
She would rave about standards of professionalism, but those standards didn’t seem to apply to her (she once threw a stapler at a coworker and when emerging from her office after being locked in there for hours, there would always be that familiar odour of weed wafting around). 
With each passing day, I became more and more stunned that she wasn’t fired, as she persisted to bully all of her coworkers. Eventually, she was fired. Ahhh, Karma, how I love thee. 
In Montreal, I had an interview with a well known TV personality, to be her PA. The interview was pretty routine, standard questions. Then she asked me if I’d seen The Devil Wears Prada. I said I hadn’t, but I’d read the book. She told me I should rent the movie, because she’s ‘a million times worse than that Meryl Streep character.’ Why would anyone brag about being a notorious bitch? Was this supposed to make the job appeal to me? Though I was invited back for a second interview, I declined on the grounds that she didn’t meet my interview standards.
When I was 14, I had a job at a local store that sold discount household goods. It was the very definition of glamour. It was an all-female staff and a terrible wage. I hated the place, but toughed it out in the hope that if I saved my measly salary, I might one day be able to afford a CD or something.
One week, the manager (who was in her 30s) came to me and told me that someone had told her I had called her a ‘fat cow.’ I had done no such thing. I had no interest in anyone who worked there and having to make conversation with them, well, some days it was all I could do to keep from stabbing myself in the neck with a pencil. She then went on to explain to me that she had recently found out she was pregnant, which is why she had been putting on weight. I was embarrassed for her that she felt it necessary to explain, to a 14 year old, the intimate details of her private life, because she was upset over allegedly being called a ‘fat cow.’ Bitch please. You’re over 30 and sell discount bleach for a living. You’ve got bigger fish to fry. If a male manager had heard that he’d been called a ‘fat bastard,’ I doubt he’d go and explain that his ingrown toenail had prevented him from working out.
So ladies, please, lets get our shit together. Save your bitching for talking about some chick’s fat ass at the gym after work. But while at the office, at least try to behave like an adult and not some uber-bitch stereotype of what you think a female boss should be. You are holding us all back! 

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Posted in life | 3 Comments »

The Crappy Job Chronicles

Thursday, February 7th, 2008


There are certain jobs where there’s a good camaraderie with your colleagues. Nightclub coat check girls form a bond, a code of ethics, a sense of loyalty not unlike that of say, the marines. When you go to work each night, you’re preparing for battle.

 

Oh sure, the beginning of the night is all air-kisses and pleasantries, but the end is a complete clusterfuck of cokeheads, drunks, lost tickets, screaming matches, ultimate fighting championships and police cars.

 

The club where I worked, in Ladbroke Grove, had previously been quite a hovel, notorious for drugs and violence. Then it was shut down and bought out by people who owned a chic hipster hangout, not far away, in Notting Hill. They gave it a makeover and it attracted a new, more up market crowd (read: hardcore cokeheads).

 

There were usually two or three of us working the coat check and a small army of security working the front of the club. They were there as much to protect us, as they were anything else. (That’s when they weren’t too preoccupied sexually harassing us.)

 

The majority of the night would be pretty fun. People would arrive within in a two-hour or so time span. Once all their coats had been hung, the rest of the night was spent horsing around, shooting the shit with security or sneaking into the club for a quick boogie.

 

Yep, it was all fun and games until the clock struck (the dreaded) 3am.

 

At 2.55am, my fellow coat check comrades and I would suit up and ready ourselves for war. At 3am, the music died, club doors flung open and a few hundred club goers descended on the coat check en masse.

 

They’d charge at us waving tickets, complaining they’d lost theirs or sometimes just wanted to engage you with their drunken tale of how they just broke up with their girlfriend.

 

Our job was to deal with all this as quickly as possible. The coat check was a pretty confined area so we were falling over ourselves and each other, digging through mounds of coats while trying to keep people calm and get the security guards hands off our asses.

 

People who’d lost their ticket had to wait till the end and that never went down well. They’d insist on holding everyone up while they drunkenly explain to you theirs is the black jacket with three buttons down the front, or was it four? No, wait, three. Maybe, two?

 

On one particularly busy night, a woman gave us her ticket and we looked for her coat. Try as we might, we couldn’t find it anywhere. She was out of it and extremely annoying. She kept screaming the description of the coat and as I waded through the 700 or so jackets, 699 of them seemed to match the description. I guess her last hit of coke was wearing off because her nagging had reached a whole new level. She had all three of us ready to drop kick her in the face or pay security to do it.

 

We combed every inch of the coat check while she screamed about how she’d make sure we paid for it if we’d lost it.

 

Eventually, I found it. It was a hideous little number that couldn’t have cost more than £29.99 from New Look. I held it up.

 

“This is it? This?! I would have done you a favor losing this piece of crap, you wanker. Take your shitty jacket and piss off.”

 

The one and only time we did actually lost someone’s jacket was not pleasant. Apparently he was a semi-big drug dealer in the area (he didn’t seem to be following the golden ‘never get high on your own supply’ rule though). He threatened to come back and kill us. A little extreme maybe, but there are certain jackets in my collection that would totally warrant a death threat if they were lost. So, I can’t say I blame him. But I did high tail it out of there like my ass was on fire that night.

 

Usually one of the bouncers would drive me home. Sometimes we’d stop at the all night bagel place in Shepherd’s Bush for a bite. I’d be at home tucked up in bed by 5am, ready to get up and do it all over again the next night. Ahh, all this talk of cokeheads and bagels is making me all misty eyed and homesick.

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Posted in fashion | 2 Comments »

Makeover This

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007


While on the job hunt, I randomly meet this woman. She said she was looking for people, could she interview me tomorrow? Great! I said. She said she would come see me at home. This seemed a little odd, but if it saved me a trip, I was all for it.

 

The next day the doorbell rings and I answer it to see Carolyn, all smiles and ready to interview me. I invite her in and as she strolls past me, to my horror I see her wheeling a small suitcase behind her. Sweet baby Jesus – I’d been duped! As the reality sunk in that I was about to be introduced to the wonderful world of direct selling/pyramid schemes, my palms got sweaty and I frantically searched for ways to get her out of my house.

 

Before I knew it, she was setting up shop on the kitchen table. I reluctantly sat down and she said she would pamper me for a bit before showing me ‘the program.’

 

She took a folding mirror out of her kit and set it up in front of me along with a rather sad looking palette into which she had squeezed various lotions.

 

She began by showing me the cleanse, tone and moisturize stage. Taking her time and showing me how to do it myself, she annoyingly never deviated from her script. “How good does it feel? Great. How easy is this? It’s so simple.” Here she was just laying the groundwork for a day of questions she would answer herself. Having known for quite some time how to wash my face, I doubted we would make any groundbreaking discoveries during this ritual humiliation, but I ‘oooh’d’ and ‘aaah’d’ my way through it.

 

With that stage completed, she then subjected me to a series of ‘1-5 scales’.

 

“On a scale of 1-5, how does your skin feel? One being: ‘fabulous’ and five being: ‘not quite what I’m used to’. On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate the moisturizer? One being: ‘I’ve never felt anything like it!’ and five being: ‘I’ve used better’’.

 

On to the make up stage! First: the foundation. As there isn’t a shade called ‘pasty Irish’, she had to make her own concoction by mixing a few colors together to get the right blend for my skin. She smoothed some on my cheek and pulled me to the kitchen window to check it in the natural light. Unsatisfied with the natural light there, she marched me through the apartment and out the front door to the street. As she pondered over whether or not the tone was right, I was just praying none of the neighbors would see me with this crazy woman.

 

Finally content with the shade of foundation, she took me back inside and plastered layer upon layer of hideous make up on my face, all the while raving about how beautiful I was. When she was finished, I looked in the mirror to see that I had been transformed into a second-rate drag queen. ‘How fabulous is this? You look great!’ she cooed as I tried to keep myself from gagging.

 

At least now that the make up was done, I thought the end was in sight. But no, she then spent seven minutes (yes, I was counting) giving me a ‘hand facial’, which basically consisted of her putting hand cream on me. She kept raving about the lotion, asking and answering her own questions and then busting out the trusty 1-5 scale.

 

So, I now had a clown face (but extremely soft hands) and figured she was going to wrap things up. But no, I had to sit there for another 35 minutes, while she told me the story of how she got into the business and showing me ‘the program’. She’d pepper her script with random 1-5 scales. I’d made my own series of 1-5 scales in my head which mainly revolved around the theme of ‘on a scale of one to five, how badly do I want you out of my house right now? One being I would rather claw my own eyes out than listen to you utter one more word, five being….oh no, wait, that’s the only option.’ I sat there with one eye on the clock letting my mind wander to far more important issues; what would I have for dinner? Should I get a pedicure today? Do I need to buy milk? Could I take my second-rate drag queen show on the road?

 

When I snapped out of it, she was asking me if I could envision myself doing this. Clearly my tactic of being polite in the hope that she would go away quicker, was not working. There was no choice, it was time for some straight talking. I told her, I really couldn’t see myself doing that. I’d just moved here and I had full confidence in the fact that I would find a job in my field soon.

 

Seemingly not content with my answer she tried one last 1-5 scale to win me over. ‘OK, so on a scale of 1-5, what would it take for me to change your mind? One being: ‘I’d rather jump off a bridge before doing this’ and five being: ‘I will come to a group meeting to hear more about it?’

 

I decided to stick with my policy of straight talking. ‘Where’s the bridge?’

 

At long last, after an hour and a half of holding me hostage with nothing more than a mascara, she took the hint and left.

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Posted in fashion | 3 Comments »