We learn things all the time, don't we? Just today I learnt that I'm not very good at cooking pasta for long enough, and that my suede boots will inevitably bring about rain and strange looks from the other guys at the gym. But there was a time, around 3 years ago, when I went through a stage of thinking I was learning nothing at all.
That time was my first job after university.
I'd worked a bit during uni, writing for a few magazines and doing a little bit of time behind a bar, so I wasn't new to the concept of doing things to earn money like some people are after graduation. But still, the idea of having to get that full-time gig to earn the money that the government were no longer going to pay me scared me quite a lot. Panic set in as I looked through my third year portfolio, suddenly seeing all the projects in a light that was no longer hazy through alcohol or filtered through clouds of Friday night aftershave. They looked shit. I wouldn't have employed me. I got started on reworking all of that, filling the living room of my student house with reams of paper and stacks of pens as I bid to do all the creative thinking that I should really have started during my actual degree course, not as it was coming to an end. I stayed sober for several weeks and found the whole process very distressing, but after I was done I had something that I could actually be proud of, which was a nice change. Now that I had that in my hands I thought I might stand a chance of getting somewhere.
And surprisingly, I was right. It all happened incredibly easily, and I realise now that such ease was probably a bad sign. I'd sent out only a handful of emails when suddenly I got a response. The first company I'd found after searching 'advertising agency Lincoln' had got back to me, and they were offering me an interview! Their boss rang me an hour or so later; he seemed like a nice guy, and before I knew it I was all set to start work on Monday.
'This career lark is easy,' I thought to myself and probably tweeted. Knob.
Three months later, at the end of what had been a placement full of lies, poorly made teas and regrets, I wished I'd never thought those words. The main reason being, and the point of this post that it's taking me a bloody age to get to, was my boss.
Let's call him Paul, because that was his name. Paul was an interesting chap. During my interview he hadn't really asked me any questions; he'd just talked a lot about the agency and where he saw it going, what his visions were and how excited he was to have someone like me coming on board. I liked him when he said that. He'd also promised to pay for the MA that I was due to take after my placement ended. I liked him even more for that. As soon as I started working, however, that affection disappeared.
On day one, instead of showing me around and introducing me to everyone, he just handed me over to someone else and told them to 'deal with me'. They looked, well, busy with their job and not really interested in having to 'deal with' a hipster graduate, so I was very much left to my own devices. When I left for lunch I thought 'It's only day 1, things will get better,' but they didn't. They got gradually worse.
Paul would rarely speak to me, and thus I would rarely have any work to do. Occasionally he would shout something across the room and then demand tea, which I would go and make merely to relieve the boredom.
Lesson 1 - I learnt how to take as long as possible making tea.
When he did speak to me it was usually about why I'd not done any work that day, and my response of 'Well, on the calendar I'm not booked on any work, I haven't been since I started and, when I ask how I can help, you keep telling me to go and make you a tea,' didn't go down ever so well.
Lesson 2 - I learnt how to avoid sarcasm when speaking to my employers.
One time Paul asked if I could spare him a minute, and I said something that made other people laugh. Paul did not like that. I had to go and make tea again. When I returned he'd forgotten what it was he wanted to speak to me about, so I sat back down and carried on watching the clock tick slowly by.
Lesson 3 - I learnt how to daydream even when surrounded by a lack of imagination.
I was going through a fairly unhealthy period of time with my diabetes back then, so the doctors were pretty keen to see me. I asked if I could take a day off to go and get some tests done which would leave me feeling sick once they were over. I was told that I surely didn't need a day for that and was required to come in as soon as they were completed. I had the tests and couldn't stand up straight for a few hours afterwards, so I rang up work and told them what I'd told them before. I then went to bed and threw up a bit. The next day Paul was visibly mad at me, because clearly a lot of work hadn't been done due to my absence. He made me make a lot of tea to make up for it, and didn't give me any work to do for punishment.
Lesson 4 - I learnt that some people are dicks and you can't do anything about that.
Paul would regularly bring people to tears with his management style. One girl sat designing while water streamed from her eyes after a particularly nasty verbal assault. Later on he came to apologise, but all he really did was carry on the assault in a calmer, slightly more sinister manner. I made her a cup of tea because I felt bad for her.
Lesson 5 - I learnt that tea can bring about happiness.
My next lesson came during what I didn't realise at the time would be my final week of employment there. Someone was leaving and we were all invited to the pub to go and celebrate. Everyone said yes, apart from Paul, who claimed he was too busy to attend. Never mind. We all went to the pub and I ate some chips which was probably the most active my hands had been in my entire time there. When we returned I noticed something strange - My computer, which had previously had several projects that I'd forced my way into on it, a few documents on which I'd started writing possible lines for other projects that I'd overheard talked about and a particularly funny email exchange with my friend, was suddenly empty. Every single thing had been deleted. There was no evidence that I'd ever sat at that desk, or that I even existed. It was as if the computer was new.
Concerned by these events, I told a colleague who then told the web developer who then came over to have a look. He did things that I didn't understand, saying that it could have been a virus or maybe it had simply crashed in an unprecedented way. But then he opened up an activity log where it said that, during our time at the pub, someone else had logged on to my account and manually got rid of everything.
Weird. There'd only been one person left in the office and he was the boss, surely he wouldn't resort to such childish levels? We all had the same thought at the same time and looked around to see Paul looking very preoccupied with his phone. He didn't even raise an eyebrow.
Two days later and I was told my placement was not going to be extended, which was the least upsetting thing that has ever happened to me. Paul, I later discovered, had deleted all my work in case I tried to add any to my portfolio. It would have been hard, given my work was mainly based in cups and had milk in it.
Lesson 6 - Always back up your work on an external hard-drive.
The thing that was upsetting was that I'd been let go just the week before I had to submit the forms for my MA, which I'm sure Paul fully well knew. I was going to have to find other ways of paying for that.
So really, having wasted my life doing a job that no longer has a place on my CV, you'd think the lessons I'd learnt might be few and far between, but they're not. Paul helped me learn how to deal with awful human beings. He taught me how to entertain myself when all other humans around me were controlled by fear. He taught me to not to trust anyone that puts their kids on their work website and calls them 'junior creatives'. But, most of all, he taught me that bad people do not prosper.
I found out today that his company had recently gone bankrupt, lost a lot of clients and staff, and been forced to re-brand. I hope they still have enough money for teabags.
Lesson 7, and my final one of this seemingly never ending bit of writing - Do what you love, just do it for people who aren't total pricks.
