by James Birk
Chapter 23
Working for FFS had never really been fun, but lately it had become even more monotonous than ever. My new team were nice enough, but either they were shaken up by the recent redundancies or they were all inherently boring people, either way, there was no-one to inject a bit of controversy into my day like Tim, or even anyone that I could pretend to appear knowledgeable about the weekend’s football with like Ian or Dean. My new line manager Dan was a more efficient beast than Kirsty had ever been. He was keen to progress in his career, and even if he wasn’t overly blessed with brains, he wanted his team run with meticulous military precision, indeed in the past he had been in the services and it seemed as though he had carried this mentality into civilian life with relish and aplomb. The only real advantage any of us had was that he didn’t really have a clue what our jobs actually entailed, having started his FFS career as a team leader rather than rising up through the ranks. It was rumoured that he had previously been a supervisor on a production line in a canned food factory, which had very little to do with financial services, but as he kept on telling us in team meetings, being a manager was all about managing people, and a working knowledge of the different jobs we did was not necessary. He was wrong of course. He didn’t need to know how to process a life assurance application form, simple though this was, but it really would have helped his cause if he knew what life assurance was. Also, if his job was to bring the best out in people then constantly shouting at them was really not the way to go. Fortunately I was perceived as being good at my job. I had reasoned very early on that members of staff were not valued on the quality of their work but the quantity. Consequently I made sure that I processed as many forms as I could per day ensuring that, where any vital details were missing, I would fraudulently fill them in on the form myself so as to save unnecessary time consuming phone calls.
Dan didn’t like me very much. Even if by my standards I was now a fitness fanatic, I was still soft and flabby in his eyes. Nonetheless he could see my value to his weekly stats, and mostly left me alone, occasionally barking at me if I was late, which was still something I was sporadically guilty of, although I was getting better at being punctual for the most part.
I still operated the odd skive to help me pass the day, often picking up a file and walking to a different floor to locate one of the few friends I still had who worked in the building, such as Dean and Antonia who alas were no longer that friendly to each other after Antonia rejected Dean’s advances in no uncertain terms. In fairness to her she had recently got engaged to a long-term boyfriend, that none of us had previously been aware of, but this did little to ease Dean’s wounded pride. He had consoled himself by dating Cheryl for a few weeks until she dumped him as unceremoniously as she had dispatched me. I hadn’t held it against him (Cheryl had dated quite a few of my colleagues as it turned out) and we still enjoyed the occasional after-work pint together.
One positive that came out of the mass redundancies was a plethora of overtime. Mumbai wasn’t working out quite as well as the senior management had hoped and consequently there was a growing backlog of work. Dan spent a lot of time shouting at us in team meetings in order to ‘motivate’ us into being more productive, but the truth was that we needed more staff to do the work and Greg Tanner reluctantly sanctioned weekend over-time to anyone who wanted it. Living so close to the office, and having virtually no social life thanks to my best friend by now having a two month old baby to deal with, I signed up for as much overtime as I could get. It was relatively well paid, they generally offered us time and a half for Saturdays and double time for Sundays, and it usually only entailed committing to a few hours on each day. Added to that, they often provided a Markbys bacon sandwich for breakfast free of charge, and there was only ever one manager on duty covering two floors, meaning that skiving was almost mandatory for most of the shift. In fact it was almost as relaxing as if I had actually had the weekend off, given that when I wasn’t running around Roath Park, I generally didn’t have very much to do.
It wouldn’t be long until they realised their mistake and took on some more temps to fill the void I guessed, and in around six months or so they might even turn some of those temporary contracts into permanent jobs, but for the time being I took the overtime gladly because I had a trip to Paris to pay for, and I knew that wasn’t going to be cheap.
I was also more starkly aware of just how little I earned in general and overtime did at least bump up my monthly salary to a more respectable level. I was about to turn thirty, and that vow I had made to turn my life around on my twenty-ninth birthday hadn’t yielded much in the way of progress yet aside from the fact that I was now a bit fitter. A weekly scan through the job pages of the South Wales Echo did little to alleviate my concerns. In the current climate I would struggle to get another job that was even as good as the one I had, there seemed virtually no chance of improving my prospects by getting a better paid or more satisfying occupation in Cardiff.
I had started to brainstorm my options. I could either leave Cardiff and look for work elsewhere, which was an alarming proposition because it had been my place of residence for the last twelve years, and even before university it had been an integral part of my life, from Saturday trips in to the cinema with Dave and Rob during my teenage years, to boring back-to-school shopping with my mum when I was even younger. The idea of leaving was scary, but it was starting to appeal because the more I thought about it, the more I realised that virtually everyone else that I knew had already gone.
On the other hand, I didn’t really know if the job situation was going to be any better in any other city. I couldn’t even truly clarify what it was that was qualified to do. I had a lower second-class degree in English literature and a wealth of experience in menial jobs. There weren’t likely to be too many employers banging on my door anywhere in the UK.
My other option was to acquire some skills that might actually lead to a professional qualification. I used a variety of career websites to determine how best to follow this path and identified some potential careers that I might like to do. Journalism seemed a fairly obvious call for someone with a literary background while accountancy seemed like a reasonable progression for someone with a financial services background. I recalled that one of my fellow English Lit alumni had gone on to do a Law conversion course and was now raking it in as a solicitor. Any of the above seemed fine to me, but the more I researched my options the more I began to realise that going back to university would mean I would have to give up my monthly wage for at least a year, on top of which, the majority of the courses that I looked at required the payment of a hefty tuition fee so unless I could come up with some significant funds, I really didn’t have many options in the short term.
My best bet it seemed was to stay put at FFS, and maybe move back in with my parents to cut down on my cost of living. Aside for the fact that this would add a commute to my daily grind, living with my parents was unlikely to do much for my self-esteem, and now that they were heading into their retirement years and with all their offspring apparently having flown the nest, it didn’t seem fair on them for their least successful child to come crawling back home.
The more I looked, the more it seemed there were only two options. The first was to maintain the status quo and do nothing. The second was to do something that had previously seemed unthinkable, something that still seemed preposterous, and something that could very well end in tears.
Most days at FFS were now spent mulling over my choices. I seemed to be stuck between a secure but uncomfortable rock and a vastly unappealing and terrifying hard place. I needed an incentive to take action.
And then one day it came.