To reasonably accurately describe the way I felt about that job, Kafka’s The Castle comes to mind. That is, I felt powerless against the oddly clueless bureaucracy which (somewhat innocently so) serves as the root of the problem.
My job was to hand out shopping carts to costumers at the tax free store in the Ben-Gurion airport. Either that or “guarding” the exit, which primarily involved telling people where the entrance was, that they shouldn’t leave with the cart and where various facilities were located.
The goal of each and every actor in this charade had been to subject the docile minds of weak travelers to as many temptations as possible. For instance, the store’s manager had ordered for the passage between the tobacco section and the checkout to be conveniently obstructed by shopping carts, hence forcing smokers to take the long way around and hopefully buy a few things on the way. It looked like a supermarket, one where excess was displayed as a necessity and sold as if within anyone’s reach, if only they wanted it.
It was another day apart from the incident with the carpool which never arrived. I stood by the entrance, dispirited, broken and demotivated to do anything. Not that I needed to. Saturday mornings aren’t exactly ever full. The alcohol salesman approached me and, slumped over a shopping cart, he complained endlessly, praising himself. Poured his heart out on me like those liquor samples he was to give out. His stories were, without a doubt, over the top. Tall-tales he conjured, though not all of it I would imagine. How he worked as a bartender at one club or the other and that the entire town knew him. About how he “did” Swedes in Thailand and how he used to work in telemarketing.
I truly did not want to believe most of it. The part with the 13,000 shekel salaries in particular. And to think he was working on 24 shekel an hour plus commissions (and evidently didn’t sell much).
Complaints about the economy came and kept coming and by the end of it I felt bitter myself and began to question why I was there as well.
When I told him about my experiences with the carpool that morning he answered, “they’re stupid. They’re animals. It’s a dead end” and I didn’t argue. He was right after all. The drivers were those marginal leftovers that entered the workforce regardless of their utter lack of professionalism. It was enough for their accents to give that detail away, and I almost felt a hatred for them for having them – though I know, that’s just a convenient thing I can blame.
We and the drivers were both prole trash. But we weren’t on the same team. We hated them, and they hated us, and with such passion. Hard working men who didn’t give two shits whether I got to work or not, just as long as they could get paid. Did they even have free time?
A woman, maybe in her late twenties, a smoker, with the same light blue sweatshirt every day shared my woes at times in trying to make sense of this situation. Asked me if I wanted to share a cab once, but I brushed that off. I simply don’t have the money, it’s quite simple. The perfume promotion worker – a tall Romanian who was equally unhappy as I was about being a victim to this system had unlike myself a useful way to vent her anger. She told me how she on her first day of work gave a little bit of “straight-talkin’” to the driver on how he should watch his tone with her.
“People like that have no limits. You’ve got to draw the line.”
I shrugged and said, “I just try to let it go.”
“But you can’t let it go!”
I would have told her she was right, but I knew I couldn’t do it myself at the same time. I had to either soak the blows or avoid them altogether. But knowing myself for long enough, as much as I’d like to spit in their face and kick them in the eye, that never would have happened. At least not to their face.
The way it worked, my schedule for the next day or so will be sent out to the drivers and their respective companies and thus I will be put down on a list. The pickup location I chose, though, did not actually exist. That is, it showed up on the list of locations given to me, but if I wanted it I would simply be dropped from the lists for the way back and occasionally for pick-up too.
And so one day I made up my mind and decided to change my pick-up location to a different one. The “deputy” referred me to the shift manager. When I spoke to him, he said he would fix it temporarily, and told me to talk to someone who can only be reached during office hours for a “permanent solution”. But since it’s a Saturday, I have to wait until Sunday – office hours in particular – and speak to one of the two women in charge. Both of which had ridiculously similar names and functions. Lee and Lee-at. The latter was described as a “revengeful bitch” by the aforementioned alcohol salesman. Or it may have been the other – I quite frankly don’t know as they practically have the same name and job description.
He never actually did that “temporary solution” and I was dropped from the list on the way back, along with four others.
By the time I managed to get to one of the similarly named clerks, it was technically speaking the wrong one, and that took two days as well as she was in meetings (who would a lowly clerk meet?), generally unavailable (i.e. not answering the phone) and mysteriously gone (not in the office). That link between my employers and the carpool service was impenetrable to me.
Calling Bontour directly resulted in being shoved aside very rudely so and be referred to See & Tour, a different company. Though the logos on the side of the car did say Bontour, it’s unclear to me why. See & Tour gave me the same treatment. Some rude secretary answered the phone, gave me the usual “I don’t know” sorts of answers and rudely hung up on me. I recommend neither of these companies solely due to their employees’ lack of professionalism, repulsive behavior and failures to simply do their job. Getting me from point A to point B and back.
The carpool failed to come again. Or maybe it did come, except not to where I stood since the list failed to come through as intendede again and left me there twenty minutes before work wondering where the hell was my ride to the airport and how was I supposed to get there?
I called the shift manager, whose line was busy for some time, who told me to wait. I waited for a call back, and when it came, the answer was, “he was there at 18:03, you weren’t. There was also a bookstore worker there, but who knows. The only thing you can do is try to get here on your own.”
I tried to explain how there was no such way. I didn’t have a car, no money for a taxi and hardly even a train (which would have taken an hour as well). I said I can’t do that unless they stop pulling that shit on me. Except I used much nicer words.
I shouldn’t have, I should have just punched her in the face through the phone somehow.
The job itself, disregarding any flaky systems to get me there and back is just barely under the threshold of enjoyable. The costumers don’t hate you (though that’s because I wasn’t a cashier, who probably get more flak).
I speak of it in past tense and it saddens me to think that I may end up coming back to it after all. And it worries me to think I “have” to get along with these inferior types. Unfortunately, as someone who holds grudges, perhaps I ought to find something else to do.
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