I hate my job
You know what happens every single goddamn morning
I mean literally every single goddamn morning
I have to get dressed in slate grey (The skirt by itself is £500 and it all comes out of my wages; try eating for the first month of your new job kiddo) then get on a train immediately
Yeah no breakfast I have no time to do anything other then dress myself
After catching the met to central I eliminate hunger by getting a shitty BLT from some brown guy who doesn't know English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, body language, or basic human decency
I have no idea what he puts into his products and I don't need to know
Anyway that's not even getting to the job itself
So I go into this office and say hi to the secretary who smiles but never says hi back
Who knows what that's about
And there's two sign-in sheets one which the authorities get and one that is actually a list of people coming and going in this building
We exchange meaningful glances while I sign the latter
And I go up the stairs because the elevator is not here, for some reason we don't have one and why no clue
I mean it's not a bad office it's okay but we just don't have an elevator
And I have to go up all the way to the top to say hi to my boss who says hi but never smiles back and then he passes me a file and today's papers
And he tells me to get working like I don't already know I'm supposed to work at my job
A job I have performed for three years for fuck's sake
So I sit at my desk and look at the file and see a list of names and I look at the newspapers and some of those names are in the newspaper and some of them aren't
Sometimes they're on the front page other times they're on the second page and sometimes they're in the goddamn classifieds and I have to root through 34 identical adverts for ride-on lawnmowers before I find a match
So then I make calls and the calls are to the numbers next to the names
Majority of the time no-one picks up assuming I'm a telemarketer or something
The minority who pick up are usually old dears or idiots
Latter tend to dominate the discussion
"What do you mean 'stone rose is rising'"
Dude you literally have a handbook
Read it
Only about 10% of the already slim minority of people who pick up the phone have actually done it so of course I need to take action
Not before I ring Bashir from Approvals and Denials and ask him if it's okay to take action
"Sure, go ahead, you have my approval, but there's this show on tonight and I was wondering--"
Nah too busy real tired you'll have to find someone else thanks bye
So I go to the closet and reach behind the radiator and take out the book
This is less a book and a repeatedly photocopied taped-together mess
I see someone's fingers at the end of the page, a woman's fingers, or maybe a man's with nailpolish
I don't judge
So I have to take the train out to the 'burbs (Why do they always live out in the 'burbs nowadays) to some godforsaken hellhole where the methheads and the junkies roam free
Once someone with only one eye tried to open my car door but it was locked I swear to God
I knock on front doors and the majority of the time they skipped town and it's up to Retrievals not me
But sometimes they open the door and say hi
That's when the taser comes out the only fun part of my job is the taser
They jerk around on the ground and then the zipcuffs come on their wrists and there they are tied to the radiator and so begins the readings from the book
The book is full of unpronounceable gibberish and just saying the words makes me feel wrong like I'm feeling up a granny that's how wrong it feels
It always works thank God
Then their passports their names their souls their reproductive organs are gone
You know
Shit they need
And I give them a card and tell them their property is now being used as leverage please call this number for further information and negotiation
They always ask me to wait, wait, WAIT! but I don't know what they expect me to do
I can't give it back I don't know where it is
Sometimes I don't need to do this at all and sometimes I need to do it for every name on the list
Then I drive back to the office clock out and say bye to the secretary who is smiling but isn't saying bye come on do I need to explain basic politeness to you people
Back on the train
Dinner is usually tinned or takeout
Go to sleep
Repeat the whole process until it's Friday and then it's OVER
And when I go to a party on Saturday by friends wondering where I've been all week I always tell them 'Work's a bitch again' and they get it and don't press the point
When people ask what I do for a living at these parties
People who don't know me, semi-strangers
I change the subject
You see why.

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