The Ironing!
The letter in the brown envelope congratulated me on passing the first stage of the selection process and detailed the time and location for the numeracy and literacy tests which would form the basis of the second stage of the candidate selection procedure. At the end of the letter was a paragraph, in bold, instructing candidates to bring a calculator and a passport sized photograph.

I arrived at the venue in good time, suited and booted, and reported to reception whereupon I was instructed to go and sit in a room with the other fifty ‘successful’ candidates.

This all took place in a dreary conference room at the foot of a monstrosity of a hotel alongside the M6 toll road in Cannock. A town famous only for the fact that Stan Collymore threw one up a dirty housewife at one of the local ‘Dogging’ spots. It was particularly galling as I had left behind the hills, open countryside and sunshine of North Wales to travel to the tests.

The room was filled with three distinct types of people. Middle aged women who had made a career out of administration. Middle aged, middle managers; men called Colin, with pot bellies and bad ties who most probably drove a Vauxhall Astra and still lived with their parents and a selection of ethnic minorities who had probably demanded an interview under the governments inspired ‘guaranteed interview’ scheme.

Fucking communists and their politically correct ‘jobs for everyone’ bollocks.

We were ushered into the conference room where the tables had been laid out like a school examination hall. As the middle aged lady administered our details the late-comers started arriving and questions were posed by the candidates too stupid to read the instructions in the letter. One middle aged administrator had brought a passport sized photograph with her. And beautifully laminated into the identification page of her passport it was too. A number of candidates had neglected to bring a photograph at all. This was no problem for our model of efficiency who was ticking boxes and writing names in triplicate. “That will be fine as long as you bring a photo in before three o’clock”.

Thus began my lesson in the equality, politics and inefficiency of a public body. If I was invigilating the exam this would have provided me with the perfect opportunity to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Late? See you, good luck.
No photograph? See you, good luck.
No calculator? See you, good luck.
Too much of a mong to spot that the passage contained the word ‘there’ instead of ‘their’ or that the word ‘difficulty’ contained about six additional letters? See you, good luck.

At the end of the thirty minute test, the affable middle aged administrator collected our answer sheets and promptly despatched them to a room full of middle aged administrators who kept us waiting for twenty-five minutes whilst they marked the papers. Upon her return the room a roll call of twenty names was read out and each was issued with a brown envelope and ushered out of the room. I did not know if I was annoyed that I had not made the grade in what were almost patronisingly easy tests, or relieved that I had been spared the ordeal with working with these types of people. In Cannock.

I need not have worried. I was one of the ten people who could obviously use a calculator to subtract one number from another and were deemed worthy enough to face an interview panel in three weeks time.

The only redeeming feature of the post is the fact it is for a job at the local job centre and in these times of doom and gloom I quite like the irony of that.
(Mr_Wendel, Fri 3 Apr 2009, 18:35, 2 replies)

Cannock
You dont actually work at that Job CEntre do you??
(Wook13 Been away but is now ducking a fuck on, Fri 3 Apr 2009, 20:24, closed)

No...
... well not yet anyway. That's what the tests and interview were for. I have decided to seek refuge in the safety of the public sector harbour during this storm!

Do you?!
(Mr_Wendel, Fri 3 Apr 2009, 21:26, closed)