British Gas should have fired me
I spent one summer in the employ of British Gas to read peoples meters.

At first I was in a team, which consisted of my best mate as the "supervisor", and me as the only other person who bothered to do the job.

We would catch the bus to whichever town in the nearby area (having lied about car ownership to get the job). Then spend the day reading meters and send off the paperwork each day.

Now we had been promised an income of £360 per week... however it was performance related it would seem. The basic was £150 a week then the extra was dependent on the number of meters you read, and lets just say to get £360 per week I'd have to read 1200 meters a week... so 200 a day for 6 days.
One day I deliberately only read ones with outside cupboards and still only managed 140 meters in a 10 hour day.

After 2 weeks my mate quit and I was promoted to team supervisor! A team of me alone...
So now I got £170 a week and the realisation that unless I did over 600 meters I would only get the basic rate anyway.

So I didn't try anymore. I went and sat in the park with a big bottle of cider and read about 20 outside meters a day. Did that all summer long and eventually I went back to uni in late september so left about 15,000 gas meters unread in the Hertfordshire region.

What's more I still had to phone up and quit and the only thing they were fussed about was my id badge.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Thu 9 Aug 2007, 15:33, Reply)