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Archive for the 'Life' Category

Jun

Escape From Sky School

By Scribbleboy 7 Comments

Categories: Life, Life List and Money

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On Friday 22nd May I replied to a vaguely worded job description posted on reed.co.uk. It read;

DO YOU HAVE THE X – FACTOR ?

Birmingham based Advertising company looking for individuals with a great attitude to work within a lively outgoing environment.

We are looking for people with that special X – Factor that can be trained up to join our busy PR team.

Must have excellent skills in customer service, confidence in their communication levels and be willing to be trained from scratch.

Full training given with opportunities for advancement for the career minded.

Please forward your CV to us for consideration.

Ten days later they made contact. According to the man on the phone I had enough “X – Factor” to get an interview. When I returned home there was an email from Scorpia Corporation informing me that I was also being considered for their “Business Development Program”. Further details could be found on their website, ANB Promotions.

This is when I became suspicious. Scorp Corp had placed the advert on behalf of The Cobra Group, part of which was ANB Promotions LTD, the company I would be working for if my interview was successful.*

Ignore that scorpions and cobras poison their prey, ignore that ANB stands for A New Beginning and sounds like a new-age cult, just look at the website. It looks very professional, with a lot of stock photography and very little detail. If I was part of an undercover operation this is the kind of site I’d put together to try and convince the public that we were legitimate. Look at their contact page, their location pulsates, as if at any moment it will vanish, and the man in the dark glasses looks nothing if not shady.

It was at this point that I wondered if ANB Promotions was my Credit Dauphin, if like Sydney Bristow in Alias I’d be recruited for what on the surface appears to be a banking corporation but in reality turns out to be a criminal organisation. When a business says they’re “a leading below-the-line direct marketing specialist representing an array of national and international clients” you wonder what you’re going to be asked to do. As it turned out it wasn’t ripping off jumpsuits to reveal slinky cocktail dresses and abseiling in heels, although it was seven floors up from a cross-dressing strip club.

ANB Promotions is located in Chinatown in Birmingham and provides other businesses with new customers. One of their most recent clients is Sky TV. Sky currently have 9.3 million customers in the UK and are aiming for 10m in the next five years. Here are some facts that make ANB happy; Sky’s closest competition is Virgin who are losing 2,500 customers a month. Some people are just trying to save money, others are unemployed, both are watching more tv and scrutinising how much they pay for this service.

I passed the first interview.

Then I completed the evaluation day.

Then I passed the second interview.

Then I was invited back for the training week.

Then, if I passed the end of week test, I would have a job selling pay tv door-to-door. This job would be commission based, so if no one bought Sky then I wouldn’t get paid.

The training week began on Monday at 9:30am with some of the most detailed paperwork I have seen in a long time. Hair colour, eye colour, height. A five year history of all employment, unemployment and education to the exact date with no omissions or overlaps. I was also required to arrive with eight different documents, including a reference I had to source and print over the weekend.

Afterwards we went into a boardroom. We were given talks and we took tests, I dubbed this part Sky School. Most days we didn’t finish until at least nine at night.

On Wednesday I got to go out in the field with my Sky Buddy Kristel, as I had done on the evaluation day. Kristel was born in Estonia, lived in Norway and has worked with ANB Promotions for over a year now. She has an amazing sense of humour, bought me an umbrella when it rained and is very good at what she does.

Then on Thursday we did the same again, only this time with less rain, flying bugs, and unfortunately, less sales. Every day each field representative is given a walk sheet (note my correct usage of technical terms there) detailing 100 names and addresses of people who can afford Sky tv but are currently with someone else. The average success rate is seven. For the entire week.

Friday I quit.

I met some great people and I learnt a lot about sales, psychology and body language but this job was not for me. In the short term I had to jump through a lot of hoops to make money that wouldn’t have covered my transport costs. Long term this job could have been quite profitable but I’d be trapped in a tiring, repetitious, mentally draining job.

The job hunt continues on Monday.

* A subsection of The Cobra Group is Appco Direct LTD. ANB Promotions and Lifestyle Advertising are both subsections of Appco Direct. While the email suggested I’d be working for ANB it turned out I was working for Lifestyle. Both companies share the same office and do exactly the same things, only with different coloured folders. Mine was red.

Jun

Going Barfuss at Trentham Gardens

By Scribbleboy 1 Comment

Categories: Life

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On Tuesday I went walking barefoot and it wasn’t because they repossessed my shoes, although surely this is only a matter of time. Gingell, Baines, Lauren and I spent an afternoon at Trentham Gardens and while we were there we tried out the Trentham Estate Barfuss Park (because writing barefoot in German just gives it that exotic edge).

The idea behind the barefoot walk comes from a German priest called Sebastian Kneipp who according to Trentham Gardens was born in the 1900s (as Kneipp lived between 1821 and 1897 they presumably mean the 19th century). Kneipp apparently cured himself of TB by bathing thrice weekly in the Danube during the winter of 1849. Trentham are a little less specific, stating that “having reputedly cured himself of a serious disease he became famous and the welfare practices that he developed became equally famous throughout Germany.”

The Catholic Encyclopedia says that since Kneipp’s death, “his methods are being lost sight of, showing that it was the personality of the man rather than his system which gave him fame. He discovered nothing new, but systematized what was known before and had been allowed to lapse.”

While walking barefoot is undoubtedly good for you, Kneipp’s contribution seems sketchy at best, this however is not the point. Anyone can have a walkway but it’s only with Kneipp as a scientific fig leaf that Trentham can claim to have a unique attraction (I still argue that anywhere can be a barefoot walk depending on your mentality).

Nonetheless, it was fun; a thousand metres of pathway, a variety of surfaces and no shoes. We walked over earth, sand and stone, traversed a tree branch bridge, passed through water and waded through mud. Sliding my feet in wide cresecent shapes one in front of the other gave me a chance to feel more of the textures, Gingell referring to this as my supermodel walk, her balance still somewhat impeded by the receding, yet ever present, T-virus.

On such a warm day the water and deep mud were cooling but the most rewarding textures were some of the gravels. Sun warmed grit allowed you to really stretch your feet and gain sensation in parts of your foot that rarely touch the floor. Gingell seemed to struggle with these, which I found odd for someone whom I think of as so active and outdoorsy. Lauren theorised that my legs are so thin that the nerve endings couldn’t squeeze all the way to the bottom. This is more than likely true.

While it’s an attraction that would be easy to mock, it was enjoyable and had a certain novelty value to it. If you happen to visit Trentham Gardens there’s no harm in trying it out, it’ll certainly be safer than going barfuss in Shelton.

[This may strike you as a somewhat odd blog post and I think you'd be right. Not only is it a strange topic but it also seems closer to a journal entry than one of my more traditional challenge-focused blog posts. Hopefully I'll write some more of these, I realise quite a lot happens that slips through the blog net. In other news, while I was almost up to my knees in thick, dark, suspiciously fragrant mud I got a phone call inviting me to a job interview. That, however, is a story for another day.]

Related Posts

Barefoot Adventure Part 1: Trentham

Jun

Don’t Ever Say I Don’t Love You

By Scribbleboy 2 Comments

Categories: Life

Just because I don’t talk to you, break the promises I make and ignore you for days, don’t ever say that. Just because I cheat on you with real life doesn’t mean I don’t love you, darling blog reader.

Unlike most normal people, who use their blogs to document activity, I use mine to avoid activity or maybe to document inactivity. This week has been rather busy (by my standards anyway); I’ve been accepted for a job, rejected for a job, hooked up with some more work experience, voted, been to two interviews, walked a 1,000 metre barefoot walk (twice) and completed a nine hour evaluation day.

This weekend is going to be packed with fun activities such as photocopying photocopies, making calls to get documents scanned and trying to find people to write references for me. On Monday I and these eight documents will be commuting to Birmingham, hopefully arriving at 9:30am and taking part in a training week.

Somewhere in amongst all of this I’ll try and crank out some words, in the meantime I would recommend reading Gingell’s guest post for Zombie Command, it’s a well written piece that brings the funny.

XOXO

Scribs

Jun

Yet More Icons

By Scribbleboy 3 Comments

Categories: Life, Life List and Site

Today the sun shone and I was offered a job, for a time it almost felt like I wasn’t in Stoke. In the email that offers me the job, just after the date, it says “PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL”. I’m not quite sure why they’re shouting but it’s probably because they know that one of my favourite hobbies is running my mouth. All I’ll say is that I’m going to get paid for some of my words sometime soon. In the meantime I have been given a very promising job tip which I will be following up tomorrow.

In other news, I’m still broke but didn’t get round to fully documenting it on Finance Friday. Expect a Finance Tuesday, Finance Wednesday or Finance Whenever I Feel Like It sometime this week.

Also today was the first of June which means I probably should have done deskscape, maybe later in the week. There is little to report; my desk is looking rather tidy, in a moment of boredom I arranged my loose change around my drink coaster, tennis player Ana Ivanovic takes on the mantle of Miss June in the FHM calendar.

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If I have learnt one thing from this calendar it is that women can either dress themselves competently or be successful, but unfortunately not both. Ana fixes the viewer with a steely gaze, apparently oblivious to the fact that her black halter neck top is far too low cut and exposes her bright white bra to the world. She’s going to be so embarrassed when she finds out.

Another thing I’m slipping behind with is the set of icons I’m designing to represent all the challenges on this blog. Before I unveil the new batch let’s deal with some of the gripes from last time.

Challenge number three was to give blood. The first blood drop I drew was too tall, the second too tubby and the third one (unless you say otherwise) is just right. The blood people sent me a letter the other day. It says that I pump O-, a blood group that is shared by only 7% of the population but can be pumped into anyone (apparently “It’s often the only safe option when a patient’s blood group is unknown in an emergency, or in some specialised procedures for unborn babies.”)

Hopefully this will put a stop to the persistent rumours that if you cut me I bleed black unsweetened tea.

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My fourth challenge is to get up at a reasonable time each morning. To make it more obvious I turned what was originally just a clock face into an alarm clock, by adding breasts. This was a mistake. I tried reshaping the breasts, I tried making them look like scary robot breasts and finally settled on making the breasts flatter, the nipples less erect and strapping them together. These are not breasts and anyone who says otherwise is a pervert.

blog_icons_temp_drive 6. Learn to Drive

This looks like a steering wheel to me, what does it look like to you? Feel free to answer honestly, this is just a set of icons and definitely not some kind of psychometric assessment. If I had any money at the moment I’d be spending it on rent and council tax (because those are my two favourite things) and not driving lessons, so not much progress is being made on this front.

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7. Complete my Degree

The closest I ever got to explaining my degree situation properly was probably in this post; I have one third of a degree in Creative Writing and Journalism plus a handful of additional credits. The only journalism degree worth finishing would be one that is accredited by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ), the only benefit of this being that you pick up the NCTJ certificates as you go. However, as 60% of people who enter journalism don’t have a degree in it you have the opportunity to pick up all the necessary NCTJ certificates in the first six months of the job. This makes me think the degree is pointless and maybe I should go for something more generalised such as English Literature (maybe through Open University) just to show a willingness to learn.

Above you can see the mortar boarded icon, now with added glasses based on Gingell’s suggestion.

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8. Keep Eating Steak and Crumpets

One of the more creative icons but then again one of the more creative challenges. This is how the Yin-Yang would have looked if it had been designed by Doctor Atkins.

Well, that’s only three icons but it seems like enough for tonight. Gingell has gone down with some Stokie strain of the T-virus but if she makes it through the night we’re all going on a house outing to Trentham Gardens to walk barefoot (they have a website, I didn’t make that up).

Have fun, walk barefoot.

Scribs

May

Working with the Smurfs

By Scribbleboy 3 Comments

Categories: Life

You’ve stuck with me through job applications, jobs rejections, actual jobs and temp work so it seems like you deserve a read of this. As promised, here is my application for my dream job, a Social Media Internship out in Asia with Ogilvy PR.

While I was writing this and since I’ve sent it off I’ve been reading through all the pages on what Ogilvy and Thomas Crampton do. I said to Baines, “These people must be big, they’ve worked with the Smurfs.“ When I said that this afternoon it was a flippant comment, now it’s starting to sink in how big they are.

As this is a social networking job I’ve started following Thomas Crampton on various social networking sites. On my LinkedIn profile I class myself as a journalist based on a year’s worth of a journalism degree, an NCTJ Law qualification and a handful of articles published in the local press. Then I looked at Thomas Crampton’s about page, feeling a little humbled right about now.

Hi Thomas,

Two of the key things I love in life are travelling and meeting new people. Last year I spent the most amazing summer of my life backpacking around Asia with four friends from university.

Starting off in Shanghai, we headed across China and into Tibet before flying to Hong Kong. Along the way I walked part of the Great Wall, admired the terracotta army, travelled to Everest Base Camp and saw the world’s largest seated Buddha statue carved into a mountainside.

For six weeks Lonely Planet China was my Bible and this along with the help of the locals allowed me to learn a lot about the culture. My friend took thousands of pictures and I documented the trip by selecting and captioning the best ones in Facebook albums.

Since I returned from Asia, social media has allowed me to keep in touch with a lot of the people that I met along the way and has helped to improve my life in the UK, this very job was recommended to me by one of my followers on Twitter.

I joined Twitter back in February and since then have amassed over 150 followers, making me the seventh most popular Twitterer in my area. In this time I have experimented with a wide variety of Twitter clients, favouring TweetDeck for Windows and Gwipper for Ubuntu (TweetDeck still seems to be having teething issues with 64 bit Ubuntu and Gwipper gives me the option to add additional micro-blogging sites).

I tweet each of my blog posts with the hashtag #scribblog and it is for this reason that my favourite short URL service is ow.ly. I can use ow.ly in conjunction with Hootsuite to monitor my stats and see which links are the most popular. Hootsuite is also used by friends at my local newspaper to manage multiple accounts and has proven to be very useful.

My blog www.scribbleboy.co.uk is a record my life and my attempts to complete challenges as suggested by readers. I update the blog regularly and spend a lot of time playing around with WordPress plugins, trying to get them to both work properly and be standards compliant.

Alongside my passion for social media and blogging I also have a set of well developed traditional communication skills. I currently work with Totem Films, a media production company, as a freelance writer. I work in a office environment and spend a lot of time approaching potential clients via email. I am also responsible for drafting any necessary press releases and most recently have written a short piece for The Main Event (the industry magazine for event organisers) about what companies need to consider when commissioning a promotional video of their event.

I am currently based in the UK but would love to move. I have attached a copy of my CV to showcase some of my more traditional skills and have listed all my contact details below. I look forward to hearing from you soon,

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About

Born in Paignton, somewhat educated in Stoke-on-Trent and living in Peterborough. I am a footsoldier in the army of the unemployed and an occasional blogger. I spend my days applying for jobs and watching Glee.

I survive on caffeine, willpower and savings alone. This blog is a record of my successes and failures as I try and complete life-improving challenges suggested to me by readers.