Curriculum Vitæ: a working life story, Chapter 17: “Do you have any questions for me?”

[Previous chapter] [The DIY Company: October 2011 – July 2012]

The end of The University Job was something of A Double-Edged Sword of Damocles—if that makes sense, Prospective Employer? And if that doesn’t make sense, I merely meant that given The Increasingly Massive Varieties of Fruit with which Girlfriend # 3’s Foetus was daily being compared by an app she’d recently downloaded—and given the inevitability of another period of Joblessness—I felt like I was simultaneously about to be knighted, but also that I was perhaps in imminent danger of being executed. 

Nevertheless, this was what was happening now and I was fine with it. I’d not looked back since meeting Girlfriend # 3. And although life was "coming at me fast" to use the parlance of the day, I felt like I could probably cope. In fact, I was beginning to think that my Existential Dread might have been shed alongside my virginity; or that it had at least temporarily forgotten how to put its roots down in My Near Future, as it so reliably used to.

I’d been called back for a Second Interview for the “online copywriter” Job at The DIY Company before I even took indefinite Paternity Leave from The University Job. And Girlfriend # 3 was on Maternity Leave, so she started putting together my PowerPoint Presentation for me before I even got home. I didn’t know what to expect from The DIY Company. But I’d recently had an Interview with One of The South of England’s Major Bus And Coach Operators for the vague and unglamorous-sounding Job of “online officer”. And I quickly gathered that if I got that Job I’d be the sole Member of Staff responsible for the website; and maybe the only one in the office who knew how to use a computer. “Online officer” sounded barely any better than “second officer”—a Role I’d had little enthusiasm for when performing Twelfth Night (at least, a very small proportion of it) back in Sixth Form. And I was worried the Bus Company might want me to do actual IT stuff, or proper coding, and that I’d soon be Out of My Depth. 

Conversely, the sheer scale of The DIY Company suggested its Jobs must surely be done to a more Professional standard. There were quite literally hundreds of Staff employed at The Head Office in Suburban Nowhere; many just to look after The DIY Company Website. So I imagined they’d have a whole Team of “online copywriters” at their disposal. I was supposed to be interviewed by a man with the same name as a minor celebrity from an indie band I didn't like; but it turned out he was on “garden leave” because he’d recently accepted a Job with one of The DIY Company’s main Competitors. “Jane”, who led the Interview, was the one who’d first put in a request to HR for a copywriter. Because, she said, none of the Staff who put the words on The DIY Company Website (including herself by implication) knew the first thing about spelling or grammar.

“So there’s no copywriting team then?” I asked. Knowing full well by now there wasn’t.

“No,” said Jane.

“I’m quite surprised by that actually” I said.

She nodded. “Yes, I know.”

“Given the size of the company…”

“I know.”

I was coming to suspect that the more you agreed with Interviewers, the likelier they were to Employ you. And I hoped the fact that Jane had put in the request to HR for a copywriter would establish An Affinity between us; because I too thought they should Hire a copywriter. I just had to hope that Jane thought, as I did, that it ought to be me. The Presentation went well. I had to tell them what I thought could be improved about the copy in the “hand tools” section of The Website. And there was a lot to Work with. They seemed to think my presentation fine. I was Nervous, but my vocal cords didn’t quite seize up at any point, and I had a thick A4 pad to support any bits of paper I might be holding—spare CVs and Interview notes—to dampen any rustling caused by the inevitable shaking of my hands. Jane asked me what my favourite book was, and I said it was either “Return of the Native” by Thomas Hardy (all-time favourite) or “The Passion” by Jeanette Winterson (recent favourite). I sensed that this was considered a cop-out, but I didn’t dare to risk choosing just one, in case she or all of them knew the book and hated it. Jane asked me if I had any questions for them, and I couldn’t think of any; I’d already asked all of the questions on my list during the process of the interview. (You should always keep one back, Prospective Employer.)

“Well, you could ask me what my favourite book is,” she suggested.

“Of course, how rude of me!” 

It was “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell—not the one off Peep Show. I hadn’t read it; but I told her my fiancée liked it, and then worried all the way home that I’d sounded like a dick. I hated using the word “fiancée”; but Girlfriend # 3 and I had postponed our wedding to next year because Child # 1’s due date had almost exactly coincided with the date we’d booked for us to "walk down the aisle" (of a converted Cornish barn).

It felt like a long-overdue moral victory when, about a week later (and several years after I'd qualified with an MA in Professional Writing) I was finally offered a Job with “copywriter” in the Title. It felt like all my cows were finally coming home to… not roost, obviously. Reap? I don’t know: some kind of delayed-agricultural-bounty metaphor would probably be appropriate here; but I lack the requisite knowledge to deploy it. I hadn’t necessarily expected to land this particular Job, but I was damn sure I deserved it. Especially after the dreadful year at The University. 

It wasn’t my only option, Prospective Employer. My Skills were finally In Demand—or at least Under Consideration—by several Prospective Employers at once. As well as the Interview for the Superior University Job I didn’t want and knew I wouldn't get, I’d also been Interviewed for a “reporter” Job in a pub in The Great Wen by The Content Guy from The Business Website that Bossman Roger read, which offered subscribers “thought leadership, training and digital transformation”. I’d come armed with a list of hastily compiled bullet-points to argue the case for why I was Not A Bad Writer. Unfortunately my Interviewer’s opening gambit was “Look, obviously you can write…” So I didn’t really know where to take it from there. He asked what my Salary Expectations were. He might as well have asked what my Celery Expectations were: I expected Celery to be Celery. Sometimes I had some left at the end of the week; sometimes I didn’t. I didn’t complain about its size, as long as I could make Bolognese from it or spread peanut butter on it and enjoy it as a snack. I probably said 25k, because that’s what I’d been offered by The DIY Company last week. But I already doubted I’d accept this Great Wen Job if offered it. The ad had said “working from home to begin”; thus implying the Job would soon be located in The Great Wen. And I was set on going West, not East.

I’d was also invited to a second Interview at The Bus Company. But they were all very… bussy. I wasn't sure... I didn’t know what to do; I was torn. The Bus Job was in The Haven Town, so would involve a lot less travel (ironically); and The DIY Company Job was really quite far away, in Suburban Nowhere and thus not even directly accessible by the public transport upon which I (not yet a driver) had to rely. But it was an actual “copywriter” Job; and if I was ever to become a Freelance copywriter, which I suspected I might have to if we ever moved to Wales, I couldn’t help but think that I ought to have been a Full-Time copywriter somewhere, anywhere, first.

We already had Child # 1 by now, so I really just wanted to get a Contract signed so I could sit around watching classic French films, eating dark chocolate and changing nappies with Girlfriend # 3—while I still could.

So that was what I did.

The role

The commute to The DIY Company Job seemed to get longer every day. I woke at 5:30am after sleeping in The Box Room so as not to disturb Child # 1 (or vice-versa), showered, dressed, packed my lunch and my work shoes in my rucksack, and walked to the train station in my boots. I’d get annoyed by bad adverts on billboards while I waited, and sometimes photograph them on my low-grade “cameraphone” in order to blog about them on my lunch-break, if it later turned out that I could be bothered to do that. I’d catch a train at around 6am. On the train I’d use a free app on Girlfriend # 3’s iPad to rewrite The Narrative Poetry Book I’d written in The Great Wen (based on Thomas Hardy’s “Return of the Native” but set in North Wales, remember) as an experimental modern novel. After about an hour I’d arrive at the station before The Railway Town—near The Suburban Culdesac where I’d lived for three (mostly miserable) years as a teenager. I’d “alight” there, and briskly walk the two and a half miles uphill to Suburban Nowhere until I reached the spot by the big roundabout to which the Head Office of The DIY Company had relatively recently been relocated. 

On the first day I did this I was wearing my shirt and tie; and although it was October, they were drenched in sweat by the time I arrived. So the next 180ish times I made the journey, I folded my shirt and tie around a carefully collapsed cereal box (thank you, The Corner Shop Job) and slipped them into the inside pocket of my rucksack, where they would be mostly protected from perspiration.

In the absence of my intended Bossman who had already left to Work for a Competitor—The Traitor, as I thought of him, Prospective Employer—I instead had to report to a Bosswoman (although not one of the women who’d interviewed me). This Bosswoman seemed unsure what to do with me from Day One, and wasn’t even there when I arrived. She was Bosswoman of a couple of Teams within the website part of the Business; which teams were in turn part of a bigger Department called “Multichannel”. She was not the Bosswoman of anyone who’d actually Interviewed me; because their Bosswoman was a Bossman. And since I was not a team, and I was merely one man, I would have to be put into some sort of team, and the Boss of that team would effectively take it upon themselves to Boss me, instead of Bosswoman; who seemeed keen from the off, not to add that (i.e. me) to her list of Jobs. So: my de facto Bosswoman—who would become my de jure Bosswoman once Bosswoman # 1 went on maternity leave a few months later, and I never saw her again—was, it turned out, head of The Online Merchandising Team; so I ended up in that Team. We’ll call the woman that was my Bosswoman for the majority of the time I worked at The DIY Company “Bosswoman # 2”. (It just makes things simpler, Prospective Employer.)

For the sake of Clarity and Transparency, there was a Bossman as well—not the Bossman of the Team with some of the people who’d Interviewed me; and not the Megabossman who ran the “Multichannel” Department (who I only ever saw From A Great Distance)—but a nearby Bossman, who became Bosswoman # 2’s Bossman over Time. I’m not sure whether he was Bosswoman # 1’s Bossman; or whether he was merely on Bosswoman # 1’s level, but with different Teams under him, and only became Bosswoman # 2’s boss after Bosswoman # 1 went on maternity leave. I also didn’t know what relationship (if any) any of them had with The Traitor who was supposed to have been my Bossman. I was given an Organizational Chart by Jane about a month into the Job, after I’d expressed confusion about the Organization of the Organization. The Chart was, Jane admitted, both Outdated and Disorganized. The Chain of Command was sometimes unclear. Some of the names-in-boxes had been crossed out. Some boxes had no names in them at all, intriguingly suggesting hypothetical Jobs which no actual person was doing. And there were question marks in place of some boxes too, suggesting either that the Job Title pertaining to a particular Role was unknown to The Creator of The Chart, or perhaps that a Role was suspected to exist in that area but that there was insufficient evidence (e.g. Work) to support the theory.

It’s fair to say Bosswoman # 2 had no better idea of what to do with me than Bosswoman # 1. When I arrived on Day One, for example, Bosswoman # 2 was tasked with greeting me. She led me for what seemed like half a mile around the vast, carpet-tiled, fresh-smelling expanse of The Head Office, and eventually sat me down in a desk cluster next to nobody in particular, but not far from her desk. She introduced me to those of her Team that were around, and asked me whether I wanted a cup of tea, which I didn’t. I was told to pass the Time till Bosswoman # 1 arrived by looking at The Website and making notes about what I thought we could improve, in terms of the copywriting. I instantly identified some spelling and punctuation errors on The Homepage, but Bosswoman # 2 said our Team had no Jurisdiction over The Homepage. “That’s the ecommerce team” she said—indicating the faraway desk island where Jane and three other women sat. “And, by the way, they don’t like being told the homepage has mistakes on it,” she added. “Have a look at some of the other pages instead. Dig down.”

I don’t know exactly how many pages were on The DIY Company’s Website back then, Prospective Employer. But I’ve just used An Online Tool to Audit it, and it’s currently in excess of a quarter of a million. I doubt it was much less then; it may even have been more By the admission of one of the merchandisers who sat near to me (I’ll call him Dominic) nobody ever took pages off The Website because this was too difficult. They just stopped linking to the old pages as they added new pages. 

“So people could still end up there via search?” I suggested.

Dominic seemed to think that scenario unlikely. 

“Apart from the domain name, our SEO is terrible.”

SEO means “search-engine optimization”, Prospective Employer, but I’m sure you already knew that. Now aware that my monitor screen was visible to countless Colleagues—not to mention the many passers-by from any given Department—my greatest fear in the Job would be Having Nothing To Do. But I knew from scrutinizing The DIY Company’s Website as Research for my Interview that there ought to be plenty to do, just as soon as I could work out how to do it.

“How do I edit this page?” I asked Dominic.

Dominic looked appalled by my suggestion. “Only merchandisers can edit product pages,” he said. “You’d need training for [Three Different CMS-Type Software Platforms].”

I asked Bosswoman # 2 if I could log in on someone else’s profile to edit some typographical errors I’d noticed on the product pages.

Bosswoman # 2 looked more weary than aghast. She didn’t get up.

“You can’t just edit a page,” reiterated Dominic, in a state of mild panic, and looking to her for reassurance.

“You’d need to raise a ticket,” agreed Bosswoman # 2.

I stood down. In fact, Prospective Employer, I was never to be given editing powers—not for The Homepage, the category pages, the product pages, or any pages on The Website. The “back end” of The Website was in fact a labyrinth of interlinking (and sometimes unlinkable) Back Ends plural, powered by all manner of often archaic-looking pieces of Software—some of which needed whole Teams in other parts of Head Office to stop them falling in on themselves. Eventually someone from another Department was summoned to take me on a half-mile power-walk to somewhere where I could get a pad of paper and some pens so I could make some notes with those about any issues I found on The Website—instead of fixing them “in situ”.

After Bosswoman # 1 arrived, and I’d been to some induction classes—and met some other New Starters who I’d never see again because Head Office was at least the size of an aircraft hangar and The Multichannel Department was a relatively minor part of The Company—I was eventually given some substantial Tasks to Work on. To my surprise they were mostly Conceptual, if not downright Supernatural. For example, I was to produce an Internal Document that would make online merchandisers write like Professional copywriters. So instead of editing the copy already on the website, I was to encourage the Team to work toward a standardized and optimized approach to Content Creation. The Merchandisers themselves—about five of them—regarded this Task (and by extension me) with varying degrees of resentment and suspicion. At least one of them seemed to think I was advocating for their Replacement with copywriters. Not yet fully understanding what unique skills or knowledge equipped s omebody for the role of online marchandising, I said that I didn’t understand why we couldn’t have both copywriters and merchandisers in the Team.

“Well, we have. We’ve got you,” said Bosswoman # 2.

By her tone, I inferred that Bosswoman # 2, though resigned to it, still wasn’t entirely pleased about that fact. She was nice enough; but I got the feeling she regarded me as something of An Albatross. I’d been sprung on her very shortly after she’d been Promoted to A Managerial Position. We were about the same age—actually, I think she was a year or two younger than me—and we had completely different Professional and Academic backgrounds. What was more, Bo sswoman # 2 (much like Bosswoman # 1) had not been among the vocal minority petitioning HR to recruit me, or one of my ilk. So while others in the Department had evidently seen a need for me, if only in a conceptual way; she had not.

I knew before I applied for this Job that I wasn’t going to be at The DIY Company forever; in all likelihood I wouldn’t even be there for a year. I might have let Bosswoman # 2 in on The Secret to alleviate The Burden of My Presence. But I didn’t want it to sound like My Heart wasn’t in the Job. If anything, The Ticking Clock motivated me to try to get as much done as possible in the limited time I suspected (even hoped) I had. So I decided to get on with trying to turn everyone in the building who was ever allowed near The Website, or at least near me, into A Good Copywriter. Thus, my Job Title might have been “Online Copywriter” (indeed, although I've often removed the qualifying adjective in advertising the position on my CVs, it was) but Bosswoman # 2 had made it quite clear that I wasn’t to simply burst into The Website, all guns blazing, and take aim at errant apostrophes. So I was to reimagine myself as something of an English-Language Evangelist. So I privately decided that the whole Company—at least the whole Multichannel Department—was going to benefit from my Influence. I wasn’t going to be limited by such trifling things as Job Titles or Job Descriptions. I imagined myself the Head of Copy, with a Team comprising “Everyone Else” to Manage. And I had Work to do...

But before I could get on with That, I was told—and it wasn’t a joke; no, I didn’t think it was a joke actually; in fact I was joking when I said that, ha-ha!—that I had to go and spend a week Working in one of The DIY Company’s actual physical Shops. And this was A Real Eye-Opener; because over the 40 long hours I spent being a complete Spare Part on The Shop Floor of The Haven Town’s branch of The DIY Company, I learnt that there was precisely nothing I could learn while working in one of The DIY Company’s Shops that would help me with my Task of improving the copywriting on its Website. They didn’t even bother training me to use the tills. When I told the Members of Staff in In-Store what I did at Head Office they invariably looked at one another as if to say “well, yes: they would waste money on that sort of thing over there, wouldn’t they”. None of them had ever been invited to spend a week in Head Office to learn how that Worked; and I couldn’t help feeling that this One Way System of professional exchange created just a little resentment among the Shop Staff. Not least because the small handful of Shops in The Vicinity of Head Office had to cope with a constant flow of White Collar obstacles who didn’t know one end of a pickaxe from the other. (Let alone what was the best type of grout to use with which tiles.) Because, inevitably, everybody who worked in the head office had chosen to live relatively near to it—except Peter The SAP Guy, who lived incredibly far away.

From Day One of my de-facto Paid Work Experience, I knew that Time would be wasted. A Customer approached me and said “Do you know anything about tiling?” A reasonable question. I was wearing a (very itchy) uniform. But I had to admit that: no, sorry. I don’t. (Apart from how to spell it, I might have added.) A Member of Shop Staff who was about the same age as me intervened: “I know absolutely loads about tiling” he said, guiding the Customer away from me as fast as was socially acceptable, with a backward glance indicating that I should go and stand near something people weren't going to ask advice about. (e.g. a toilet?)

I asked one of the older, friendlier, members of staff who’d Worked in The Shop for 30 years whether the wording on the In-Store signage came from Head Office. (I’d noticed some apostrophe issues.) “No!” he shook his head. “A place in town does them.”

The Crusade

The first few months at the Job were pretty quiet, Prospective Employer; because I was ensconced in a website Team, where I wasn’t allowed access to The Website, under three or four (possibly five or six) Superiors, most of whom didn’t know why I was There and hadn’t asked for me in the first place. Jane, and one or two others, would come over periodically to ask for my advice on grammar or punctuation Issues, and I’d happily part with it. But as this was the first Time since The Language School Job that I’d been treated as an Authority on the subject of English, I began to have Qualms about my Credibility. I recalled the Time that The Cashier on The Banking-English Course had baffled me and Cosmo with questions regarding archaic conjugations of the verb “shall”. I wouldn’t go as far as to refer to my Qualms as “imposter syndrome”, Prospective Employer; because I knew I wasn’t A Bad Writer. At least three Superiors had by now said so; and I had a very expensive Certificate to back them up. But word was getting out that there was a copywriter in Head Office. So I was being visited by Staff fro m all sorts of Departments asking me to help them with editing and proofreading bits of copy for all sorts of Tasks—website-related or not. Some of these were much older than me, and had been taught proper grammar at school; children of my generation (at least those attending State Schools) were not. (Or rather, had not been.) So I was wary of being thought a fraud for not having a ready answer to one of their queries—or, worse still, committing in haste to an answer, in order to please, only to later be proven Wrong.

Notwithstanding my qualms, being Obedient and Cooperative by Nature, I was ordinarily Happy To Help in such instances. But having observed the unexpected value of copywriting as an Intangible Commodity at The DIY Company, Bosswoman # 2 subsequently became very Possessive over me—and probably thus saved me from Coming A Cropper. The Budget for my Time, she said, was allotted to her Team; so I was not to Work on demand, willy-nilly, just because other people’s Departments hadn’t had the foresight to hire Their Own Copywriter. With this in mind, I decided to use the considerable Downtime I’d have as a result of Bosswoman # 2’s Protectionist Approach to my Role to brush up on what I really ought to have known before applying for the Job—let alone being given it: which is to say, English grammar and punctuation. I spent hours on Wikipedia (already a comprehensive and mostly trustworthy Resource by this Time) and reading Style Guides published by The Guardian, The Economist, The Telegraph, and numerous others, parsing Linguistic Rule from Editorial Opinion. And by the time December arrived and a heavily pregnant Bosswoman # 1 had bade or possibly bidden us farewell, I’d authored a weighty 34-page-long “Copy Style Guide” that would not only instruct the merchandising Team as to the “dos and don’ts” of Writing for The Web, but would also serve as A Crash Course on The English Language itself—should any of them ever both find the time and already possess the requisite language skills required in order to read it. I also created an A3 “Copywriting Excellence Matrix” on Excel, colour-coded to chart the Journey of each merchandiser from “awareness” to “competence” and, eventually, “excellence” in the fields of Punctuation, Grammar, Copy-editing, Tone of voice, Branding, SEO, Product naming, Product descriptions, and Product data. And I drew up a list of Banned Words, which I thought were overused on our website, and thus rendered meaningless: like “stylish” and “quality” and “luxury”, hitherto used to describe pretty much everything on The DIY Company’s Website—from packets of nails to garden furniture. 

On one occasion, when Bosswoman # 2 was in the toilet, Jane summoned me to her desk island to Settle A Dispute about the copy for next week’s “hero” on The Homepage—i.e. the main promotional banner greeting Customers to The Website. The text said: 

“1000’s of stylish and quality rugs delivered to your door”.

I wasn’t sure who’d written it, or whose side I might be taking if I passed judgement either way. A Nightmare Scenario, if ever there was one! Faced with such a Dilemma, I made the mistake of Speaking My Mind and said:

“I think it sounds a bit… threatening?”

Jane had written it. So I was out of her Good Books after that. (“Cloud Atlas” and the rest...) But I couldn’t offer an appraisal contrary to what I’d written in my 34-page Style Guide just to help her win an argument with a colleague. Besides, Jane had casually mentioned a few weeks in that I hadn’t been her first choice for the Job. So I didn’t feel like I owed her anything by way of allegiance after that. I suggested that the copy should focus on the breadth of our range of rugs or the fact that we were willing to deliver them—whichever was the key selling point. Also that we lost the adjectives, which I argued didn’t add much by way of description if they applied to each and every rug. (After all: why would we, or anybody else, sell unfashionable or poor-quality rugs?!) I also said they should lose the apostrophe, because it was both Unnecessary and Incorrect.  

Returning from the toilet, Bosswoman # 2 saw another Team using her copywriter again, and staged an intervention. On this occasion she might have rescued me, but if there was clearly an Appetite in the Multichannel Department to be doing copywriting better; surely this was to be embraced? Bosswoman # 2 couldn’t deny my Logic, but still didn’t want me talking to other Teams. So we agreed that I’d put together a weekly Email Newsletter for the Department, focusing on one problematic Issue I’d noticed to be prevalent on The Website.

“Do you think you’d have time to do one every week?” she asked me, incredulously.

I said I could probably find the time, yes. So she gave her consent.

Tuesday January 3, 2012. In Kandahar in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber killed four civilians and a police officer. But in The DIY Company’s Head Office in Suburban Nowhere in The South of England, I pressed “send” on my first “Copywriting Issues” email. The Focus was the discrepancy between “in store” “in-store” and “instore”; all three of which were used on The Website without any heed whatsoever paid to consistency or grammatical context. I colour-coded every reference to adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs, so that Colleagues would be able to enjoy free grammar lessons by reading my emails. I even included one deliberate Typographical Error per email so people could have fun looking for it! Each email was to comprise, and I quote (from the one of these I somehow still have a copy of):

1.       a summary of the issue;

2.       the argument surrounding its contentiousness – a more in-depth look, which many may wish to skip;

3.       a conclusion of recommendations for resolving the issue.

The emails were popular, as you can imagine, Prospective Employer. They were enjoyed by at least three men and one woman who I’d not met before. Some came to chat with me at my desk and to make suggestions for other Frequently Occurring Issues I might want to tackle in future editions. One listed some typographical errors he’d seen on The Product Pages, which I’m sure the merchandisers around me were very grateful for. Alas, before the month was up, Bosswoman # 2 received An Anonymous Complaint that The Copywriting Issues Email was not Relevant to the wider Department, only to our Team.

“But it is relevant,” I protested. “There are mistakes all over the website. Not just on the product pages.”

We eventually agreed that I could continue to produce Guidance in this form; but hosted on a Blog, where it would be much easier for the people who could benefit from it to ignore it. What can I say, Prospective Employer? You can lead a horse to water; but you can’t persuade it of the importance of a standardized approach to spelling and grammar. The only reason I recalled The Copywriting Issues Email at all was because I forwarded The First One from my Work Email to the personal email address I never accessed at work—because all websites you might use for personal reasons, like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, etc. were banned automatically by the Work computers. In other Jobs I might have considered this a breach of my Human Rights. But at The DIY Company I didn’t, because there was so much fun to be had copywriting—and it wasn’t as if they could stop me jotting drafts of poems onto the Notepad app on my Work computer and then emailing these to myself at my personal address. Because how would they know what was a poem and what wasn’t?

The best record I have of my Working Life and of my Personal Life at that time is what I emailed to myself at Home from my Work computer. A lot of these emails are simply “notes to self”. One such example being the addition of five names to the list of celebrities to whom I would send copies of my debut Poetry Book, whenever I got around to publishing that. The names? Jeanette Winterson, author; Brian Sewell, art critic; Michael Landy, conceptual artist; Bill Turnbull, BBC Breakfast news presenter; and Metatron, vocalist and songwriter from the experimental black metal band The Meads of Asphodel.

I’m also reminded of The Christmas Party that was held on a Thursday evening in the nearby Docks Town. The timing made it impossible for me to go home first (due to The Long Commute) so I accidentally drank an entire bottle of Jacob’s Creek Shiraz in a bar alone while reading “A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In” by Magnus Mills. By the time I got to The Christmas Party I couldn’t quite stand up straight, and after about ten minutes of drinking water and trying in vain to make chit-chat with colleagues without slurring, I had to disappear outside to be sick down a back-alley, and thereafter opted to swiftly make for the next train home.

By January I was already emailing myself lists of ex-Colleagues to contact about Freelancing work when the time came. But I used a coded title for the email, just in case. By March I was sufficiently comfortable in my Job Security that I wrote a whole blog post on the Notepad app on my work Computer about how annoyed I was at The BBC Website for using hyphens instead of en-dashes and then having the cheek to rebuff my complaint concerning the matter. (“We do not consider it an issue that requires us to impose convoluted procedures on our staff … Indeed, we are not aware of having received another complaint along these lines.”) I emailed the blog-post to my personal address so that Evening Me could post it on my long-neglected personal blog once I’d bathed Child # 1 and put her to bed.

There’s also a petition to Gilbert and Boots from University to proofread a draft of my first Poetry Book; which Gilbert kindly acquiesced to, but which Boots never replied to. And by the time summer came along, there’s a very long Resignation Letter (which I would later edit down to a more reasonably sized Resignation Letter) and an early draft of a poem about how my Polish grandfather might have been an informer for the Nazis during the Second World War—which I later found out he probably wasn’t—written on Girlfriend # 2’s iPad while eating my lunch alone in The Work Canteen.

But don’t be fooled into thinking I was Slacking, Prospective Employer. There may have been a bit of wedding-planning here and there, and a bit of poetry, and one or two emails to friends and relatives. But by the time we come toward the end of this Job there’s an absolute cascade of Documentation that I was sending to myself with the intention of compiling a Freelance Writing Portfolio in the future. There are quite literally hundreds of pages’ worth of product descriptions, rewritten product category pages, copy-editing for The DIY Company App that was being produced by a Freelance UX guy, plus Style Guides, Word Lists, Tone of Voice documents… In fact, there’s evidence of a lot of Work that I’d completely forgotten I did.

As my Ambitions for The DIY Company’s Website (which I secretly regarded as my Legacy) became more grandiose, and more likely to induce headaches, Bosswoman # 2 came to guard my Time less jealously. Other Teams—even different Departments—were gradually allowed to have more access to me. I was even allowed to work on Homepage copy once or twice to encourage The Ecommerce Team to try out new approaches. I regularly wrote copy for marketing emails. “Make your Diamond Jubilee party a memory to treasure for years to come” was just one example. There are two versions—one for if the weather forecast was good; one for if it was bad—and completely different Products recommended, depending on the scenario. I’ve also found something about how we weren’t going to be selling Busy Lizzies that year in an attempt to prevent the spread of downy mildew; but I fear that might have been a case of “barn doors and bolted horses”.

I invited Bosswoman # 2 for a private chat on The Meeting Banquettes in mid June and told her that I was handing in My Notice because Girlfriend # 3 and Child # 1 and I were moving to Wales. She put her head in her hands and made a loud groaning noise. Probably the exact same noise she’d made less than a year ago when somebody told her I was soon to arrive. The Team had by ten grown tolerant of my presence. I got on with most, and liked the ones that I’d got to know. If any of them disliked me as much as I’d first feared, the y were kind enough to hide it. Bosswoman # 2’s Bossman—an intimidating but witty Scotsman who I’d never spent much Time with—invited me for a meeting later in the week. I thought perhaps he was going to give me A Dressing Down for being A Traitor (or at least A Deserter). I’d been there for about nine months by then. So not exactly Gold Watch Territory; although of course I felt I was within my rights to move on.

The Bossman thanked me for my Hard Work over the past year (he rounded it up, charitably) and told me that in the short Time I’d Worked at The DIY Company, I’d completely changed the attitude of the Department toward the importance of copywriting. And he was sure my Influence would continue to be felt in The DIY Company for years to come. Was that something in my eye, Prospective Employer? Or maybe a little bit of… Job Satisfaction? Nobody had said anything remotely like this to me before upon receiving the news that I was leaving. True, nobody had sacked me either—or even made me redundant from an open contract; at least not since The Garden Centre Job. But I'd generally got the feeling that people got used to me rather than thought I was useful. The Boutique Agency Bossman had attempted to retain me with an offer of Home Working when I left The Great Wen. And I knew The Conference Company Bosswoman had liked me—even though she must have recognized that I both hated that Job and was bad at it. Even The University Bossman had liked me; but he hated his Job by the end, and was quite sure—not unreasonably—that we (i.e. his Team) had all wasted that year of our Working Lives.

By contrast, Bosswoman # 2’s Bossman’s words were so kind that I thought perhaps he was just being A Nice Guy. I wanted to believe that what he said was true; but I doubted that my Influence would last any longer than the portrait-orientation of my PC monitor once I was out of the building. Perhaps I should explain that, Prospective Employer? Early on in the Job I’d discovered that my rectangular monitor could be rotated by ninety degrees, thus offering the ideal shape to display the entirety of an A4 Word Document. I did it as a joke at first. But because my desk adjoined a thoroughfare, people kept noticing it, and asking why I’d done it. 

“I’m a copywriter,” I’d tell them. “So I work primarily with Word documents. It just makes more sense to have it this way around.”

I explained the portrait-orientation of my monitor to so many Colleagues that I eventually started believing this version of events myself. It was like the “150 words on what makes A Good Writer” section of my Style Guide. The last five were “a suitably jazzy waistcoat collection”. That was meant to be a joke too; and it was later highlighted to communicate to The Reader (if anyone ever read it) that even supposed Authorities will tend to slip into subjectivity from time to time, and ought thus to be approached critically. Yet at the same time, I did tend to dress in jazzy waistcoats, flowery shirts and clashing ties; and I was, surely, A Good Writer; if only inasmuch as I was the only copywriter they had employed. I got most of the waistcoats and ties free from Girlfriend # 3’s sister, a costumier in The Film Industry; and Girlfriend # 3 tended to choose my shirts. But the resulting Style or indeed Quality of my outfits was nevertheless unmistakably mine. I wasn’t trying to look like The Office Clown; but in such an enormous, bland, air-conditioned, corporate environment, I had to find a way of Being Me—otherwise I’d have been far too easy to ignore.

Once, our Team had to give a presentation to the whole Department about changes we were proposing to make to the website. Bosswoman # 2 introduced us all. Dominic, one of the more senior merchandisers, did his bit. And I was to introduce myself and tell everyone what I was doing by showing them a short PowerPoint Presentation I’d put together on The Standardization and Optimization of The Product Naming Process. Far from merely introducing myself, I was very nearly shitting myself. I would often start shaking and stammering if I had to speak to more than a couple of people at once. It happened frequently during University classes. It sometimes even happened one-on-one: if the Colleague was unfamiliar, or if I’d accidentally got stuck in my head, imagining all the worst things I could say, and how they might be received. And now I was being told to talk to over a hundred people at once.

People who meet me briefly, Prospective Employer, often assume I’m relatively confident or even arrogant—perish that thought—because of my Unconventional (sometimes Unprofessional) dress, or my lack of readiness (more a lack of ability) to smile artificially but convincingly in order to put people At Ease. Actually, I’m a physically Nervous person who has a tendency to Overthink things and prepares for all scheduled Events by picturing the Worst Case Scenario as a likely outcome. This can cause me to Panic, and—if left Unmanaged over extended periods—will tend to precipitate a full-blown bout of Existential Dread. My Speech Impediment is merely a physical trait resulting from a slight underbite, which was more pronounced when I was young. But I’ll probably never know whether my Physical Nervousness results from my Overthinking, or vice-versa. (I imagine many other Potential Employees feel similarly; but I doubt many would own up to it, Prospective Employer, for fear of being thought A Liability.) All I have to my advantage in situations like this is my difference. So I tend to cling to it, even ham it up if I can. Which was why I opened my semi-prepared Speech by saying:

“I am The Online Copywriter. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

This got a few awkward giggles; if anyone noticed the superfluous additional syllable in the second word of the Shelley quote, they didn’t mention it. I only bring it up now because I was reminded of it by Bossman’s words about my Legacy. Had he remembered the( mis)quote from “Ozymandias”? Was he trying to appeal to my Fragile Ego? Like I said, Prospective Employer. I have a tendency to Overthink. But in most Workplace contexts this Flaw is, I’m sure you’ll agree, less likely to be Fatal than its counterpoint.

Alas, the “Six Month Plan” I submitted to Bosswoman #2 in March would never be completed—because I would not be there in September to see it completed. The document lists six focal areas, delineated as columns: Merchandising copy practice, a “Copy Style Guide” wiki (so people didn’t have to read the document, and could ignore that instead), a “Multichannel copy practice” paper (God knows who was going to read that), the “Copywriting Issues” blog (that nobody ordered), a Company-Wide Copy Practice Proposal (what?), and the final column: “Project Beagle”. For which column each month simply contains a question mark.

Project Beagle

I will not Ramble about Project Beagle, Prospective Employer, because we were on A Need-To-Know Basis about Project Beagle, and none of us needed to know about Project Beagle; because Project Beagle was happening in The Other Room, which was heavily guarded. Project Beagle would involve the creation of a New Website. That much we knew. There was a whole Department at least the size of the Multichannel Department (only part of which existed in order to serve The Exi sting Website) dedicated to delivering Project Beagle. And every now and then the clever and enthusiastic young man who was head of strategy or whatever for Project Beagle—and his female counterpart who I think was head of strategy or whatever for Multichannel—would come in and tell us how Project Beagle was going, albeit in Coded Terms that we mere Business As Usual Staff couldn’t hope to fathom. They would enthuse, crack jokes, share in-jokes, explain why The Project was overrunning even further, and why this was in fact A Good Thing, and then we would go back to our desks muttering.

It wasn’t clear to me what exactly was going to be delivered by The New Website. But I also didn’t care because Girlfriend # 3’s Maternity Leave would be over by the summer; so I was hoping we’d be on our way "Home" to Wales by then. Delivering a New Website for The DIY Company seemed to require about a hundred times as many people as not delivering one for The University had required. And these were all Contractors who were reputed—usually via the medium of muttering—to be Paid a lot better than any of us (except Peter the SAP guy, Peter the SAP guy suggested—more as a likely statement of fact than a boast). There were also hundreds more Staff in “offshore” Teams in Ukraine and India who were referred to in passing. Presumably they were Paid too; but probably much less than any of us because they didn’t have to Commute to Suburban Nowhere. Massive “Gantt charts” were ceremoniously unfurled to the bewildered indifference of Business As Usual. There was much talk of “sprinting”; but all they ever seemed to be doing in there (when I peered through the sometimes-open doors) was to be having interminable stand-up meetings where they’d all ended up leaning against things, because they’d been standing up for too long.

I was supposed to liaise with The Strategy Guy from Project Beagle to see how I could help them in my capacity as a copywriter to ensure that The New Website had some correctly spelled words on it. But He never found Time to stand near me for longer than thirty seconds because he was incredibly busy Advocating for The Project, proudly displaying Gantt charts, sharing in-jokes with his female counterpart, and reporting back to The Department about the presumably expensive fact-finding Business Trip they’d taken to America to look at what DIY Companies over there were getting up to. (To summarize their findings for you, Prospective Employer, the answer was: DIY.)

The Ultrabossman of Multichannel Defected in spring to join The DIY Company’s main Competitor, so he was thus recognized as a Traitor and put on Garden Leave. Then The Strategy Guy from Project Beagle went to seek his fortune in The Great Wen, with a new Job at Facebook. There was woeful muttering about how The Strategy Guy had been “too good for this company”—where Company might as well have meant World; because, for many of them, The Great Wen was Another World. (The Strategy Guy’s female counterpart thereafter grew pale and wan.) A Consultant Who Looked Like A Retired Special Agent Returning For One Last Job was brought in on a Contract basis to replace The Treacherous Ultrabossman, and Staff whispered in disgruntlement about the eye-watering Salary he was allegedly enjoying. The only thing I remember him doing, other than folding his arms and standing with his feet wide apart, as various Conservative politicians had recently begun to on television, was informing us that we were now in fact an “Omnichannel Department” and no longer a “Multichannel Department”. We went back to our desks on that occasion to Google what “Omnichannel” meant; but our Working Lives did not seem to be immediately affected by this revelation, either for better or for worse.

I’d witnessed Wrangling before, Prospective Employer, at the Music Website Job; and I had personally Worked on an ill-fated Website Project Team far too recently to view all this with anything but hard cynicism. But… Did The DIY Company get The New Website it so desperately required? I didn’t ask. And the only one I kept in touch with was Alf, who left the company not too long after I moved to Wales. But The Wayback Machine says that... yes, in fact, it did: only a year and a half after I left.

Good Job or Bad Job?

The DIY Company was a funny place to Work, Prospective Employer. Almost like being back at school; probably because about two thirds of the Staff were local and therefore did use to go to school with each other. From Day One there was a constant hum of Useless Information in The Background about Who was seeing Who, Who used to see Who, Who used to Work Where before they came Here, Who was thinking of Leaving for Somewhere Else; Which One had been on “Come Dine With Me” (the one who told me she’d been on “Come Dine With Me” the first time we met), Which One used to be a glamour model (the one who looked like she used to be a glamour model), Which One used to be fat (the one who ate delightfully pungent steamed broccoli for lunch in the open-plan office every day), Which One was a semi-professional bodybuilder (the one who stood in the kitchen and ate An Entire Roast Chicken every day). Girlfriend # 3 and I had both been concerned about the Parochialism of our new Workplaces when we first left The Great Wen, Prospective Employer. This is nothing to do with Bigotry toward the particular part of The South of England that we’d moved to; only an acknowledgement that Talent Pools in less densely populated Vicinities were likely to be shallower than those in big cities like The Great Wen.

Some of the Staff were pretty shonky; there were almost as many Outright Jobsworths at The DIY Company as there were at The University. Some who had been there for years wouldn’t have been tolerated at similar-sized Organizations in big cities. But most were capable enough; and shared histories and futures are no hindrance to Solidarity, Prospective Employer. Rather the opposite. Besides, it was the non-locals that kept turning Traitor and defecting to Competitors; or simply moving on after less than a year at the Company, like I did. 

Even at The University, I’d found it refreshing—or at least a novelty—to work among people who hadn’t all moved from somewhere else to pursue a great Ambition or Dream, only to have it crushed or shattered and to have ended up sharing an office with me; people who just wanted a Good Job near to their Home, had a Hobby or two, and were getting on with the not altogether serious business of Living. There were people who liked sports; people who ran Social Clubs after hours in the Office; people with lucrative side-lines in wedding photography; people who were planning their own weddings in their downtime; people who were perpetually knackered because they’d just had their first or second child; people who played in bands, but weren’t necessarily expecting or even hoping to become famous as a result; people who kept wine-blogs (well, at least one of them other than me); and, funnily enough, quite a few people who liked DIY. There were probably poets there too, but I never found—or sought—them out. I don’t like to dwell on Demographics, Prospective Employer, because Colleagues deserve to be known for more than their Adjectives. But there was a refreshing age diversity at The DIY Company, which I’d not found in many Jobs in my Professional Life to date. 

The all-singing and all-dancing New Head Office wasn’t as fancy as you might expect. Sure, we had a “cashless canteen”. But the Suburban Nowhere location meant that the nearest train station was over two miles away; a fact I knew well. No one else I knew took Public Transport in to Work. One or two cycled. Bookish, mild-mannered Alf, I was delighted to learn, thundered in on a motorcycle. But almost everybody else drove in—most of them alone, and most arriving and leaving at the same time. The traffic at chuck-out time was horrendous. Peter The SAP Guy (I still don’t know what SAP is, although he did try to explain it to me several times) lived in a faraway village in Somerset (where, he was Proud to relate, PJ Harvey also lived) so he had to drive 100 minutes there and 100 minutes back, every day. When I told him I woke at 5:30am for my Commute he chuckled: “That’s nothing. I wake up at four!” But he was a Contractor; so I gathered he was Handsomely Remunerated for his seemingly herculean efforts. Peter and Alf sat just over from me in what I gathered was a sort of Tech Team. There were a couple of CMS guys who ran one of the CMSs I wasn’t allowed into—the one for the product pages that the merchandisers managed. One of them was in a Local Band, and would share lengthy conversations with Dominic over the top of their monitors about their new(ish) slow-cookers, invariably ending with one or both of them declaring in ecstatic tones that “the meat just falls off the bone!”

I got on well with Alf, the data publishing manager, even though I never understood what one of those was. He was one of the cleverest people I’d Worked with, and—like me—had a creative Hobby that he’d much rather have been doing as his Job. When I crowdfunded my first self-published Poetry Book a year later, he contributed generously. And I’m proud to have four of his excellent ink sketches of corvids on display in the shed-based home-office in which I’m writing this Curriculum Vitæ. Alf was the only other Member of Staff from our desk cluster not to join The Throng in The Giant Lobby that greeted The Visiting Dignitary when he paid a visit to The DIY Company for publicity purposes. (I personally remembered The Visiting Dignitary as (then) Prime Minister, David Cameron, Prospective Employer; but I admit that no amount of Research can confirm this as fact, so it seems unlikely to be What Really Happened; it is surely likelier to have been a board-level employee from the Parent Company.) As for The Merchandising Team… we shared a few pub lunches over the months I was there. And we drove into The Railway Town for an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet one lunchtime for someone’s birthday. (I didn’t drive. Bosswoman # 2 gave me a lift.) 

At first, I was something of A Lost Lamb / Lone Wolf at The DIY Company; but by the time my tenure drew to a close I felt sufficient Solidarity with my Department to know that I’d even miss many of those who were incidental to my Working Life. I thought they’d have had enough of My Kind by the time I left; but (regardless of what they thought about me personally) I was, in fact, to be Replaced. My last Task was to write the Job Advertisement. And I reckon I left some pretty big shoes under the desk for my successor to fill—although probably not literally.

DIY as a Sector is concerned with action and empowerment and is thus inherently on the side of Dignity. My week on The Shop Floor—where I was as much use as a glass hammer—hadn’t felt terribly Dignified, and nor was it the best use of my Talents. But the Job itself was a Status Symbol for me: being able to walk through the doors of Head Office every day knowing I was the resident copywriter felt Good. My Qualms about Working for A Big Company never developed into anything remotely akin to Professional Angst. I’m not sure for how long I could have Worked in such a huge Office, in such an inconvenient location; but I liked the Job well enough to offer to continue to do it Remotely—an offer I knew they’d refuse, but genuine all the same. My initial desire for a Team of copywriters to manage had gradually faded, because I enjoyed the novelty of my Role, and—in a Weird way—the attention it brought me. The Head of The Design Team, who’d also left The Great Wen for a Lifestyle Change, agreed with me that it was ridiculous to have just one Professional Writer working on such a vast website. But he cautioned me early on that Change came slowly at The DIY Company—and I inferred that he’d learnt that The Hard Way. 

There were downsides to the Job: the Corporate Culture meant a lot of Meetings. And at a lot of these Meetings, nothing got done; though a great deal was said. I called just one Meeting—once!—to pin down The Merchandising Team, and make them commit to The Plan outlined in my “Copywriting Excellence Matrix”. The meeting was Bosswoman # 2’s idea; I thought I should just email it to them. But instead I got to hear the newest member of the Team (“Reginald”) reel off about 15 minutes’ worth of cumulative Business Jargon he’d presumably learnt by watching The Apprentice. (Reginald was A Nice Guy, Prospective Employer; but his main Qualification for the Job—according to Bosswoman # 2, who hired him—was that he’d been a backing dancer for JLS; which initialism had to be explained to me, despite my own past life as Editor of a Music Website.) I politely waited for Reginald to finish enthusing about the Omnichannel Paradigm Shift that would facilitate us to really Think Outside The Box (of Low-Hanging Fruit) before asking each of Them in turn to say exactly what they were going to do to help improve the copy on The Website. When it came to his turn he started talking about Synergy and Solutions and Dovetailing, so I said “Great!” and thanked them all, and left.

In my first few months I concede I made little impact on the fortunes of The DIY Company; and, by extension, on the improvement of the homes of The British Public. But among the mass of Work I exported into my personal inbox (that I’d never quite fashion into a Proper Portfolio) there is Hard Evidence of Productivity: Work of the sort I was hired to do, which played its part in the Evolution of The DIY Company’s Website. It would have happened without me, of course: the Professionalization of Ecommerce and the advent of “Content” as something Businesses were willing to spend Money on. I was only A Passenger on That (metaphorical) Bus. (And, to my enduring chagrin, other copywriters were available.) Yes, I concede that my approach at The DIY Company may often have been akin to that of an over-enthusiastic supply teacher. (Which I had also done as a Job, remember, Prospective Employer?) And I’ve no doubt a lot of Colleagues found me annoying; at least as many as thought I was A Force For Good. For what it's worth, I believe I was both, and that it was hard to be The Latter without being The Former. Certainly I found it hard.

In my Farewell Email to the Department I typed the three words I couldn’t have made myself type when I left my three-months-longer Job at The University:

“It’s been fun.”

It had.

It was A Good Job.

Concluding Notes

• In the months leading up to summer 2012, Girlfriend # 3 and Child # 1 and I had been visiting The Landsker County in West Wales with a view to finding A House to “buy” using The Deposit we had left over from The Equity from The Victorian Terraced House in The Great Wen, which had finally sold following a succession of False Purchases, Re-listings, and A Masonry Wasp Infestation. We’d agreed we'd move to Wales some time ago. I still thought of Wales as Home, whether or not it thought of me at all. And Girlfriend # 3 had spent many happy Holidays there in her youth; and for reasons of her own didn't especially want to move back to where she was from. But I didn’t want to return to North Wales either; because I’d never again live in The Villa—and memories of my childhood there were tinged with regret because of The Rupture, and my parents’ eventual divorce. We considered our options, and settled on West Wales—principally because there was a Steiner School there; and Girlfriend # 3 had been enjoying taking Child # 1 to The Mother-and-Baby Group at The Steiner School in The Woodland Town, halfway between The Haven Town and my Workplace. We wanted to Live Rurally, as we’d both done as children—I in North Wales, and she in Cromwell’s County. We went there and back on the M4 over the weekends, with Child # 1 screaming for much of the journey. On our third visit to The Landsker County, the ninth property we visited—an hour before we (by which I mean Girlfriend # 3) had to drive back to England, and a month before her Maternity Leave was ending—was The House on The Corner. A 19th-century farmhouse close to the geographical centre of the county—and not much else. It was cold and damp, and the carpet was horrible. There was moss growing on the walls inside. But it was just within our budget. We’d no time to arrange a second viewing, so we put in an offer.
  

• The Landlord of The Tall House in The Gated Community withheld £300 of our Deposit in order, he said, to fix the broken blinds and clean the mouldy walls—even though the blinds were already broken and the walls were already mouldy when we moved in. Over a decade later, as I was editing this very chapter, he would try to Connect with me on LinkedIn for some reason. And I would reject his advances.
  

• At some point during The DIY Job, I finally settled The Career Development Loan. Twelve thousand pounds over less than five years. About two hundred pounds a month. The Debt probably did more to Hold Back my Career over my years in The Great Wen than The MA Course did to Develop it. But can you put a price on the Experiences you have and the Friendships you make, Prospective Employer? In this case, yes, you can: twelve grand.

[Next chapter]