Curriculum Vitæ: a working life story, Chapter 20: “What is your greatest weakness?”

[Previous chapter] [Ad Agency # 2: August – September 2013 (eight weeks)]

By summer 2013 it was becoming increasingly apparent that Wife #1 was pregnant again. Wife # 1 was thus unable to travel to The Great Wen or The Fairy Place for Work—both of which she’d been doing semi-regularly for the past year. And I was strongly encouraged to find Work; which alas, because of my lack of ability to secure regular Work From Home, meant once more looking to The Great Wen.

The relative ease with which I could find Work in The Great Wen now that I didn’t want it, having spent so long living there and failing to do just that, was an irony not lost on me, Prospective Employer. Since going Freelance, I’d been offered plenty of Contract Roles—and even more Full-Time Jobs—that I’d have given one of my little fingers for back in 2007, ’8, or ’9. But these were useless to me now I lived in The House on The Corner in The Landsker County in West Wales, as it took me about eight hours to get to The Capital of The Country That My Country Was Owned By. What was more, none of them allowed for Flexible Working and shared childcare commitments; let alone Remote Working—even for part of the Contracted Time. 

I look back at my CV at this Time, and over the next few years, and think: blimey, I didn’t do much Work at all back then, did I? But we were living in an only-semi-modernized house in what anyone but a third-generation+ local would recognize as The Middle of Nowhere, we had a tottering two-year-old daughter to entertain (with another child on the way), Terrible Internet, and a repeat rodent infestation. Yes, Wife # 1 got a lot more Freelance Work than me, and hers was better-Paid than mine; because she was older than me and had actually managed to progress with a Career of sorts before she met me and I subsequently ruined it. But there were occasions upon which our finances were sufficiently dicey for Wife # 1 to be willing to be left alone with a young child in a house that she thought might be haunted so that I could use my comparatively inferior earning power in order to help us Make Ends Meet. On this occasion I simply saw a recruiters’ online ad for a “community manager” at Ad Agency # 2, pointed out that I’d done the exact same thing very recently to a satisfactory standard, told them my fee was £260 a day, and was duly invited for an interview by the Bossman of The Social Media Team at Ad Agency # 2. I got on my metaphorical bike, a real train, and headed back to The Great Wen—specifically, to my father’s spare box room in the north of the city.

The role

The Interview with The Social Media Bossman—or rather The Community Management Bossman—of Ad Agency # 2 was more a Briefing than an interrogation. Ad Agency # 2 needed somebody to start Working on a beer Account immediately if not sooner. So all I had to do was appear in the right location at the right time, fully clothed, and nod occasionally. Bossman talked about the pressing need to resurrect a neglected Facebook account for The Beer Brand so as to bring it in line with the new flagship campaign that was driving The Beer Brand’s Global Strategy—which it turned out was much more complicated than simply making and selling beer, Prospective Employer. It wasn’t The Beer Brand’s main Facebook page; but the Facebook page for some kind of island that The Beer Brand had purchased or rented for Unspecified Reasons at an Unspecified Time in the past; some time between the Upper Palæolithic and Morgan Tsvangirai losing the 2013 Zimbabwean General Election to Robert Mugabe.

I found out when I turned up for the first day of the Job proper on the following Monday that it was in fact The Beer Brand’s Ireland Facebook page that I was looking after, which made a lot more sense now that I saw it written down. I was to be sent “assets” by The Beer Brand’s parent company’s team in Ireland, which I would then adapt for Facebook, and schedule in a content calendar for posting over the next couple of months. The theme of the campaign wasn’t Beer, obviously; it was Music. But in addition to this adherence to the global music-themed campaign, there was also an Ireland-specific Competition we were running that was to invite applications from Customers for a corporate sponsorship toward their Ideal Job. This was meant to loosely tie in with the Follow Your Dreams vibe of the Global Strategy; so even if there had been people in Ireland telling us that their ideal Job was to be The Freelance Community Manager for The Beer Brand’s Facebook page (which was my fear, of course) they weren’t likely to be shortlisted and allowed to face the public vote. I don’t even remember who did the shortlisting, but it wasn’t me, nor anyone in Ad Agency # 2; so I presume it was someone in Ireland. You can imagine the approach: no lawyers, no police, no builders, no social workers, no ambulance drivers, no politicians, no gynaecologists; none of that sort of thing. It had to be the sort of thing that looked good on a Facebook page, and that The Beer Brand could do a good impression of having single-handedly achieved for the Customer via a short series of embedded branded YouTube videos. There was a cash prize of fifty thousand euros too, so it was A Good Competition—I’d have entered it if I was in Ireland.

I watched loads of video applications to weed out anything unsavoury or otherwise against the Brand Values. I came across one very long, very well-made, very desperate application—really more like a plea—from a guy who Worked in an Office and said he hated his Working Life and “a monkey could do what I do”. He wanted to be a children’s book-writer, and said this competition-entry was his “last hope”. He was 42. He’d tried everything to change his life and follow his dream. He was depressed. And he’d written and illustrated a children’s book (which looked pretty good). So he was entering into a competition to win his Ideal Job as an author of children’s books—a competition that was sponsored by a beer brand.

Needless to say, that guy didn’t get on the shortlist. The shortlist chosen by the folk at The Beer Brand comprised a videographer, a fashion designer, a photographer, an artist/surfer, and a film-maker. They covered a suitable geographical spread across the country; although I couldn’t help thinking that having three out of five of them wanting to point cameras at things and press a button was a bit of a limiting depiction of the “Ideal Job” spectrum as represented by over a thousand competition entries. Nevertheless, there were doubtless all manner of Eligibility Criteria to consider. The shortlist went to a public vote over the next couple of weeks, and digital democracy did its work. Branded videos were produced for each of the people on the shortlist; they’d pose and smile with the tools of their trade (mostly cameras) and soundbites would be cut and edited along with a suitably uplifting soundtrack. There was no mention of beer, drinking beer, selling beer, intoxication, or anything of that sort. And it looked like the artist/surfer would probably emerge as the victor.

It was a result that would please as many people as can realistically be pleased by such things. He seemed like a nice, normal kind of guy, with a genuine passion for what he did—both the art and the surfing. Admittedly, he already seemed to be doing both of these perfectly well without the intervention of a global corporation (and a quick Google reveals he’s still doing them now) but the money and publicity would give him a bit of a boost, and he’d fulfil his end of the bargain by serving as a de facto ambassador for The Beer Brand. His paintings were colourful, vibrant and abstract: of indeterminate technical Skill, but with an undeniable aesthetic appeal; a celebration of individualism and certitude projecting the comforting if perhaps unrealistic notion that we might all achieve satisfaction in life if we simply had the courage and conviction to be ourselves. (And, at least implicitly, to occasionally drink some mass-produced lager.)

But he didn’t win! The videographer won. A guy who liked car-racing, but couldn’t personally do it for whatever reason; so he’d decided he wanted to film motorsports events instead. And, for whatever reason, he was able to convince a few hundred more people to vote for him than the artist/surfer guy did, or indeed any of the others. So he won. And everyone congratulated him, each other, and themselves. The Account guy who sat over the desk from me, who I hardly ever saw, told me he was impressed with my “client-facing skills”—i.e. my ability to sit next to him and talk loudly and clearly at a weird-shaped telephone in the middle of a table in an otherwise empty room. For my part, I was impressed with his ability to disappear from The Office every time I blinked.

There was lots of downtime from The Beer Brand over the four weeks I worked at Agency # 2, so I was used to help out with some other Clients that the team normally dealt with to free them up for newer projects. I crowd-sourced (AKA nicked) a lot of inspirational visual content for The National Tourism account of a major North American country. That was pretty easy Work; except for the time I posted an agricultural landscape with the caption “Hay bales, as far as the eye can see” and several hundred irate farmers immediately began peppering the Facebook page with comments like “Not a single hay bale in this picture!” and “I think you mean ‘straw bales’. Maybe get your eyesight tested!” and “If you’re going to work on [The National Tourism account of a major North American country]’s Facebook page, you really ought to be able to tell the difference between hay and straw!”  

I also spent some time putting together Social Media Content Calendars for a major oil company that I’d worn a free pin-badge in protest against when I was on The Stop The War March as a university student, some years ago—that Content was mostly about how much The Oil Company liked the environment actually; despite what you might think. (And I felt nothing, Prospective Employer: nothing.) There was also a car brand that was posting stuff about films (not cars), which I briefly helped out with but wasn’t very good at; probably because I know nothing about cars and not much more about films. The rest of my time was spent making use of my tried-and-tested “writing in character” skills, by maintaining a Facebook page on behalf of one of The Beer Brand’s parent company’s other flagship alcohol brands. To summarize: it was a character that was popularly considered to be a rum-drinking pirate; but who could not—for Brand Values reasons—be referred to as a “pirate”, and whose associated product could not—for Legal reasons—be referred to as “rum”. 

Arrrrr, me hearties!

Good Job or Bad Job?

I won’t dwell on the ins-and-outs of Agency life here, because you don’t get much of a sense of that as a Freelancer. It was pretty chaotic. One of my Account people seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown due to an unsustainable workload following the unceremonious firing of his colleague on the first day of my tenure, and the other one was usually in Ireland. People were being routinely fired (with varying degrees of politeness or curtness) from the first day I was there. Indeed, it was almost as chaotic as Agency # 1, but with the important difference that because I was a Satellite member of an existing Community Management Team, there was a lot more in the way of Solidarity to be had in the few weeks I was ensconced there. The social strategy guy—a northerner w ho I’ll call Pete—was a Manic Street Preachers fan, and encouraged me to listen to their new album “Rewind The Film”, which became their first album since “The Holy Bible” that I’d really got into. The Bossman had what I suppose you would call a “wicked” sense of humour. He spent a good deal of the time I was there compiling an extensive list of amusing if sometimes borderline abusive nicknames for Colleagues in the wider Department, which some of the Team would enthusiastically contribute to, while others—presumably for Political reasons—seemed less keen to get involved.

I had the notion that because I was in The Great Wen for two months without Wife # 1 and Child # 1 (not to mention the imminently due, but as-yet-nonexistent, Child # 2) I should probably write some kind of novel while I was there. But the Commute wouldn’t allow that; the tube as far as Camden was standing-only on the way back to my father’s flat, and the majority of my Commute constituted a brisk walk along Regent’s Canal, where I’d marvel at the mountains of knobbly, parasite-infested knopper-galls piling up by the toe-path; indeed, I don’t think I saw a single healthy acorn shed along the canal that autumn. On the tube I read Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, and re-read a bunch of Magnus Mills novels I found in my father’s spare room; most of which I’d first read on holiday as a teenager, when my parents were still together, and before I’d left for The University. Although I’d a comfortable double-bed in my father’s Box Room, I had no “Room of One’s Own” as such, because there was nowhere in it to balance my knackered old Acer laptop. Besides, my father gradually made it clear that if I was to impose on his hospitality for two months, I was at least going to repay the favour by spending each evening watching back-to-back episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” with him, and simultaneously drinking as many cans of his lager as was logistically possible. (But not the lager I was being paid to manage the Facebook page of.)

It wasn't an unpleasant way to pass the time. I desperately missed Wife # 1 and Child # 1, and I felt guilty that I wasn’t there to help out in some of the last few months of The Second Pregnancy. But because I was finishing late on Friday and starting first thing on Monday, there was barely enough time to get from The Great Wen to The House on The Corner and back during one weekend; and I’d have “wasted” a good deal of the Money I was making to help Wife # 1 have some Maternity Leave in the process. I went home once in the middle of the Job, when there was a Bank Holiday. I met a guy on the packed-out train who kept quoting Alan Partridge (and thus reminded me of Townie Tim from my teenage Corner Shop Job). We shared some wine. He worked in finance, and told me that after three years in his Job, to the best of his understanding, it appeared that the entire Global Financial System was a Scam designed to ensure that the wealthy remained wealthy and that the poor remained poor. “Abso-bloody-exactly!” I agreed, not really knowing whether he was a reliable narrator or not; but seeing no reason to disagree.

There was no more Dignity in pretending to be a rum-based-spirit-endorsing historically fictional privateer on Facebook for Money than there was in pretending to be a fictional Italian hot-chocolate monster from the 1970s on Facebook for Money. But, then again, neither was there any less. And I was getting ten pounds more per day for this Job; or whatever was left of that after The Umbrella Company had removed whatever sum it required from and added whatever value it provided to the equation; about which latter matter I never quite achieved clarification. I wonder what happened to all those baby wasps that ate their way out of those knopper galls along Regent's Canal. How many survived? How many thrived? How many procreated before they died? How many of those parasitic insects “added value”—or worried about what value they’d added—to their environment? I produced a lot of Content in this Job. A lot of Digital Content that only existed on computers. Maybe that nice Irish surfer guy got a couple of exhibitions in a couple of galleries; not because of me; but partly due to work I’d done, because I was told to, and which I agreed to do, because of the offer of money. Maybe some people bought some beer or some crude oil or went on holiday to a major North American country or drank a drink that for legal reasons couldn’t be marketed in our country as rum—and maybe just some of those people did some of those things just partly because of something I typed or uploaded to the internet. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll never know.

We went out for a party on a boat one night. An all-staff thing. I drank more than I probably should have, given that when you’re Freelancing it’s a bit like you’re constantly Interviewing for the Job you’ve already got. But I was on a boat, to be fair. And I wanted to enjoy it. And at least I wasn’t sick this time, like I had been at The DIY Company’s Christmas party. (Progress, Prospective Employer: learning from my mistakes.) A Professional Actor had been hired to dress up like The Character that we weren’t allowed to call a pirate, from the packaging for the drink that wasn’t legally allowed to be called rum. And he was there to party with us! That was pretty weird, I can tell you, Prospective Employer. He didn’t use his real name, only the name of The Character from the Product. He drank, he laughed, he smoked—although not indoors, obviously—and he danced and swung his arm in a jovial manner, and he said things like “Arrrr”. He was generally charming and personable and conducive to A Party Atmosphere. I asked him what his Job was like, at one point, when nobody else was within earshot—out of Morbid Fascination. He replied with a theatrical wink that being Paid to Party with Agency Staff was A Good Job; but that you couldn’t make your whole Living out of it, so he had to support this ideal Job with Serious Acting Work from Time to Time. I have no way of knowing whether he was acting when he gave me that answer to my question; that’s the trouble with actors, Prospective Employer: they are inherently Unreliable Narrators; the more so the better they are at their Job.

Bossman told me I’d done A Good Job; but somewhat enigmatically added, during a conversation on (what I think was) the prow of the boat, that I was “too intelligent to work in this industry”. In the absence of other Industries queueing up to employ me, I took that to mean I hadn’t done A Good Enough Job, somehow. Back in The Office, on the last day, Bossman’s Bossman asked me if I’d like a Full-Time Job at Ad Agency # 2. I said that yes I would, if I could Work From Home—because why couldn’t I, if the clients were mostly in Ireland and Canada; and those that weren’t, I only ever spoke to on a phone? “Where do you live?” he asked, puzzled by my reticence to enjoy the office with the rest of them. West Wales, I said. “Fuck!” he said. I know, I said: too far to commute on a regular basis. So he said he’d see about that and get back to me; which I knew by now meant “no chance”. So I left with my suitcase on wheels for the train-station with the statue of the bear from the children’s book, and I bought a chicken katsu curry and a can of something that couldn’t legally be called “rum and coke” for the train.

These Jobs were paying better than any Jobs I’d done before. And in many ways they were easier. And in some ways, not least in that people were telling me I was good at them, they could be Fulfilling. In this particular Job, Prospective Employer, I might even say I made Friends. Some of whom at the time of writing I still talk to—on Twitter, once or twice a year. But…

I kind of enjoyed it. But I still think it was A Bad Job.

Concluding Notes

• In late November, 2017, Wife # 1’s youngest sister came to stay. The latest in a succession of relatives offering to babysit Child # 1 in case Child # 2 decided to make an appearance. And, on this occasion, make an appearance Child # 2 finally did. I don’t think she was as late as Child #1, who had been more than a fortnight overdue. And she didn’t take as long as Child # 1 in the process of arrival itself; in fact, I almost missed the moment of delivery while out picking up some snacks from the petrol station in The Retail Park next door to The County Town Hospital. There was less pressure on me this time because nobody was going to ask me to conduct an impromptu sexing of the newborn. We’d already had a couple of scans and been told that she was another she. And we had a name ready, like the first time. So my Role was limited to snack-procurement, and being there, while Wife # 1 did everything else. 
  

• In the months that followed, Wife # 1 would be tied to The House on The Corner, and to the new baby, and—more often than she’d have liked—to the desk in The Cold Room. I didn’t go away to Work for a while after Child # 2 arrived. The relative merits to the Financialization of my Time when compared with Wife # 1’s were negligible; so as long as She was still getting Work she could do Remotely, it made little sense for me to be seeking Employment in The Great Wen and leaving her with the children. As long as Wife # 1 could breastfeed Child # 2 in-between conference calls—which she’d already proven she could with Child # 1—I was to take on The Lion’s Share of childcare “going forward”. A year in, though still mostly toothless, Child # 2 would discover Solid Food, and swiftly abandon her Mother’s Milk in favour of It. From that moment, although both may well have benefited equally—if not more—from their mother’s Time and Love, the children were rarely to be given the luxury of that choice; I would be their Primary Carer, and their Care would be my main Job. But that unpaid Job will not get its own chapter in this CV, because Unpaid Childcare is not recognized as Proper Work in our culture.
  

• Offers for further community management Roles came in thick and fast during the Ad Agency # 2 Job. That’s how LinkedIn Works; or at least how it Worked then. But Employers and Recruiters alike invariably wanted me to Live in, Commute to, or Relocate to The Great Wen; none of which was possible—let alone desirable—to us at that Time. I had a few bits-and-bobs of copywriting Work that I could fit around the nappy-changing (Child # 2) and parent-and-toddler groups (Child # 1). But it wasn’t until The Good Recruiter popped up in my inbox again that another Regular Job came my way…

[Next chapter...]