Interview with a Danda

See what I did there? Interview with a vampire, interview with a Danda… Here are a few basic facts about your favourite Danda before we get started.

1. He likes ice cream.
2. He drives a taxi.

Hello, Danda. How are you feeling on this fine Sunday morning?
Yeh. Alright.

Rumour has it that you recently watched The Sweeney starring Ray Winstone. Was it your opinion of this film?
Unprintable.

What is the silliest thing anyone has ever asked you in your taxi?
I was driving under the Picadilly underpass with some Americans in the back and one of them said to me, “Is this the tunnel where Princess Di was killed?”

Regale us with a story from yesterday’s taxiing.
One of our local colourful characters, Jeannie, was spotted walking down the middle of the road waving her hands at cars to try and stop them. She was walking all shuffly because her knickers had fallen down around her ankles. I did not stop for her, unfortunately.

How do you feel about Laura’s new project in which she aims to live more responsibly?
So far, the cooking’s good.

What is your favourite book in the world?
Well, the books that I can read and re read and still enjoy almost as much as the first time I read them, are the Flashman books.

Would you say you have become “reliant” on tea, much as one would on drugs?
Yes.

What is your favourite thing Laura has cooked?
Oo, so many to choose from. Er. Thai chicken curry.

Why won’t you let Laura have a chicken in the garden?
Cause I’m mean.

What is your opinion of Laura’s blog and is it your favourite blog in the world?
Laura does a blog?!

How do you feel about breakfast?
Don’t eat breakfast.

And now, the question that stumped Gordon Brown in the incident now known as BiscuitGate…. What is your favourite biscuit?
Chocolate digestives. No problem with that one.

…Cor, is that it, Laura? Not exactly Jeremy Paxman, are you? There was no really hard questions at all was there.

And that, my friends is the end of this interview with Danda. I feel we can all learn something from the things we’ve read here.

Figure this one out!

I had a slightly mental dream again, everyone. Get your dream analysis heads on and figure this one out.

So I was doing a dissertation in the dream. It was about migration and what encourages it, or something like that. I had printed the subject of the dissertation in big purple letters then cellotaped it into a lined pad that I was taking notes on.

Somehow, by who-knows-what genius on my part, I had organised an interview with Prince William and Prince Harry for my research. I met them in a little pub somewhere with one of my friends, I don’t know who. This friend had brought along one of her friends who just wouldn’t shut up, basically. She was rabbiting on about the environment and the state of the country and what were the princes going to do about it and didn’t they have a responsibility and blah blah blah.

At first I let her go on and on because I was hoping she’d give me a go. Eventually I just stopped her and got all stroppy. I was like, “Ok, could you give it a rest? I don’t know if you realise but I arranged this meeting. I’ve got a dissertation due and I need to interview them as part of my research. I mean, these guys don’t have very much time so could you let me get on with my stuff now, please?!”

Suitably admonished, she stopped talking but laughed at me a bit. The princes looked a bit surprised at my outburst but told me to start with my questions.

So I flipped to the page in my notepad where I had cellotaped the title of the dissertation and I couldn’t find it! It was my turn to talk and I couldn’t find, nor remember, the dissertation title! I knew it was something about migration.

I kept trying to ask them stuff from memory, I was going, “O, it’s about migration and how we encourage it in this country.”

They were going, “Immigration? O yeh, and the benefit system?” The loud mouth sitting next to me kept saying things about immigration and immigrants.

I was getting all annoyed but trying to be polite about it, given that I was chatting to the princes. I was going, “No. Not immigration. Migration. It’s not about immigrants as such, it’s slightly different.”

The princes were waiting for me to tell them what it was about but I was flipping through and through my notepad and couldn’t find the dissertation title.

Then they had to go and Prince William took out a notepad and jotted down his expenses, paying for everyone’s drinks, then they left.

And then, on the floor, in a pile of papers, I found the dissertation title and I realised it wasn’t specific enough. It didn’t really have a clear focus. I started to worry about the deadline being in April as it’s March now and there’s not much time and I didn’t have anything written yet.

I text my friend Sophie (who was in the last crazy dream) to ask the due date then I heard someone calling my name and it was another friend Bianca, by some chairs. She waved me over and everyone I went to uni with was there, plus one girl I went to school with. Everyone looked a bit upset and sniffly as it was our last day at university but I just kept thinking about how my dissertation didn’t have a focus and what on earth could I write about.

By the chairs but a little way off was a policeman looking stressed. I started imagining his thought process and decided to write my dissertation like a diary of the policeman’s thoughts. Then I realised that’s more a story than a factual investigation. I played with a few more ideas but couldn’t settle on any.

Then my alarm went off. For the first few seconds, I thought about what I could write for my dissertation. Then I remembered I finished studying last year, there was no dissertation. Phew!

Wierd.

Any ideas, people?

Why Kingston University probably hate me

My relationship with Kingston University has been strained, to say the least. I first applied for a course there way back in 2006, when I was looking at undergraduate courses. I visited it one day, to have a look around and will always remember passing somebody on a path and overhearing them say something like, “This uni is so rubbish…” as they passed me. It felt like an omen. My first choice uni accepted me anyway, so I didn’t go to Kingston, as they were my back-up.

Then, late last year, I decided to apply for a PGCE with them, as they had quite a good reputation for the course. I again put them second and a different university first. I was surprised, therefore, when I got a letter from Kingston University asking me to come for an interview, before I got anything from my first choice university. I called up UCAS, the people who process and send out your applications to universities. I asked if something was wrong and if my first choice uni had my form.

And of course they didn’t! On the application form, you list your first choice UNDERNEATH your second choice. So I had put my choices the wrong way round.

UCAS said they would have to withdraw my application from Kingston Uni before they could send it to the other one. I would have to call Kingston and tell them to stop my application.

The phone call went something like this.

“Hi, I just need to speak to someone about my application for the PGCE.”
“Yes, I can help you with that.”
“Ok, I need to withdraw it. There’s been a problem on my form so I need to correct the mistake and then send it out again.”
“O, right. What’s the problem on your form?”
“I just, erm, it’s a problem with my choices.”

(Awkward, don’t want to say, “I put you first by accident but I don’t want you, I want someone else.”)

“Right, so what’s the problem with your choices then.”
“….Erm, it’s just… Erm… They’re in the wrong order.”
“Ok, so what’s the problem with the order.”
“…Erm. I, erm, put Kingston first and I meant to put the other university first.”

There it was. I’d said it. I’d said, you’re my back up, I don’t really want you. Now can you give me my form back so I can take it to the university I actually want to go to.

Awkward phone call.

She tried to persuade me to come to the interview I’d already been offered, because if my first choice university didn’t want me, it would have to go back to Kingston anyway, so that way, they’d already know whether they were going to offer me a place on the course. I said I’d try to change my shift at work because it was the next day and a bit late notice. Someone could cover but from 9am so I called back to ask if I could come a bit late, she sounded irritated but said it was fine. Then there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with workmates and I realised I couldn’t take the day off at all. So I called back and said I couldn’t come. So I’ve annoyed them. I’ve really annoyed them.

Then my first place university DOES reject me. And so my application goes back to Kingston Uni! They offer me an interview but when I call up to accept, they say there’s no record of them offering me an interview. Their system tells them I’m down as having been rejected.

I email someone to ask what the confusion is. I have a letter for an interview. Their system says they’ve rejected me. In the end, they kind of say I can come to a group interview day, I think to get me off their backs.

I go along and spend the day using three words to describe myself and what I feel makes a good teacher and other such nonsense. I felt like I did ok. We were told we’d get a letter in a week.

The next day, I get an email from them saying no thank you.

Whoops.

I think they hated me by the end of it all…! I’ve also got a feeling I was allowed on the interview day just to get me to shut up and stop calling and emailing!

The moral of this story? Don’t be an idiot with your application form. And don’t make it really obvious you don’t want something, if you might need to later pretend you really do want it.

The worst manager I’ve ever had

A little while ago, I worked in a shoe shop. It was not a good job. Well, let me qualify that statement. It was an alright studenty job but the manager was… I’m thinking of a polite way to put it. She was just a bit rubbish really.

 

You know when you can’t understand how someone got to the position they did. It was like that with this manager. I was constantly puzzled by her. She was confident and took charge etc. She just didn’t seem to understand things people said. Simple things. And she was quite rude, but I think we call that being ‘a bit rough around the edges’ nowadays.

 

Anyway, I should have sensed all would not be rosy in the world of shoes in my initial interview. You know how, usually, the interviewer will direct questions at you and it’s for you to answer, talk about yourself, your knowledge, sell yourself a bit? Well, in this interview, she talked for probably 60% of the time. Now that’s wrong isn’t it? She already doesn’t get what the interview is for.

 

Almost at the end of the interview came the killer question that should have told me not to accept the job when she called to offer it. She said something along the lines of “Can you tell me about an experience you have had of receiving bad customer service.”

 

And I replied that, since I’ve worked with the public for years, I know that often it’s nothing to do with the actual customer, it’s the one before who annoyed you, or something just happened elsewhere, you just broke a plate, or you’re tired. There are plenty of reasons why someone’s grumpy. So when I go somewhere, if I don’t get good service, I don’t take it personally really.

 

She looked at me, blankly. She didn’t know what I was talking about. So she said to me, in a let-me-slow-this-down-because-you’re-too-thick-to-understand voice, “No darlin, it means when you’ve got bad customer service somewhere else. Not when you’ve given bad customer service.”

 

I wanted to say ‘YEH I KNOW YOU STUPID WOMAN! DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME.’

 

Instead I said, “Yeh, I mean I don’t really remember negative customer experiences because I don’t take it personally. I’ve worked with the public for ages so I know what it’s like and sometimes you don’t give your best customer service and it’s nothing to do with the customer.”

 

“No, okay,” she says, taking a deep breath, “What it means is, you’ve gone somewhere else to buy something and the person doesn’t give you good customer service. Not when you’ve given someone else bad customer service. Do you see what I mean?”

 

It was un-be-liev-able! She was really really talking down to me. I could see her mind ticking away, thinking, ‘how am I going to make this girl understand the question? I was like, I DO! I’M ANSWERING YOUR QUESTION! It’s that YOU don’t understand ME. But, of course, I’m in the interview, I want the job, the only way to explain properly is by being rude to her, which I can’t do. I was about to start my second year of a postgraduate course that was costing me a lot of money so I thought it would help to just have a little extra coming in. It had been advertised as 8 hours a week. Easy peasy.

 

So instead of trying to explain again, as she apparently couldn’t hear (maybe she left her ears at home, maybe that’s the problem), I just went, “No, I don’t remember receiving bad customer service.”

 

I mean, what did she think I thought was happening? Did she really think that I thought she was saying to me, ‘Have you ever given bad customer service?’ and I was going ‘Yes, all the time, because sometimes you have bad days, dont you?’ As if, in an interview, you’d really be asked that! And as if I’d really answer in the positive. When I’m interviewing for a job!

 

She was just plain rude sometimes too. She was fitting a little girl for some school shoes and the girl had hold of the one shoe which was from the shop floor and she was saying to the manager, in her little five year old voice, “But there’s only one of these.” As five year olds do, they don’t understand the ins and outs of how buying shoes works. And the manager, super irritated, snapped at her “Yeh! I’ll get the other one from the stockroom!” At a five year old! Ridiculous.

 

She would also sometimes ‘teach’ me things, to train me. She would ask me how I would usually do something, register a transfer of stock to another store, perhaps. I would tell her my version, which was guesswork as no-one had taught me properly, and it obviously wasn’t right. She’d go, “No, ok, we’re going to start again. What’s the very first thing you do? You’ve got to transfer shoes to the Notting Hill branch. What’s the first thing you do?” I’d say whatever I did, which was wrong. And she’d go “No, what do you do first, before that?” And I didn’t know. So I’d say it again.

 

She wouldn’t stop this and go, ‘Right, well let me show you how to do it properly, then you’ll know.” She just kept saying, “But what do you do before that? First?”

 

Inevitably, during this nonsense version of a training session, a customer would come over needing help, she’d run off and do that and we’d never revisit the problem.

 

When I finally left, six weeks later, the assistant manager said I was their shortest staff member ever. I was shocked, six weeks felt like a lifetime, I didn’t know how all the others coped being there longer.

 

I had asked for a day off the following Monday, which was about a week and a half away. My official days were Tuesday and Wednesday so I was actually doing extra hours that day. Given that it was about nine days away, I thought it was more than enough time for a place which has about twelve members of staff, all pretty flexible. At the end of my shift I approached the manager and said the following Monday would be a problem and would I be able to get it off?

 

“Nope!”

 

I’m sorry. I didn’t really know what to do with that answer. I just kind of stood there. There was no way I could work and even if I could get out of the other thing, I didn’t really want to go to the shoe shop. By this point, I was starting to dread it.

 

“It’s too late notice!” she said. “Can’t do that. No.”

 

The assistant manager, who was standing next to her, tried to be helpful. “Maybe Rachel could do that shift?”

 

“No, Drew. People should be allowed their days off. I can check the rota later,” she said, in her most doubtful voice, “but for now, it’s a no.”

 

I couldn’t believe it. I just kind of nodded and, as it was the end of the shift, got my bag and left. I went home, checked my contract for my notice period, and wrote my letter of resignation straight away, which said something about the ‘inflexibility of the shift patterns’ and that I ‘had not enjoyed my experience of working here as much as I had expected.’ I gave some obligatory nonsense at the end about my school year starting again and too much work but I just put that in for politeness sake.

 

What an awful awful woman. She used to tell me about her and her boyfriend going motorbiking at the weekends and she wore those fit-flop things which are the most hideous things ever.

 

She also called me Lauren the entire time I worked there.