by Ted Somerset
For a happily unambitious bloke such as myself, a few untaxed cleaning jobs can raise a sufficient, modest income to pay the bills. Your working years coast quietly at the same undemanding level without drama or ceremony. In the way that cloud formations change imperceptably, time can drift by unnoticed.
However, sometimes it hits home that money’s not all work is about. To seem real, time needs more than seasons. Time requires weekends and end-of-year holidays to punctuate it.
After being instantly sacked from one of my jobs for not coming in on Labour Day – “You’re getting cash to clean the bloody building. Public holidays don’t apply to you.” – I realised that job hadn’t been a job at all.
Any real job, however menial, has the minimal protection of the Holidays Act; minimal social recognition that you’re actually a person rather than a service. Being suddenly told that public holidays didn’t apply to me was a dose of social rejection that triggered a little mid-life crisis. Suddenly I urgently desired a job. Not an under-the-table fixed-term contract, but a real job like the factory one I’d left way in back in the eighties. With holidays and sick pay and workmates you got to know a bit and something honest to write on the tax return.
But it can be tricky trying to get a job when you’re 58, don’t drive, and could fit your CV on a cigarette paper. For the millionth time I flicked past the paper’s inaccessible want ads for policy analysts and lawyers and prostitutes towards the Might Just Conceivably be Possible positions at the back. Today there was one:
“Cleaner/Tea person. Vacancy for bright energetic person to clean our offices and cafeteria, make tea, some factory cleaning duties also…”
Occasionally I have found that – inexplicably but somehow – honesty opens doors. I sat down and emailed:
“I’m an experienced cleaner who takes pride in delivering top quality work. I’m an older worker, aged 58. I’m also a regular long-distance runner and non-smoker, fit and healthy in every respect. If you want a steady reliable bloke to keep Achilles Industries a clean and happy workplace, please give me a call.”
After I’d posted the thing I realised I’d written my phone number wrong. Not a good first impression. However, it’s the putting right that counts, so I sent a correction. I thought I’d probably stuffed it, but two hours after that Pam rang and asked if I could come in next day for an interview!
A keen young job-hunting acquaintance had recently told me about modern-day interviews. I spent a restless night rehearsing answers to interview questions like: “What, exactly, makes you think you’d be a good Achilles cleaner?”; “Tell us how you’d cope with a tea-making situation where the client wanted Dilmar and all you had on hand was Darjeeling and Irish Breakfast?” and of course “What about the Treaty?”
Little could be done about my wretched CV, so I decided to lie and say the last interviewers had forgotten to return it.
Next morning I put on a nice shirt, shaved very carefully and set off. On arrival, as prearranged, I went straight upstairs to reception. Pam called me through to her office and sat me down for the interview. Word for word, it went:
“Have you done a bit of cleaning then?”
”Oh yes, I did St Andrew’s school, the Polytech, um… lots of offices…”
“We can only pay about $12 an hour, review it a bit later.”
“That’d do.”
Pam got up. “Come through here and I’ll show you where the vacuum is.”
She showed me the machine and then took me around three other little top offices, telling one of the female occupants, “This is Ted, I think he’s going to be our new cleaner.”
The largest room contained many potted African violets, a TV and a private toilet and was empty. “You have to be a bit fussy about Mr Brixton’s office.”
Pam then showed me the ladies’ office cafeteria, which I didn’t have to do, and the men’s cafeteria, which I did have to do. “And there’s a few toilets and things down on the floor.” She asked if I could start next Monday, and that was it. I had a real job again!
On Monday morning I signed a contract agreeing to start on $12 per hour reviewable in 6 months, or sooner in case of recognisable achievement. Also that the 14-page Achilles Standard Terms of Contract and 5-page Achilles Code of Conduct would apply.
To an experienced cleaner used to Spotless-type workloads, the round was a breeze. A bit of office vacuuming, seven office bins to empty, four upstairs toilets, the canteen to sweep and mop, and tea to make for lunch time and smoko. That, plus dish washup, a bit of foyer glass cleaning, sweeping the factory aisles and the downstairs toilets made up the job.
I was allotted four and a half hours to complete my daily duties. A Spotless boss would have quoted two hours tops to do the lot. You can’t beat working direct for the client.
The Achilles cleaner before me had probably appreciated this too. I have come across a few accomplished cleaners in my time but the Unknown Cleaner who preceded me at Achilles beats them all.
Facilities downstairs off the toolroom were grim. There were but two remaining toilet cubicles not nailed up and labeled Out of Order. Both of those operating survivors featured bright emerald mould and thick brown high-tide marks. Dessicated toilet brushes skulked behind the filthy bowls in silent dismal testimony to their long-term unemployment. The unspeakable urinal handily had a door, so that its sight and smell could be enclosed when not in use. Previous workshop ablution cleaning had apparently consisted of tossing in an occasional toilet roll.
“The lady before you she never do toilets,” one of the guys told me. “She just come in, hide away, smoke, talk to her cell phone.”
By contrast, the upstairs office toilets were very thoroughly scrubbed and Mr Brixton’s special private one was impeccable. The previous cleaner had fully grasped the fact that in a two-tier world whose respective sections never saw each other’s toilets, it was only necessary to clean the facilities of the ruling caste.
The blue plastic jar of medicated Brylcreem in the boss’s private toilet set the time zone. At the dawn of the 1960s, the top office of Achilles Industries would have been state of the art. Now, most of the royal blue carpet and the goldy gloss varnished woodwork was still intact, ditto the textured burnt-orange glasswork and the pink vanities in the Ladies and Gents.
But cracks were starting to show in the leatherette office seating. Even Mr Brixton’s huge black swivel boss’s chair oozed a greasy op-shop patina. Most of the wooden office desks bore computers, but the devices didn’t yet look at home on them; more like someone had temporarily parked them there on the way to their real destination.
There was a similar dated feel to the gloomy factory. A score or so of old Wickman lathes and various ancient metal working devices clustered on a black bumpy floor steeped in oil. Most of the machine tools sat silent; one or two of them were covered in black plastic.
I learned that while an occasional rush order was filled by direct manufacture on site, the place was now more of a warehouse than a production line. The former foundry had become an inward goods store receiving vast amounts of cheap products from China. A couple of years ago there were 45 workers on the Achilles shop floor. Today this was down to a dozen.
Remaining workers said the reduction was achieved gradually, without the complication of redundancy payments. As the Achilles Standard terms of Employment states: “In the event of redundancy you are not entitled to redundancy compensation and none will be paid by the company.”
It appeared that the firm was as good as its word on this one. One worker I talked to who had been there for 15 years was daily expecting the worst, and was immovably fatalistic about his prospects.
“You can’t do anything with that bastard,” he spat, jerking his head towards the offices upstairs. It was an interesting contradiction that he would trash his boss to another worker of four days’ acquaintance, but have no hope in any collective response to layoffs.
At the end of my first week I mentioned my new Achilles job to a car dealer mate of mine. It happened that he knew my new boss very well.
“Old Brixie! Top bloke!” he enthused. “He’s adjusted his business very cleverly over the last few years. Loves his cars. I’ve had one or two dealings with him, he’s got a few Mercs and Range Rovers but he’s basically a Jaguar nut. He’s got a nine car garage!”
Read the following chapters: chapter 2; chapter 3; chapter 4; chapter 5; chapter six
Redline 