ryuuzaki's Blog

I come before you today to talk about the wonder that is www.graze.com.  A colleague at work pointed me towards this brilliant website.  Here, you can order boxes of healthy snacks which are delivered straight to your desk as many times per week as you want (at £2.99 a pop).

The website is incredibly user-friendly, and you can easily see and rate all of their products.  Based on your preferences, Graze sends you three or four little cartoons of different snacks, all sealed within a little recyclable cardboard box.  Because you can rate your items, if you dislike any foods you can let Graze know so that they will never send them to you.

My first box arrived this morning.  It contained four small boxes containing the following:  American nut mix (almonds, pecans and Brazil nuts), Korean chili rice crackers, yogurt covered apricots and dried raspberries.  All of them were incredibly fresh and utterly delicious.

I'm set to receive a box every Wednesday.  I think it's going to become the high-point of the working week for me.

I finally got my results today and so know for a fact that I have passed my MA course in English Literature and Philosophy.  I don't (technically) graduate until July 2010 as my University only hold ceremonies once a year, but it's nice to know that my year of hard work was worth it.

Yesterday, we got a threatening letter (posted by hand) through our door.  The TV license people have been sending us threats since we moved in, which is somewhat odd as we didn't have an aerial and so had been watching nothing but DVDs. 

However, this letter threatened us with legal action if we did not pay for a TV license.  This was slightly annoying but as we had intended to eventually pay the fee anyway we decided we may as well do it now so as not to receive any more of these letters.

Thus, now with freeview, we have watched nothing but The Simpsons and re-runs of Friends for the whole evening.  Money well spent, I think ;)

I observed the following event this afternoon as I walked back to work. 

I had whipped out in my lunch break to go to the post office, as I needed to send one of the books that I had sold via Arkham Books.  As I was turning the corner between the Haymarket and Rampant Horse Street, I saw an old couple take a tumble into the road.  From my vantage, some 50 yards away, it seemed that that lady had stumbled and as her husband tried to catch her, both collapsed into the street.

To my relief, a couple of young women quickly rushed to help them up, but as I got closer I saw a number of other people gathering around the incident, nudging their friends and laughing.

I found this utterly disgusting an old couple falls over into traffic, and this is a cause for people to point and laugh at them.  Especially as they were, understandably, quite embarrassed and shaken.  My first instinct would be, if I had been close to the unfortunates, to help them as the two other girls had done.  Sometimes, other people make me really despair.

This incident really spoiled an otherwise good day...

I talk about movies all the time, but I am actually also an avid reader.  I read on the bus, in the bath, while I'm eating my lunch.

My copy of If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor finally arrived the other day so I have been rediscovering my love for Bruce Campbell.  I don't know what it is about him that makes me adore him so much.  To quote Bernard Black, "I was immolated in the firewall of his charm".  I really like the lighthearted tone of his biography.  It's clear that his personality is very much how you would imagine him to be, and he's perfectly happy to make fun of himself.  It's a good read, and I'm looking forward to actually getting to the parts about the Evil Dead franchise.

The other book that I am reading at the moment is The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter.  Vlad has been trying to get me to read this book for quite some time now, due to the number of times I either bring up H.G.Wells in conversation.  The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine have always been two of my all-time favourite stories.  This is proven, I think, by the fact that I can recite the entirety of the Jeff Wayne musical of the former. 

The Time Ships is a sequel to The Time Machine, in which the time travel attempts to return to the future to save Weena the Eloi from the Morlocks, only to discover that he has irreparably changed the future of the Earth by telling his friends in the past about his adventure.  In this future, the Morlocks have succeeded in blocking out the sunlight and have also evolved to be intelligent and sophisticated creatures.  Much of the first half of the novel revolves around the time traveller's inability to accept them as anything other than the cannibalistic torturers of the Eloi.  Although enjoyable enough, thus far it's been slightly predictable.  I really am fond of Nibogifel the Morlock though.

So, yeah, that's what I'm reading.  Not that anyone particularly cares, but meh.

Well, I have now had my first week at work and I am enjoying it.  It may not be the kind of thing that I envisioned myself doing, but it is very interesting stuff.

Although employed by Capita, this little Capita team is out-sourced to an insurance firm called Marsh.  The department I am in is called 'Construction, Power and Utilities' and my job seems to mainly consist of processing data into tables and presentations to be scrutinized by underwriters.  That's a gross over-simplification, but it in a nutshell.  I am specifically working on the insurance for things like power stations, so it's all very grand-scale and I find it interesting just learning about the places that are being insured.

My colleagues all seem very nice too.  At the moment, I am being very gently eased into things, but I hope to take a more active hand in my work over the next few weeks.

Wow, I'm getting out a lot of reviews at the moment!  I will post about my first week of work later, but I figured that I should just crank out this review while it is still fresh in my mind.  As always, there are SPOILERS:

You may have seen the terrifying trailer for The Fourth Kind already, and thus be aware that this film is supposedly based on factual accounts - even going so far as to tell you that sounds and footage that are included in the film are real.  A quick google-search will reveal to you that it's as seated in reality as The Blair Witch Project is.  Disappointing, but inevitable.

Anyway, The Fourth Kind is presented by way of a documentary.  The fore-mentioned "authentic archive footage" is interspersed with a reenactment of the events where Milla Jojovich plays the main character, Dr. Abigail Tyler.

Abby is a psychiatrist and the movie begins with her being a hypnotized to help her come to terms with her husband's death.  It's quickly revealed that her husband was brutally stabbed by an unseen assailant.  Terrified, she breaks out of the hypnosis.  Against her friend's advice, she decides to return to Nome to complete her husband's work.

It turns out that her husband was investigating a number of very similar cases in Nome - a place where there were countless suicides and unexplained disappearances.  In each of these cases, the person was finding themselves waking in the middle of the night to see a white owl staring in at them through the window.  The fact that all these people described the exact same thing causes Abby to become suspicious and she decides to use hypnotherapy to discover more.

Although her attempt to hypnotize one of the sufferers (Tommy) goes badly, it reveals more about the visitation.  Tommy has repressed the fact that the being has entered his room and also that it's "not an owl".  Breaking the hypnosis, he leaves but is obviously shaken by the ordeal.  Later that night, Tommy murders his family before killing himself - implying to Abby that she would understand if she had seen what he had seen.

It's not long before Abby discovers that she is repressing similar memories, and finds evidence that she has been forcibly dragged from her house.  Realizing that her husband had been experiencing similar things prior to his death, she becomes determined to discover what the "owl" really is and in doing so make sense of what happened to her husband.

I realize in reading through my brief synopsis that this movie sounds kind of cool.  It is very much in the same vein as The Mothman Prophecies.  I'll say it now, The Mothman Prophecies is a guilty pleasure of mine.  I know that it's not a great film, but I love it.  It creeped the Hell out of me the first time I saw it, and I could watch it every day without getting bored.

The Fourth Kind, simply, was inferior.  In the first act of the film, it had some great creepy bits.  Although anyone with half a brain can look at the title and figure out what the "owls" really are, watching the hypnosis tapes is very unsettling and it is very tense in places.  However, it doesn't last.  The film gets sillier and sillier, as we begin to hear recorded messages of ancient Sumerian and see scenes that have been over-used since The Exorcist.

I also did not think that the documentary footage was a very good idea.  The movie liked using split screen to show the "archive" and "reenactment" footage side by side in the bits that should have been scary.  It just detracted away from the scary!  I would have much rather just had one screen to focus on, with no subtitles or jiggly frequencies.  I appreciate that this movie was trying to be a different kind of documentary film than the likes of The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and [Rec] but, dammit, it just was annoying and made me dislike this film.

It also suffered from having too many characters that did not have screen time that they required.  Abby's children barely appeared in the film and I half-expected there to be some more development to their story.  I mean, her son hates her and her daughter has gone blind from the shock of her father's death.  There's great scope for some development there that would make the characters of all of them more moving and interesting.  But, no, we get nothing and thus this movie ends leaving the audience feeling deeply unsatisfied.

So, yeah, The Fourth Kind was pretty sucky and a waste of life to see.  Save yourself money by simply watching two TVs at the same time, comparing any documentary on UFOs to The Mothman Prophecies, while jumping on the spot and you should achieve the same kind of effect.

One of my first reviews for this blog when I began last October was for Saw V.  Ergo, I figured that I should really continue in this vein by reviewing its direct sequel.  As with all of my reviews, this is more of a commentary and so there will be SPOILERS for all six of the films in the franchise thus far.

For the unordained, the Saw films focus around the killings made by a man named John Kramer (nick-named "The Jigsaw Killer" by the media).  Kramer differs from most conventional serial killers in that he does not kill his victims directly.  Instead, he places them within elaborate traps.  Usually, these traps are designed so that if the victim remains stationary they will certainly die, but if they win the "game" (which usually involves maiming themselves in some fashion) they will win their freedom.  The thing that all the victims have in common is that they have all either harmed others or "wasted" their own life in some way.  They are judged by Kramer as he is dying of brain cancer and thus is bitter that people would waste their lives while he is denied of his own.

Kramer died at the end of the third film, and since then punishments have been dealt out by his apprentice, Mark Hoffman, who was also a policeman.  The plot of Saw V revolved around Strahm, an FBI agent who had grown suspicious of Hoffman.  At the end of the film, Strahm is crushed to death leaving Hoffman believing that he has escaped.  However, Kramer did previously state that Hoffman would also be "tested"...

Saw VI carries on directly from the previous installment.  Hoffman has been using Strahm's severed hand to frame the deceased agent by placing his fingerprints at the crime scene.  It is also revealed that Kramer's wife (Jill) has been involved in her husbands "games" all along.  As Hoffman struggles to keep his identity secret as evidence pointing to him begins to stack up; Jill appears to be setting a greater plan into motion which (inevitably) includes the judgment of Hoffman...

On top of this, the latest game is set in motion.  The victim this time is one William Easton - the executive who denied Kramer coverage that could have cured his cancer.  William wakes up to discover that bombs have been strapped to each of his limbs and he must suffer four "traps" to receive the keys for each device and reach the end of the gauntlet within an hour or his family will be killed...

Although this film is hardly high cinema, it's plot is far more enjoyable that then previous two films.  I was, understandably, worried when I saw that it shared writers with Saw IV and V but there was a definite improvement here.  Although still somewhat predictable, the twist was interesting and (unlike the previous two films) I had not guessed it within the first fifteen minutes of the movie.  Although I would have liked a little more closure, I have grown to accept that there will be at least thirty-four films in this franchise and so we're probably a little soon for that.  Besides, we haven't found out what happened to Lawrence (protagonist of the original Saw) yet.

However, let's face it, nobody watches the Saw films for the plots.  It's all about the traps.  I must admit, as a horror movie purist, I preferred the traps of Saw when they were horrible but the violence occurred off-screen.  I think that things are always worse in your mind's eye.  That said, after the sheer gruesomeness of some of the traps in the last few Saw films (I'm looking at you, buzz-saw box) most of these ones were quite tame.  I say most.  I cringed during the first trap which involved people giving their pound of flesh.  If we've all seen Se7en, we know what the obvious thing to sacrifice is.  Very unpleasant.  And the movie decided that we needed a flashback mid-way through to remind us about this trap.  Yay...

Although the traps were less complex this time around, the film makers seemed to want to provide more of a social experiment.  As William (basically) decided who lived or died in his job, the trials he endures forced him to decide between which of his colleagues would live or die.  In this way, it forms a kind of complex, multi-layered version of the Prisoner's Dilemma which (as a Philosophy student) I found most interesting. 

This gauntlet includes in one of my favourite games of the series - the carousel trap.  In this, six of William's colleagues are strapped to a device that resembles a merry-go-round.  Pointing at this trap is a rifle that shoots the person closest to it whenever the carousel stops.  The rifle contains six rounds, all of which will be discharged, but William can save two of them by pressing a button (which injures his hand in the process).  Thus, William is forced to listen to the pleas of the six in order to quickly decide which two are most worthy of life.

Naturally, Saw VI is not perfect.  It's clearly inferior to the first film which still has the best plot by far - it's become a cult classic with good reason.  My major problem with this film is Hoffman.  The writers spent Saw V fleshing out his character and I did really like him.  I appreciated the fact that he evolved from being an vengeful person blackmailed by Kramer into someone who truly believed in what the Jigsaw was doing - basically moving from revulsion to acceptance.  Now, the film-makers try to undo this by proving that Hoffman is the true bastard and Amanda was the more sympathetic apprentice.  The fact that Amanda is now a good apprentice also adds retcons to the movie's retcons and shows that the writers are starting to loose their grasp as they try to make the plot needlessly complex.  This jarred with me a little.  It's kind of nice that the film does keep zooming out and showing us a little more of the bigger picture (kind of like a jigsaw in itself), but I wish it could just decide on personalities for its characters and then stick with them.  Even though the time frame in which Saw III-VI are set is relatively short, the characters seem to change dramatically.

So, this movie ends with us not knowing what Jill's next move will be or whether Hoffman is even going to survive into Saw VII (though I expect he will).  I am still intrigued enough to want to know what happens next.  Due to Kramer's promise that there will be a way out for Jill, I'm already starting to theorize how the next film will end.  Tune in next Halloween to find out if I'm still enjoying this franchise...

Since I'm now living in my own place and have no reason to ever see my former flatmates again, I have placed a link to my blog within my FaceBook profile.  Since I'm not having to live with my tormentor any more, she's welcome now to surf over here and discover what I really think of her.  I view this as the first step towards a more confident Ryuuzaki.

I'm currently enjoying my last few days of freedom before I start my job.  I'm kind of excited and nervous about that.  Excited because I've finally gotten myself a position that is full-time and permanent working for a large company, and nervous because I've had no training and still haven't been told exactly what it is that my job entails.  I posted my contract back to the head office yesterday, so it all should be official by now, and all I have to do is to turn up on Monday morning with my passport, national insurance card, birth certificate and a council tax bill (for proof of address).  Then I finally get to find out what I'm doing for a living.

Today's job is to open up a savings account so that I have something to start building my finances within where I am not tempted to spend it all the time.  I think Vlad and I are going to the movies tonight as (to my shame) I still haven't seen Saw VI.  If I don't see it soon, I may loose my title of "horror movie fanatic" after all.  That said, I am happy to wait as long as possible.  I loved the first film of the franchise but since then it's gone rapidly downhill.  I'm only really sticking with the series because I would like to know how it's (eventually) going to end.

To follow up on my more recent blogs, our new washing machine works and so I've sent off for a one year guarantee for it before anything can go horribly wrong.  Also, many more snail-babies survived then I first believed.  There are only about 10-15 that appear not to have survived the ant attack.  While sad, I am relieved for the 150+ survivors.  Now I just have to find homes for them.  I will (of course) keep a couple.  I am also babysitting two for Monkey who will take them off my hands when she finishes her first year at University.  A friend of Mum's also wants a couple for her infant-school class.  That leaves well over 100 baby snails that need loving parents.  If you live in the UK (due to laws on the handling of live-goods, I cannot send them abroad) and are interested, please send me a note.  I only ask that you pay a little towards the postage and packaging.  Remember: African Land Snails are easy to care for, can live for several years and make great first pets for children.  Also, Christmas is approaching and they would make excellent presents.

Intrigued by a recent Penny Arcade strip, I've been watching the developers' diaries for the Dante's Inferno game that will be released early next year.  From what I've seen, Dante Alighieri must be spinning in his grave...

From the trailers and concept art, it seems fairly faithful in places.  It's disgusting and faintly shocking in places, but that is the nature of Hell.  The poem is disgusting and faintly shocking in places - full of virulent diseases, rivers of excrement and dead babies.  The developer's need to make the game a true vision of Hell means that a lot of this stuff is included.  People are already complaining the "unbaptized baby monsters" that appear in Limbo.  Developers haven't gotten as far as revealing the seventh level of Hell yet, but if the burning sodomites make an appearance I imagine they will receive even more complaints.

I must admit, I have a fondness for the Divine Comedy and really like the way the game looks.  I'll emphasize that word again.  LOOKS.  I do not think I will actually enjoy the so-called plot of the game but it looks the part.  Although the levels of Hell have been simplified and adapted slightly, and the "bosses" reimagined somewhat (as Cerberus has become some kind of mutant tapeworm) they are still true to the poem in essence.  The second level still is plagued with a tempest, and the fifth level still contains the river Styx and the City of Dis.

However, the plot is laughable.  You're probably aware that the Divine Comedy was written in the 14th Century and is both a lamentation that Dante never met with the woman of his dreams, and a metaphor for his exile from Florence.  Thus, Dante travels (reluctantly) through Hell with Virgil as his guide, until he can meet with Beatrice and continue his journey through Purgatory and finally reach Paradise.

The game transforms Dante into a crusader who has committed every sin (revealed in a tapestry which he has sew onto the skin of his chest) who pursues Beatrice into the depths of Hell where Lucifer seems to be making her into his bride while also poisoning her mind to Dante.  Armed with Death's scythe and a magical crucifix, Dante battles his way through Hell to finally reach Cocytus where (presumably) Lucifer and Beatrice wait.  Confirmed bosses thus far include Charon, Minos, Cleopatra and Cerberus.

I'm not sure what made anyone sit down and read the Inferno just to think "hey, this is a great idea for a video game".  What part of this characterization of Dante sounds like a good idea?  I don't know whether to laugh or cry thinking about it.  Yeah, I will probably play this game no matter how bad it ends up, purely because the level and monster design is rather inspired, but I really think that they could have thought up a better plot for the game than this...

If you're really interested in seeing more, here's the official site --> www.dantesinferno.com/home.action

In honor of the arrival of our second washing machine, I thought I would dedicate a blog to cataloging the Washing Machine Saga in full.  'Tis truly an epic tale of biblical proportions after all.

As you may remember, when Vlad and I moved house at the end of August we were moving from student accommodations into a house that had nothing what-so-ever.  As my mother is also selling her house at the moment, we did inherit a lot of her old furniture (including a sofa, an arm chair, a kitchen table with four chairs and two single beds).  However, we had to buy all of the white goods for the kitchen as we all we previously owned was a microwave.

Thus, the day that we moved (August 26th) we ordered a gas oven and refrigerator from Comet, and a double bed and washing machine from Argos.  We had to order everything for home delivery as neither of us can drive.  All of the items were supposedly going to come within a week.

Sure enough, we received the order from Comet within this time frame.  Argos, however, sent us an email to say that our goods had been delayed and so we would not receive them until October 2nd.  Annoying, but we had a laundrette at the end of the street and the single beds so we could at least cope.

The following week, the laundrette was vandalized and so we were forced to start using a different one that was over a mile away.  This is a long way to heave your laundry when there is no bus service going in that direction.  But still, we coped.

On October 2nd, we were phoned by Argos to say that there had been another delay and that we would not get our items until November 2nd.  We were annoyed about this and intended to phone up and cancel our order, but then received a second call later that night to say that our order had arrived in the store and we would receive it the following day.

Here's where the story gets more complicated.

The washing machine arrived and Vlad installed it.  We tested it with a load of our unwashed bath towels only for the machine to breakdown mid-cycle.  A flashing red light told us that the motor had overheated and we needed to call an engineer.

Now very angry, I phoned Argos and was on hold for 45 minutes while I waited to complain.  They said they would contact Norlec - evidently an engineer's firm - who would then contact us within three days to arrange a time to repair our machine.  I told the Argos people exactly what had happened so that they could notify the engineers of the precise nature of the problem.

The Norlec lady phoned us the next day to say that the engineer would be around at 10.30am the following day.  I explained that both my partner and I would be at work at that time and she responded (very rudely) that if one of us was not in the house then they would phone Argos back and say that we were unprepared to have our washing machine fixed so there was nothing that they could do.  As I had only been working for a week and thus had built up no holiday time, Vlad had to phone in sick that day in order to be in the house.

The Norlec engineer came, having not been told the nature of the problem, and thus had no parts to fix it.  He told Vlad that it would take him three more weeks to get the parts in.  Vlad said that there was no need as we'd just call Argos and get them to take the washing machine back, but the Norlec man responded that this was not possible as Argos had no return policy for white goods, thus we'd have to wait for it to be repaired.

I was reasonably sure that this was untrue, as how could they refuse to take back and item of their's that had broken down as soon as I had turned it on?  I was, of course, correct.  Argos offered to replace the machine, but I told them that I'd rather they just took it away and refunded me my money.

Thus, last Wednesday when Argos finally did give me my money back, I went on the Comet website and ordered a washing machine from them instead.  It's a different model to the Argos one and did cost me £20 more, but I've just been put off ever ordering from Argos again.  The new washing machine just arrived and so Vlad will be able to plumb it in when he gets back from work.  Hopefully, this one will not breakdown and so we'll never have to walk to the laundrette again...

I found out where our ant infestation originated.  Within a packet of spaghnum moss that I had on the side in our living room.

How I discovered this was shortly after I had put new bedding in the snail tank, only to open it and find Byron and Shelley cover in red ants.

Vaguely traumatic.

I've been bitten numerous times trying to rescue the babies.  Now the snails are going to have to survive in a tank full of damp kitchen roll until their new bedding arrives.  I can't tell how many baby casualties there have been.  I'll feed them some lettuce later and try to assess the damage...

SPOILERS lie below...

Continuing my pre-Halloween viewing of low-budget horror films, I rewatched Phantoms today.  I hadn't seen that film for years and all I could remember was that it was a Silent Hill-esque deserted town affair and featured an attack by a giant moth.  Although mildly entertaining in places, the film irked me.  It's a prime example of how potentially good ideas can be ruined by poor pacing.

I'm not going to review Phantoms because it really isn't worth the effort.  It's basically a film about two women who drive into a town to discover that all the townsfolk are either dead or missing.  They're then forced to survive (along with the town's sheriff) and a few others as things get increasingly weird.

Basically, it becomes apparent that it is a large creature that is to blame for everything.  This creature is like a cross between the monsters featured in The Thing, It and At the Mountains of Madness.  It's a shapeless monstrosity that has lived beneath the surface of the Earth for centuries and is responsible for all of the unexplained mass-disappearances such as the death of the dinosaurs and Roanoke. 

It also absorbs knowledge from the creatures that it eats, and so knows everything that its victims does.  This has made it self-aware.  As humans view animals as inferior; it holds the same perspect of the human race.  We are either "cattle" for the slaughter, or pets for its own amusement.  It has also come to believe that it is Satan and its arrogance becomes its undoing as it believes that (as a God) it cannot be destroyed.

This, I think, is quite an intriguing idea for a creature in a movie.  However, it is woefully under-used.  The major problem with Phantoms, is that it is so poorly paced that it is boring.  There are a few scenes that, in any other film, would be shocking.  The creature (called the Ancient Evil) loves to torture its pets.  Early on there are some great horror scenes, such as a one in a bakery, that are really quite fun.  However, there is no build-up at all.  The two main characters discover the town is deserted within the first five minutes of the movie.  After this, they switch between locations so quickly that there is absolutely no time for tension to build.  In turn, there is also no time for any characterization.  The two women are, simply, sisters.  Ben Affleck's character has a little 'quirk' in the fact that he once accidentally shot a small child but other than this is just a typical (albeit strangely young) town sheriff.  Liev Schreiber's character is randomly crazy, but it's not explained why (or how he's gotten a job as a deputy despite being so unstable) leading me to assume that he is just an utter bastard.  Things are made worse by the fact that none of this characters have much personality and so I didn't especially care whether they lived or died.

Conversely, the second half of the movie is far too slow.  Once Peter O'Toole's character arrives in the town we are treated to a couple of long, boring scenes in which the surviving characters decide to sit and discuss the nature of the creature.  The Ancient Evil does communicate with them during this, and I hoped this would lead to some kind of banter with it, much in the vein of Sphere, but no.  The creature merely expressed a desire for the world to embrace it as the Devil and our heroes conveniently had the means by which to kill it and swiftly do so.

I already expressed that this movie was similar to The Thing, It and Sphere (with elements of Alien thrown in for good measure).  All of these are enjoyable films that I would have much rather been watching.  These films are good for a reason.  They pace themselves well interspersing character development and relevant filling with action.  Phantoms unfortunately failed the pacing 101 exam and thus wasted some interesting ideas and interesting moments by just being too boring overall.

Anyway, my stock of Halloween movies left for the next week includes Crooked House, Braindead and Phantasm so at least I have some enjoyable stuff left for my favourite week of the year.

Following the nightmarish work experience that I unfortunately suffered two days ago, I have managed to get a real job!  As of the first Monday of November I will be working a happy 9-5 deskjob for Capita - an insurance broker who's Norwich office is a mere 30 minutes walk from my home.

I'm not entirely sure what this job will entail but I now believe that anything is better than door-to-door sales and I'm sure I'll figure it out pretty quickly.  It's also a permanent full-time position so I don't have to worry about temping anymore.

Hooray!  In a month's time I'll have an income again!

Hi guys.  Have I got a story for you...

I went to a job interview on Tuesday.  It was another one of Reed's "mystery interviews" but it turned out to be for a company that markets Talktalk broadband.  The interview went incredibly well and I was told to come back the following day (yesterday) for a Day of Observation to see if I was suitable for the job.  I was told to dress smartly, wear sensible shoes and be at the office for 12.30pm.  I would then be taken around by an administrator and would be able to go home at 8.30pm after a short interview.

It sounded great, and there were hints that I would get the job, so I turned up to discover that I would start out doing direct marketing.  I asked what this meant and was told that it meant communicating with customers directly, rather than via advertising.  This sounded just like what I wanted to do, but I was kind of surprised when I was taken away from the office, bundled into a car and told I was going to spend the day in Great Yarmouth - slightly confusing, as I'd been lead to believe that I would be based in Norwich.

It turned out that the direct marketing that I would have had to do for the first year of employ was door-to-door sales - something that I have a few moral qualms about doing as I dislike door-to-door salesmen vehemently.  But I decided to stick it for a while to see what they did, making quite clear that the Day of Observation was as much for me as it was for them so I would not guarantee anything.  The day that followed was awful and utterly put me off my job.

Employees at this level are only paid based on commission.  You may have a great week and sell lots of internet, but it's equally as likely that you will sell none and receive nothing.  I would be expected to travel all over Norfolk (and occasionally go on road-trips around the rest of the UK) and would not be reimbursed for my travel to do so.  Ergo, I could easily have to fork out £30 for a train ticket to then make no money that day to cover it.

Worst of all, in order to complete a sale, I would have to go into people's houses to finalize their details and check their phone line.  I'm a 22 year old girl.  I have more commonsense than to just go walking into stranger's houses.  I just would not feel safe having to do that, especially as the guy showing me the ropes said that they mainly focus on poorer areas (which are unsafe anyway).

So my experience of yesterday was seven hours (with no breaks) of walking around a strange town in the pouring rain wearing my best formal clothes (luckily, I had brought an umbrella but had no smart coat so was just in a linen shirt) to knock on 300 or so doors just to make 2 sales.  I was soaked to the skin within minutes, had lost all feeling in my extremities within the first hour and was threatened with bodily violence once due to a rude remark made by the supervisor that badly offended a prospective client.  I just felt like giving up immediately and going off to have a good cry.

I also hated the supervisor vehemently.  I rarely take an instant disliking to someone, but he was so rude to both his colleagues and the customers (he claimed he was being charming, though personally I couldn't see it).  I just don't think I could have stomached working with that prat, let alone being forced to repeat that job every day for a year on the off-chance that I'd get promoted at the end of it.

So, feeling a bit bummed out and suffering a slight fever, I've decided to do my job hunting for the day online and not venture out again until Friday...