Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Moving In, Moving On

We have been here four days and it already feels like a life­time. A fairly sharp turn in life­style to be sure, but one to which we are already becom­ing accus­tomed. And a week ago we felt so young, yet here we are, already facing the unpleas­ant respons­ib­il­it­ies of being Tenants, resur­gent Students and City-dwellers, con­fron­ted daily by unpleas­ant words like Payment, Credit Reference and Obligation.

If this week under­scores any­thing it is how far from real­ity last year was — liv­ing like kings in a daily-vacuumed bio­sphere with quiet and noise on tap, isol­ated from the real world until we chose to step out­side. Did we real­ise what we had? Probably not. But here we are — hav­ing drunk the milk of Paradise we are liv­ing among real people once again.

And we are enjoy­ing it so far. Our house has the “crack den” appear­ance from the street, sand­wiched between other former coun­cil prop­er­ties long since bought up and ren­ov­ated, while ours main­tains a “seasoned” look to it — exter­ior main­ten­ance not high on the Landlord’s list of pri­or­it­ies. But inside it is cosy, the rooms lar­ger than expec­ted and hold­ing the prom­ise of an excit­ing year to come, as well as a few stor­ies from the past. The kit­chen and bath­room are new, which is some­thing of a relief. And the heat­ing works, the neigh­bours appear to be nor­mal and the prop­erty does not sit at the brow of a large hill.

But it is the feel­ing more than any­thing that I have tried to verb­al­ise for the last few days, the feel­ing I exper­i­enced when my father’s Jeep pulled away on Sunday, or when I stepped off the step and locked the door behind me that first time as I wandered into town and smelled the move­ment and care­less­ness of the place and heard the dis­tant sirens as I became once again a small fish in a very large bowl. And as I walked through the streets I real­ised that this is just one more step closer to Life; that at least for the time being I can be thank­ful that I have a reason to be here. In two years time I will be done with “edu­ca­tion” and will have to decide how to spend these wak­ing years.

Bread Winnings

For those of us get­ting paid monthly, the end of the month is a good time. Unless of course it comes as a reminder of how much we’re get­ting whipped by our employers.

Today I received my payslip for last month’s work, includ­ing the com­mis­sion from the month before. Having not received com­mis­sion before I was expect­ing some­thing in the region of £50 to £100, but was instead greeted with… £19.

Yup, for a sales­per­son receiv­ing between 15 and 30 phone calls (requir­ing tech­nical know­ledge, good man­ners and an IQ higher than room tem­per­at­ure) and pro­cessing around £3,000-worth of orders a day (a con­ser­vat­ive estim­ate) for 3 days a week for 3 weeks, I appar­ently have to settle for… 0.05% of my con­tri­bu­tion to the busi­ness turnover — the grand fig­ure of 0.05 pence in the pound. There’s noth­ing like mak­ing your employ­ees feel like a Valued part of the Team.