when people say 'what do you do?' i generally blink at them and say nothing, or say 'nothing.' i am kind of a writer, in that i have written and published books, but i have done a lot of other stuff to stay afloat over the years.
here, in chronological order, is the first ever comprehensive list of everything i've ever done to earn cash.
1. babysitting, or babyshitting as i used to call it. in a catholic neighbourhood, this often mean screaming at psycho older kids to go to bed, wiping apple sauce of the face of a toddler and simultaneously diving across the floor to stop the suicidal baby sticking its finger in the electric socket.
2. dressing up as a giant koala. well, who hasn't done that? it's a pretty standard job here in australia, fundraising for a green group called the wilderness society.
3. junior office person at the australian war memorial HR department. the place where, after the SECOND week, they teach you how to use 'the big hole punch'. i stayed 2 weeks so i never got to that stage.
4. assistant editor on the war memorial's magazine. got this as a 6 week temp fluke from heaven cause they were between staff for the role. i remember a weird guy who was employed to identify military medals in another department who kept sending me inappropriate email attachments.
5. horrible pub in london #1. where my friend and i climbed out the window after a week to escape the evil owners.
6. horrible pub in london #2. less horrible, longer duration, but i still don't like cleaning ashtrays with my fingers. eventually got glandular fever and had to go back to australia.
7. heart of midlothian FC in edinburgh. horrid temp job where i had to arrange birthday parties for six year old hearts fans. hearty harry, the team mascot, used to meet me in the foyer and ask which kids had caused the most trouble and then chase them round the room for me. thanks, harry.
8. several horrible pension companies in edinburgh. these all blur into one. generally in a big old victorian building where I worked in the basement with a typing pool full of girls called maureen.
9. Ethicon, in sighthill outside edinburgh. this was johnson and johnson’s specialist factory for making weird surgical stuff, in possibly the grimmest location outside edinburgh. I worked in the HR department addressing envelopes. the women there referred to the factory workers as ‘manuals’, as in ‘ I can’t use the gym just now, there’s manuals in there.’
10. J & H Marsh McLellan. Some solicitors where I did the filing.
11. Delloite and Touche. pretended i got sick after an hour and went home cause the boredom was literallt killing me.
12. Some architect’s where everyone wore black turtlenecks.
13. some building surveyor’s where the ‘office boy’ was a guy called tom who must have been at least 70.
14. Scottish and Newcastle #1. typing business cards into a contacts database. woo hoo.
15. Scottish and Newcastle #2. working in the PR department where there was an almighty furore because the world cup was on, scotland was playing, and there were free tartan noses with the scottish sun, so they ordered 100 copies to get a nose each and the papers turned up WITHOUT THE NOSES!! will never forget the aggro scottish advertising wankers on the phone demanding ‘where’s oor focking nooses?’
16. Lothian Hospital. had a great time working for a professor. there was internet and a really nice lady called Lyn who had me round to dinner in her massive palatial house that had a ballroom. I had a hacking cough the whole time I worked there.
17. the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA). that was fun. putting together packs of stickers for kiddies who had won competitions or something.
18. Australian Parliament House. back in canberra. working for a committee so I had to sit in on these parliamentary hearing things full of overweight politicians. amanda vanstone once bailed me up in the corridors and demanded a biscuit from the catering platter I was carrying, that was funny.
19. an orthopaedic surgery in sydney run by his crazy lesbian ex-wife who turned out to have been the mother of my brother’s friend from primary school. this workplace was destroyed by her lover who tried to take over the running of the office, but I did meet alex who had a dungeon in his house.
20. a chicken products factory in norwich, back in england. hideous, the only job I’ve ever left for harrassment reasons cause the chicken dealers (yes that’s right, guys who think they are on the trading floor of some major new york share dealer and who spend their days shouting ‘I’ve got a hundredweight of giblets I need to shift! Sell! Sell!’) couldn’t shut up about my tits. the girl I was replacing ‘went on holiday and couldn’t bear to come back.’
21. some company in norwich where I was some guy’s PA.
22. Tactica solutions, also in norwich, my only permanent job which I did for 4 months and left to move to london cause norwich sucked. a company being ripped apart for a management buyout where everyone was miserable. in fact, the term ‘sharon’ that husman and I use to describe evil HR women is based on a real life woman called sharon from there!
23. typing notes from some liberal thinktank conference about the conflict between rights and responsibilities.
24. an arthritis charity in london where I gave myself arthritis typing.
25. an asthma charity in london where I gave myself asthma shredding endless documents.
26. great ormond street hospital/UCL where I loved everyone. I was a research secretary to the professor of paediatric neurology and they were kind enough to keep the job for me when I got back from my trip to china, so I ended up doing it for a year. a lovely place to work.
27. edinburgh royal infirmary where I was meant to type up patient notes but the equipment was so crap I couldn’t actually do the work, so I ran away and never got paid.
28. some developer company in edinburgh bidding for the contract to redevelop the royal infirmary (good!)
29. john kennedy, another developer who I was warned might be ‘a bit difficult’. I thought they meant an asshole, which he was, but turned out they meant he usually hit on the temps. he was into blood sports and got given a rocket launcher while I was there (an amateur one I presume) and I had to find the rockets to go in it, but otherwise fairly standard.
30. earnst & young where i got told to 'read the judge judy books' by the lady i was replacing. i scoffed but they were great. that was where i was when september 11 happened cause i couldn't get onto the bbc website.
31. the scottish executive, where all I remember is the thin moustache of some thin guy called paul.
32. SRCGP or whatever, the scottish college of GPs, where I had fun and they wanted me to stay but I was going to asia so I left.
33. Environment Australia, my funnest every job, writing information sheets about bilbies and stuff, in a proper job with proper job title of ‘communications officer’. my boss was this guy called peter with a beard who used to be a lighthouse keeper. dealing with the Butterfly Mafia was the best bit.
34. then I was on the dole for a while, then CENTRELINK itself gave me a job researching social trends, such as why young educated people might be on the dole. he he he. just for a month because…
35. …I went to work at EA again doing the same job but left because i….
36. …got commissioned to write the biography of an older gentleman who had been a surgeon and maverick medical politician. did this for a year and had great fun. had to do some of it from holland where we moved for husman’s study.
37. got back to canberra again and did this awful PA job at the department of industry or as I call it department of indolence, for this horrible guy who was nasty to everyone. it sucked because they did more nothing than any other department (quite productive by australian public service standards therefore). but I gave it to my friend annabel when I got the job
38. to write some report into aboriginal health. working for the infamous Fat Lady of evil repute, AKA bridezilla, who hated me because I was getting married (she apparently got ditched at the altar the year before) and ended up causing endless ructions at the end of the contract because ‘your cubicle went out to lunch without the other cubicle.’
so here I sit today, happily unemployed!
