callmedave:
no matter what your job is there will always be bad days.
I wish I could say I was referring to “bad days” but I’m really referring to systematic problems in the industry. Unlike some guys, I actually don’t care about traffic jams or being held up at drops, and I don’t suffer road rage, so I’ve rarely ever had bad days in the bad luck sense - too few to recall, anyway.
If you’re accustomed to office work being around 8 hours a day starting at 9am, how will you really feel doing up to 15 hours a day, each day, without any choice in the matter? Do you mind not having a bath between shifts? How will you feel starting work at 3am some days, and 8am the next, and not knowing until each evening beforehand? Do you have any hobbies, any after-work routines, any personal relationships, even any health conditions, which won’t suffer under these stressful and disruptive conditions?
How will you feel earning £7.20 an hour for Class 2? What about £9 an hour for Class 1? Both with at least 45 minutes a day, and up to 90 minutes a day, breaks paid at £nil an hour? These are not starter rates, in many cases they’re the going rates for firms that would expect to get well-experienced guys at those rates.
If you’re under 25 with no previous experience, how will you feel struggling to find any work in an industry that claims to be desperate? And I don’t mean general experience, I mean specifically like how Class 2 experience often won’t cut it for a Class 1 vacancy, and even how curtainsider experience won’t do for tail lift work?
I welcome anyone who can re-inforce this or (hopefully) tell me otherwise.
Well looking at the sample of views since my last post, many are upbeat, but they seem to be upbeat about intangible things like the pleasure of driving trucks (which is nice but frankly it wears off the same as driving a car does if you do 100k miles a year in one).
Nobody has stated any rates (at least not as apply to a new pass), not even those who say it’s “printing money”. Security guards “print money” in the sense of physical effort, but they’re really on very bad rates and are paid to endure boredom and the consumption of their time.
They’ve also said agencies will lie and mess you around, “not to be trusted” - there’ll be times when you probably won’t work. They’re clear that hours will be highly unsociable and punishingly long - longer than almost any other industry, even offshore work tends to be no more than 12 hour shifts, and there you’re hosted and catered for and paid ■■■■ well for it (or at least used to be).
Others ask ominously about whether you can return to your current occupation, and how you’d do better to put your licence in the sock drawer for 2 years, or that it’s good as a “fall back”.
They say the work is “not desirable” and “not mega bucks”, which is really British understatement for dirty work at near NMW. Crappy jobs and physical work can mean backbreaking labour ■■■■■■■ the contents of cages over cobbled streets or similar (it’s especially undesirable for many drivers who by definition enjoy sitting and concentrating at the controls, not sweaty labouring).
And then there’s the social effects. You’ll need an “understanding partner”, which really means a partner who never expects to make any plans with you, and maybe barely sees you or spends any quality time together. And forget about playing footy on Wednesday evenings.
You’ve been warned. Guys in the industry will try not to talk it down and make themselves look like downtrodden fools for doing it, but if you read between the lines it’s an extremely bad industry to enter. Only if you are a masochist and genuinely happy with its extremes (perhaps because you have no life outside of work), should you even consider crawling through the sewer entrance.
