BLUE BAND MOTORS

At the time of writing the 6 months from working at Charles Hall sock factory to working at Blue Band motors is the longest time out of work (not including when I went backpacking) in my life. I was starting to get a bit disillusioned with agency work. During this time an agency that I had signed up for almost a year earlier and never heard from since phoned up out of the blue at 6AM offering me a single day's work in Measham expecting me to be at the place in the next two hours..........what a joke!!!!!!!

When I landed the latest agency work it was only part time.... 8 in the morning until 12, Monday till Friday. I’d been out of work for so long I reached the stage where I would take anything. The money was slightly better than normal so I was around 60% better off than I was collecting unemployment benefit.

Blue band motors was on the Shepshed industrial estate not far from the sock factory. Despite it’s name the company was a parcel delivery firm nothing to do with cars. All I was doing was loading and unloading lorries by hand, some heavy lifting at times but overall the actual work was no problem.

As usual it became the same old story, the job was no problem but the idiots I worked with were. With only 3 others in the place I couldn’t figure out why the place was so hostile. The young lad Rob was ok but the 2 middle aged ones were a nightmare. It was a typical gang up on the temporary agency worker all over again. Ray was a bit of a wind up merchant but he knew when to stop and concentrate on the job. I gave him a bit of grief back and there was at least a bit of mutual respect between us.

Don however was a constant annoyance from the moment I set foot in the place until the moment I left. He’d keep repeating the question “what’s up with you then?” over and over again for hours on end. Eventually I would just lose my temper and snap back at him and we’d end up having some fairly nasty arguments. I quickly reached the point where I hated being in the same room as him.

One of the tasks which took roughly half of my shift was the big delivery of garden gates, we had to sort them out then load them onto several smaller lorries. Don would do the sorting, place them onto my trolley and I would take them to the appropriate lorry. One day he loaded them on but they slipped off, one of them hitting him over the top of his head. It was purely an accident of course, one of the others was a witness and they were not blaming anyone. I didn’t help matters by not showing the slightest hint of concern even though he was obviously in a lot of pain. I just shrugged my shoulders and carried on with my work. As far as I was concerned he was just a bully who deserved everything he got.

I worked until about a week after my 20th Birthday, I knew beforehand that the company were going to lose the contracts for the gates and my days were numbered. The boss from upstairs said that they would be getting a contract for something else and even talked about setting me on full time. I was told that I would be getting a phone call about a week after I had finished.

Of course there was no phone call, I knew the chances of there being any were fairly slim. I can’t understand why they just don’t admit straight out that the work is finished or have the common courtesy to make a simple call. This was fairly standard treatment when you do agency work, on the other hand they expect you to sit around waiting for phone calls and be ready to work at a moments notice.

I’d spent two years since leaving school going between work experience placements and temporary jobs and I’d by that point had more than enough. The following month a friend got me a full time permanent job at Charnwood elastics where I worked for the next 7 years.