Degree of separation

IF, during my university career, I had been asked to guess my first job title, I don't think porter-packer would have been a contender. Trainee something? Perhaps. Assistant-something? Possibly. But porter-packer? I never expected my 2:2 in archaeology to catapult me straight to London, into that power suit, to rape those boardrooms; but surely I could improve on porter-packer? And it's rather more packing than porting I can tell you.

Porter - that alone could maybe have a slightly romantic, cheeky, "Blame it on the bellboy" type air about it. But porter-packer sounds as if I'm a porter who takes his job seriously enough to specialise in packing. Having been one for a few months now, I'm becoming my job. I've described it to so many people; each time further solidifying its self-defining capabilities.

There must be millions of graduates who, like me, have settled for less, and now can't get back into the career-hunting business because their life has been swamped by hundreds of Catch-22s. Perhaps the pay is bad to average, they can't risk leaving because of bills and rent, but the long hours mean they are often too drained to do any serious job-hunting. When you flick through the job section and all the ads seem to run along the lines of "Managing Director of World ... successful candidate will have one hundred years' experience ... no time wasters please", it's easy to feel a little stumped. Even slightly grand sounding office jobs, where you're given the chance to fine tune those stapling and filing skills, leave you with a feeling that Marxist theory, and the relative sizes of fish sperma- tozoas weren't such vital subjects, and that university was a big conspiracy. We march around the gloomy subbasement of wherever, searching for Distribution and Resources (ie, a new pen for the receptionist) and an army of friends and acquaintances march around the subconscious. The ones who've known exactly what they've wanted to do since the point of conception. The ones who are smug about their pay packet, and their first wine bar flirtation. And all the relatives and older friends who say: "So what are you doing now?" Closely followed by: "Oh." In the meantime we refill the photocopier, we keep the till rolls coming, we take orders from the school leavers and achievers, and ponder exactly when and where the "Ay, but to die ..." speech from Measure For Measure is going to come in useful.

Copyright 1998
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