In a dismal pub—one of many belonging to a lifeless and corporate chain—I am about to get hired. I have just moved to town, and have bills I need to pay. Today alone, my CV has already graced the hands of fifty or so managers, and just as many bins. Here I am, stood before a landlady, whose eyes smile with the crocodilian glint of predation.
We’re all family here, she says, with a grin that tells me she’d sooner skin me alive than say hello to me in the street. It’s all about family, what you can do for your family.
The wallpaper, once white, is as brown as the ancient top of the wooden bar, and peels in
strips from the top down. Almost like the raking of fingers down a madman’s face. Somewhere in the back room, an old regular, who has long since given up trying to escape, damn near hacks up his lungs into his pint of bitter.
The company has done so much for me, she says. So much! Just look at how successful I am! And it can do the same for you too! Oh, I am so glad you’ve decided to join us here. Pull your weight, and in ten years, you could be on your way to greatness.
I notice a serene, almost reverent look cross her face, and she closes her eyes for a moment, as if in contemplation. Then, catching herself, she shivers back to the reality around her, the reality into which I am to reluctantly—but necessarily—enter.
You’ll work anywhere from zero hours a week to sixty. Possibly more, depending on what thebusiness-–what the family—needs. But a young man like you can manage that, can’t you? It builds character! And we need young men like you. We need you to protect the urban core of this company. I’m just happy you’ve chosen to do it here!
The landlady ushers me behind the bar, and upstairs to the office and staffroom. She tells me about the asbestos, and the rats. From thin air, she produces a contract just as frayed and crumpled as herself.
What you need? Oh, don’t be silly! We’ll take care of you, so long as you help us out. Sign onthe dotted line, and you’re ours! Isn’t that fun?
Paper signed, she shows me down to the cellar, shows me where the boiler room is, and how
to replace the gas canisters. Then, she shows me the kegs, each one weighing between 60 and 70 kg.
It’ll be my job, I am informed, to move them all downstairs, when they are delivered. How lucky I am, she tells me, to be of service to the company in this way. I notice her hands as she teaches me the changing of a barrel, and see that they are immaculately manicured.
We’ve got all sorts of perks here, even for someone like you, just starting out on the lowestrung. If you’re struggling for cash, you can take out half your month’s pay in advance! Of course, that means you’ll have to work extra hard next month to get by, because once you dip into your pay, it’s a cycle. Do you know Ouroboros?
We make our way back up the stairs, and she pours a performative pint of something rancid. She tells me that accepting tips is not company policy, and that should someone hand me a cash tip, I am to place it into the donation box. I am not to take advantage of our beloved customers and their generosity in that way. Many weeks from now, I will find out from a long-suffering colleague that accepting tips is allowed after all, and that the manager’s bonus is dependent on how many donations she can wrangle each month.
But we pay you what you’re worth! We don’t go by that “living wage” nonsense. Only whatyou’re worth to us, and not a penny more—so you’ve really got to prove your value! I find that…incentivising. But you don’t go in for that liberal, fair-wage sort of thing anyway, do you? I can tell you’re a real family man.
As she walks me to the door, she places a hand on my shoulder, and looks at me as if for the first time. I feel sorry for her because, even if it’s just for a second, I think I see her mask slip; I think I see her eyes beg me to drag her out through the door, and back into the real world; I think I see, somewhere deep behind her desperately curated visage of contentment, someone who once had aspirations beyond this place, someone who has been cowed and broken by the demands of the industry, of her superiors. But then, as if I’d been mistaken, the plasticine grin, moulded to company policy, is back, and she is seeing me out.
Just the other week, we had to let someone go, she sighs. It’s always a shame when thathappens (here she furrows her brow, as if trying to remember what face people pull when they’rebeing genuine). But they didn’t have what it takes to be a part of our little family, you see. They didn’t have what we need. I do hope you’re different; I see real potential in you…