Tony Harrison, reviewed by Nicholas Lezard:
he says “When dole-wallahs fuck off to the void / what’ll t’mason carve up for their jobs? / The cunts who lieth ‘ere wor unemployed?” That hasn’t changed, not really: and “call-centre worker” isn’t something you’d want on your gravestone either, as my own experience has taught me
Here’s the problem. These jobs will be awful as long as management doesn’t value the people who have them, the people who have them don’t expect better, and especially as long as society at large doesn’t value the people who have them either. The romanticisation isn’t helping anyone. This was part of my point in the Politics of the Call Centre series.
Mind you, the public sector can lead off: this is a piece of work, although I’ve not dug deep into it yet.
Bradford Batman unmasked; there’s something deeply Yorkshire about the fact he was just, by chance, dressed as Batman having come back from the Bradford City match at Wembley, when his mate rang up and asked him to go with him to the police station. Once there, he of course had to play the character. More depressingly, your man tried to cash the stolen cheques using his own passport.
It’s not just about valuing the people (although that is very important) a key problem is that if we’re honest, the jobs (job roles?) themselves are not valued. No-one actually cares if the call-centre helps or hinders the callers… (If you don’t believe me, trying calling up nPower, or BT and getting something sorted…)
Npower? Watch this space for a post combining Clausewitz, low trust society, call centres etc.