Temping

My first glamorous temp job was handing out flyers at Nottingham football grounds on a Saturday morning. After that I spent a couple of months in the brain-dead world of data entry in various zombie-offices in and out of town. I ultimately ended up in the basement of Capital One in a massive open office room together with 20 other under-achievers, dealing with credit card applications. For an ex-popstar with great ambitions of ‘sticking it to the man’, this was the most ironic place to end up being underpaid and bored beyond belief.

I turned to conducting socio-studies of my fellow worker drones. They were as fascinating to me as I was for them. The thing is, that almost every Brit has a ‘Germany story’ which is normally based on having visited a German city and having been impressed by cleanliness and Ordnung/order. And beer. Or the ‘my dad was in the army and stationed in *insert German town that I’ve never heard of*’ story. Very rarely a Brit actually talks proper German. Most of them had it at school but all is forgotten – which I understand. Brits don’t need to speak a second [or third] language because everybody speaks English. Kind of. Even most of my English friends that live in Berlin get mostly by with a very rudimentary command of the German language. They also rarely watch German television [it’s shit] or listen to German radio [it’s shit] or take part in any form of German life. That is except from one of my English/German mates. Sean, member of the notorious UK/DE performance group Gob Squad, has actually just been granted German citizenship after an arduous test of his language and German history and politics test. He wants to be German whereas I am living an opposite life in the UK alas without feeling the need to get a British passport. Why would I want to pay money to officially become part of the gang were 40+ percent of people want to kick me out of the country? Anyway, more of my English/German mirror friend later.

Back at Capital One, we were sitting at tables with stacks of credit card application letters, trying to make conversation to lighten the hours of monotonous drivel.

So, do you have clubs in Germany?

Err... yes. Of course.

What, like here?

Yes, like here. All the same. Well, kind off. Most of our clubs have English names but the people inside are mostly German.

Does everybody wear Lederhosen in Germany? *wink wink*

Nope. That’s only some parts of Bavaria and Austria – which is not really “Germany” anyway.

Aaah, really! Why does everybody like David Hasselhoff?

I have no idea. Do you like David Hasselhoff?

Not really but I heard that he is big in Germany.

Maybe some Germans like him because he brought The Wall down.

He brought The Wall down?!

No, not really. I was joking. That was the Scorpions with Wind of Change.

Really?!!

Absolutely. They all got a German knighthood.

Wow... I didn’t know that.

*sigh/LOL*

I am actually still friends with one of my Nottingham temp colleagues on Facebook. He’s now majorly into global conspiracy theories.