I’ve become known in some tiny circles as “that guy who tweets, while working in a petrol station”, it seems.
Before I finished my last shift at 7am Monday morning, thought I’d do a bit of filming. There’s no manager salaries, and no inside secrets – just a couple of minutes of random behind-the-scenes crap from my job.
Frankly this will be of no interest to 99 out of every 100 people.
No, the iPhone 3G doesn’t do very good video.
When did charity start to get so boring?
Yesterday I was in the centre of Bristol, and there was the usual modern sort of charity collector we’ve all seen a million times before.
There he was, permanent grin on his face, swirling a clipboard round and throwing it around like a fucking circus entertainer.
“Alright ladies?” he says in far too over-friendly a manner, as two poor women he’s never met before try to wander past him.
It’s every man for himself though, so I used the fact he was distracted by a couple of attractive girls to pass by without him “raising awareness” of my bank details, to set up a Direct Debit for their monthly payments.
When did it come to this?
When I was at primary school, I remember we had a charity day of sorts. It involved everyone bringing in some spare change, with the aim being to cover the entire school hall from corner to corner, in money. As a kid, this seemed quite fun.
There might have even been a bit of an Art Attack angle to it, with some sort of picture or pattern, made via the placement of the different colours of coins. Fun.
I used to be a member of a charity organisation myself actually.
Although my part in it had nothing to do with fundraising, as part of my commitment to the organisation, every member was supposed to hang around for a couple of days in Christmas, shaking tins and begging people for money.
I never partook in this for the whole time I was there.
I thought “I hate those people who pester me for money outside Sainsburys – I don’t want to be one of them.”
Also, as our organisation was media-related, surely we could do better than that?
When the Bristol Folk House (a kind of adult-education centre by day, music venue by night) needed to raise funds a couple of years ago, they set up a music night with BCfm (a local community radio station that also needed to additional funds), and split the profits.
There’s a night of music and entertainment, broadcast on the radio, that raises awareness of some upcoming musicians, the Folk House and BCfm, while helping to bring in needed finance to two local businesses.
I recently attended the Bristol #Twestival.
This is predominantly a way of raising money for charity, but has the nice by-product of becoming a night out, and the chance to meet people you’ve been chatting to on Twitter.
I was concerned about even buying a ticket. I worried I would be sold-to, from the moment I got in the door. Although I’m not heartless, I’m not affording to live at the moment, so additional spend is really not possible.
Why did I even think I’d be given the hard sell?
Well, I went to a comedy gig a while back for charity.
Ticket sales went to the charity, and all profits from the bar.
There was a short break between each act, during which I was forced to watch a horrible slideshow of African children in harrowing conditions.
To cheer myself up a bit, I joked this is like a catalogue that Madonna gets at Christmas.
To shake up the monotony of Powerpoint Poverty, they sent people round to the tables to flog you armbands, roses (“for your girlfriend”) and any other crap they could make a profit on.
The headline act didn’t come on til 11pm, by which point I was completely fed up, exhausted, and I’d been repeatedly made to feel like I hadn’t given enough.
I was worried the #Twestival might be the same, but I was surprised.
It was £5 for a ticket.
Then, on entry, I was given the chance to check my coat “but wait and see if it’s hot in there before you do”. No pressure at all.
I was shown further in by a volunteer, who advised me where I could buy cake/drinks/raffle tickets.
There was no requirement to buy anything, and I wasn’t given the hard sell.
I bought a large slice of cake for the nominal fee of £1, because I hadn’t had any tea yet.
Ticket sales went to charity, as did the coat-check fees. There was a raffle held, with tickets for a £1 (or 5 tickets for £4), with prizes donated by local businesses. Instant exposure for local businesses, plus more money going to charity.
At the end of the night they topped their target, by some margin, and everyone was a winner, baby. That’s the truth.
I spent maybe £12 the entire night, with £10 of that going to charity.
I guess that’s another issue I have with the charity muggers on the street.
They might give it the sympathy vote when they come to your door and talk to you about the ones they’re raising money for, but don’t be fooled by the idea they’re doing it because they care.
Street/door fundraisers earn £7-£10 per hour, and some are on commission for sales.
Some are paid per hour for the travel time to get to the city centre.
See this current advert from a recruitment website:
Clearly charity muggers on the street do work, because otherwise they wouldn’t have them.
I’m not saying you can run a night of entertainment every night of the week (or that it would continue to bring in money), but begging for money, and attempting to guilt-trip me into it, is surely the lowest form of charity.
Recently, I was offered the chance to work for a company (in a call centre) phoning people at home and trying to shoehorn Direct Debits out of them.
I had emails from the company who found my details on a recruitment website, and an agency who got me to register, then offered me the same job.
It would seem sensible, given that I’m not affording to live at the moment, to take such an offer. But who wants to be told “fuck off!”, 50 times a day? Not me. I wouldn’t want to be one of those. You can’t even even distract them with pretty girls and cross the street to get away.
When I Google-image’d for “jelly”, I didn’t only get the type of thing usually inedible by vegetarians, because Jelly is also a coworking/networking/working event.
Essentially it’s designed for self-employed individual types, who spend all day on their own at home, fighting the urge to switch on the Xbox, and trying to motivate themselves to keep working, without going mad from the loneliness, or the distractions of cats, children, or a sudden desire to do something incredibly mundane (that never looked remotely interesting until you weren’t supposed to be doing it).
The idea is to get together in a shared space, and occasionally talk to one another.
There is some networking opportunity there, but you don’t go just to swap business cards, and there’s no requirement to stand up and talk about yourself for 60 seconds (people will look at you very oddly if you do).
Just because you meet a PR guru doesn’t mean you can only use/recommend them for all future PR needs, and you don’t have to get up for it at 5am, pay membership to join a bloody “chapter” or learn a secret handshake, either.
At the ones I’ve been to, there was even free tea/coffee and biscuits.
The majority of people who have attended the ones I’ve been to so far, are either web designers or web developers (possibly due to it being arranged via Twitter). I’m not either.
My current circumstances are as follows:
1. I work part-time at weekends, in a crappy job in a petrol station. This is tediously boring, involves working in the middle of the night, is bad for my health (mental and physical), and it isn’t paying my bills either, which is why…
2. I’m looking for another job. It’s pretty boring, and hard to keep at it, when the economic odds seem massively stacked against me, and every news report tells me there aren’t any jobs left.
AND
3. While I wasn’t working for part of 2008 and 2009, I came up with an idea for a business. I’ve been working on this for a while, and I attended workshops at City of Bristol College in Business Startup, but it’s hard to keep both the motivation and confidence in the idea going, with little validation from people who aren’t friends/family.
PLUS
4. I’ve a fascination with the media, especially writing and radio. However, it is fiendishly hard to get into, easy to fall out of, and the radio industry seems to be stuck in a rut at the moment of thinking that listeners just want back-to-back music (and adverts), with little-to-no personality from presenters (assuming they still employ presenters, and aren’t running 10-hours-a-day of automation).
When I first heard about Jelly, I thought it was a great idea, and commented about it on Twitter.
I was immediately invited, but felt I wouldn’t quite fit with it, given how little I was accomplishing at home. The idea of doing whatever you do at home, with other people, would have involved me mostly drinking tea and feeling slightly sorry for myself.
Lee Cottier (who organises the Bristol/Bath Jelly Coworking events under the guise of @CoWorkingWest) practically insisted I come along, and talked me into it.
I wasn’t sure I met the “for creatives” brief that the event had chosen, but Lee thought my radio stuff would. Bizarrely, I didn’t even think about that side, as it is something that has not yet made me any money whatsoever, so I’d disregarded it altogether.
At the first meeting, I was very late. It starts at 9.30, and as I left home very late, got lost, and nipped into the busiest Post Office in the world to send a “quick” parcel (more of my worldly goods, eBayed), it was nearly noon by the time I got there.
This wasn’t an issue. The venue is booked all day, but there is no requirement to start at the start, or end when the organisers end.
I thought I’d feel a bit of a fraud, because I thought that all the people there would be moderately successful. While this is true, they weren’t all financially supported by what they were doing at Jelly.
I spent a lot of time talking to an author, who despite having already been published, couldn’t afford to live purely off of that.
There were two tables – one big with lots of people sat round, one small with two people sat round. Feeling a bit unconfident, I took a seat at the smaller table.
I did some work, wound up chatting to some very interesting people about publishing, and although on paper all I did was send some emails, post some forum messages and tidy/type up some radio/script notes, there was no denying that it had inspired me to go on and do more.
I set some things in motion that day, which would give me more constructive things to carry on with, afterwards.
It also gave me a small amount of hope.
Spending all day on your own, watching the news, listening to the radio, and looking for a job that seems more unobtainable by the hour, you can really get quite depressed.
While the economy is undoubtedly screwed, these were all people who were making a living at doing something. They were all able to attend a coworking event on a weekday, so had flexible working hours.
Just getting out of bed, getting dressed and going to an office, was brilliant for motivation. Never mind that it wasn’t MY office, I wasn’t getting paid for my work, and I wasn’t working WITH any of these people. Together, we were all working…separately.
Yesterday I went to my second Jelly meet.
I came on leaps and bounds with EatInBristol (my business project, aka #3 above), and met some more interesting people.
In the space of seven hours, I got a major task completed that I had been putting off for a long time and sent some important emails, someone else filmed an advert for the Doritos King of Ads competition, and we’re all a lot more clued up on UK recruitment law thanks to a completely unplanned cross-table discussion.
For more information on Jelly:
– See http://workatjelly.com (for how it started)
– See http://wiki.workatjelly.com for information on one local to you
– And if you live in Bristol/Bath, contact @coworkingwest on Twitter, for information about when/where the next one takes place.
What is wrong with people?
Not a week goes by, without someone moaning to me about the “unexpected item” error you get in self-service checkouts at the supermarket.
If you’re getting it, it is YOUR fault.
Seemingly it’s a problem we’re all having, all the time.
Well I’m not.
Ever.
I’ve never thought of myself as a genius, but as I’m seemingly the only person in the world who can figure out how to use these machines, I thought I’d write a post explaining this, why it occurs, and how to resolve it.
I’ve had no training in building these machines, but from what I can see, there’s two things going on.
1. You scan.
2. You put it in the “bagging area”.
First the machine scans a barcode, then it expects you to put something in the bagging area.
I’m pretty sure it checks the weight of the bagging area, to make sure you haven’t bought 12 toilet rolls, and scanned them through as a Snickers bar.
It will report “unexpected item” if you just chuck something in the bagging area, because you haven’t scanned it.
That’s your fault.
So scan it, then put it in the bagging area. Simple.
You’ve scanned it, it’s waiting for you to put it in the bagging area.
Where a few people get confused is where they use their own bags.
Given it measures the weight, you already know you can’t just put your bag in the bagging area.
You know this doesn’t work – don’t fight it.
Don’t blame the machine.
If you put a bag in the bagging area without scanning anything, it’ll complain. YOU are using the machine incorrectly.
If you’ve been struggling with this, the solution is so simple you will kick yourself.
For this example, I’ll be buying a 2pt bottle of milk.
You scan the milk, then put it in your own bag, then put the bag (now containing milk) in the bagging area.
It weighs it, and it is approximately the weight it was expecting.
You do this for each new bag, as you add them.
Simple.
If that doesn’t work for you, then you’re still doing something wrong. I haven’t had an argument with the machine about unexpected items in months.
The only argument I have is when you have 4-5 bags, you’re attempting to put money away and pick them up, and as you’re a tiny few seconds slower, it tells you “please take your items” as if you’ve forgotten.
I’ve got a simple solution to that too – swear at it. Profusely.
Well that was odd.
I work in a petrol station at the moment part-time, and we sell newspapers.
You know, like paper books with news in.
No? Erm….well it’s like a print out of what you can read online for nothing, a day or so after the big story has happened. With silly celebrity opinions shoehorned in.
In amongst this, we also sell some works of fiction, like the Daily Mail.
Anyway, a few weeks back I noticed this had been delivered to us:
At the time, I remembered a lesson in college recently, about how slagging off your competition is not a great way to advertise your product/service, as people tend to think you are a bunch of c***s.
Also, what is the “Casual Sun”? I don’t think we stock that title.
If they mean Sun readers who are only occasionally reading it, again – how would I know? I don’t take note of what every customer reads.
If someone buys a Twix, I don’t ask them if they’re only casually buying it, or if they would much prefer a Snickers. Very strange.
I’m not working today, and it’s jobs day in the Bristol Evening Post (my local paper), so I just nipped out to my local newsagents.
Once inside, upon approaching the newspaper stand, I noticed a man loitering shiftily.
As I got closer, he asked “getting a newspaper?”
I thought he was some bored shop assistant, and didn’t really have time to answer before my hand touched a copy of today’s Evening Post.
“Oh..” he said, upon sighting my choice, “can I interest you in a copy of the Daily Mail?”
“Erm no – I don’t really read the Daily Mail”, I replied.
I thought that would be the end of it to be honest, but he came back with the frankly amazing retort of:
“You don’t have to read it. You could just sign up for the vouchers to improve my stats”.
Lol. I almost felt sorry enough for him to sign up.
Everyone has to earn a living, and what with the economy being completely screwed at the moment, and admiring his honesty, I almost decided to do him a favour.
Sadly, I couldn’t be arsed. Plus, signing up to receive Daily Mail vouchers probably gets me junk mail from the BNP and other unsavory organisations.
Sorry about that Mr Daily Mail man.
It makes me wonder though if the Daily Mail are seriously worrying about losing sales.
It saddens me to say this, but as someone who has to accept/return newspapers as part of my job, the biggest selling non-Murdoch title is the Daily Mail. By a long margin.
We get two copies of the Financial Times. We return two copies unsold.
We get thirty copies of the Daily Mail, and sometimes return two unsold, on a bad day.
Nationally, the Daily Mail is the biggest selling daily…thing..by miles.
The real irony is that despite the disappointment of the Daily Mail voucher tout, and despite my reluctance to have anything to do with that publication, the newspaper I bought – the Bristol Evening Post – is owned by “Bristol News and Media Ltd”, which is “a member of the DMGT Group of Companies”. The Daily Mail and General Trust owns it anyway.
After spending 2.5 hours on a job application doing something constructive, I’ve allowed myself to do something silly, like, say – writing a letter to McVitie’s about creating portable digestive breath “mints”.
McVitie’s Consumer Service Department
Freepost Nat4520
Ashby-de-la-Zouche
Leicestershire
LE65 1NZMonday 7th December 2009
Dear Sir/Madam,
Yesterday, my girlfriend was enjoying some of your fine digestive biscuits, and dunking some in a cup of tea that she’d brewed in a McVitie’s Digestive mug. (I have enclosed a picture of the mug for reference purposes, but apologise for it being in black and white, as I don’t have a colour printer)
We were talking during this time, and I couldn’t help but notice that her breath smelt of biscuits.
It got me to wondering: Why are all breath mints…mint?
Why do we want our breath to smell of mint anyway? What’s so good about mint?Personally, I love the smell of McVitie’s Digestive biscuits, and think it would be lovely if more peoples’ breath smelt of them. Plus it would probably make people hungrier and more likely to buy more of your biscuits, though I would hope you would not use that power for evil.
Obviously it is inconvenient to carry a large packet of biscuits with you everywhere you go though, and there would be a great deal of crumb maintenance, so I wonder if it would be possible for McVitie’s Labs to create a long-lasting portable breath “mint” that enabled you to have that all day taste/smell of biscuits? For overweight people, maybe you could make one that smelt/tasted of something nobody likes, like sprouts, or Turkish Delight.
Good day to you, and if you did feel the need to send me some vouchers to help fund my biscuit addiction (that you have played a part in creating), they would be much appreciated.
Yours hungrily,
Ben Park
I really did sign it like a proper letter too. It looks very official.
And here’s the picture I printed and sent with the letter (for reference purposes):
It’s a real letter. I’ve just posted it…..now.
Edit: 18th December 2009.
Just received this reply from McVitie’s (click to enlarge).
I’ll be honest, I don’t care about the Daily Express mostly.
It’s quite a boring newspaper.
Not racist/homophobic/scaremongering enough to be the DailyMail, it isn’t really first with any stories, and it doesn’t have any writers I’m bothered about.
I’ll read it if the paper is around, but I’m not too fussed about it either way.
My job in a petrol station also involves selling newspapers. As part of it, I have to put in all those millions of inserts that you get in weekend newspapers, as they’re all delivered separately.
Delivered with Saturday’s Daily Express was their normal magazine, with celebrity interview, TV guide, etc.
We were delivered a few too many inserts so I was flicking through a spare copy, and tucked away near the back was an advert that made me laugh. Maybe it was just because I was working a night shift and it was 4am, but this became a running joke for the rest of the night (click image for larger):
My first thought was how gaudy and disgusting it is, but there’s much more to poke fun at, than that.
Someone has actually sat down and thought “Elvis..people like Elvis..what sort of Elvis merchandise can we come up with?”
Granted Elvis has been dead for such a long time, it’s probably hard to keep coming up with ideas, but an Elvis cuckoo clock?
Sorry. Not just an Elvis cuckoo clock – it is the “first-ever” Elvis cuckoo clock!
Where he pops out and “sings” a hit on the hour?
What sort of drugs are they smoking at the Bradford Exchange?
It states several times this is the “40th Anniversary edition”, but of what?
His comeback special is mentioned early on, from 1968. But then the 40th anniversary of that would surely have been in 2008, not 2 months from the end of 2009. They have arrived somewhat late to the party.
The clock features a “brass pendulum bearing Elvis’ replica autograph”. As opposed to what? Getting him to sign them all personally?
Either way, you had better snap one up quick because it is “strictly limited to 295 crafting days”. Does that mean someone is making these all day every day, for nearly 10 months?
And I thought I had it bad in my job.
Available now, just £149.95 (plus 9.99 p&p) you can pay in installments – hurry! You need send no money now!
I hate living with people.
I currently share a house with three others, but a fourth will be added when a room has been renovated to a standard where you can actually live in there.
When I moved in, I partly fooled myself into thinking I’d like to live with people as it would be more sociable, but if I’m completely honest it was because I had a shitty studio flat where I had to cook in my bedroom, and that got boiling hot in summer, freezing cold in winter, and had no central heating.
I also didn’t have a washing machine (or room for one), and walking to/from the launderette wasted a lot of a weekend day.
Today I’ve had a shit day. I knew that a long time before I got home.
I’m tired, I’ve fucked my sleep pattern up, and feel like I’m wasting a huge percentage of time every week, that I should be spending doing something.
But that can’t be any excuse for other peoples complete lack of ability to wash anything up?
How hard is it to scrape the ketchup off a plate, so it’s clean?
If you ate in a restaurant and there was some old scummy ketchup on the edge of a knife you were eating from, you’d ask for a clean one.
I’ve just had to wash up every plate (two of which I had used), but one was in the cupboard, all caked in some previous meal.
I’ve put that plate back next to the sink to be washed up fucking properly like the hygiene policeman that I am, but it’ll end up being me that washes it up anyway, because nobody else cares.
And the annoyance doesn’t stop there.
When people do wash up, and do it to a mediocre standard that passes my test, they occasionally dry it up, then leave it out on top of the cooker.
We’ve got a cupboard for pans, another for plates, etc. If it’s washed, clean and dry, just put it away.
Otherwise I have to put it away when I come to do some cooking.
I’m not sure who keeps doing it, but there is some sort of pasta sauce or ketchup on the side of my kettle at the moment. (Yes, mine – I bought it!)
I’ve cleaned it recently, and it’s back there again.
How does that even happen?
I must admit I’m no amateur to using a kettle, but I fill it with water, boil it, then add it to the mug/bowl/pan I’m using. At no point do I smear ketchup all down the side of it.
It’s not even on the handle so it isn’t just coming off their hands. I’ve thought through the possibilities, and I can’t fathom it out.
Of the 10 cups we have in the house, 3 of them are currently clean.
There’s a few lying around the living room and a glass half full/empty of water (always – why not just put less in, if you don’t want all of it?)
Between 4 of us, it’d probably be nice to have a few more. But I’ll be fucked if I’m buying any more, as I bought all of them to start with.
There’s an iron still plugged in (thankfully switched off at the wall) that someone hasn’t bothered to put away. My iron, yes.
And one of my housemates just rang the doorbell because he’d lost his keys. Why do people lose keys so easily? I’ve never lost a set of keys in my life, and maybe it’s down to the fact I assume that anyone who has my keys can steal whatever they’re currently keeping locked up.
E.g. It’s not a key – it’s my laptop, TV and everything else I own of value.
Sadly in a shared house, it’s exactly the same if they lose their keys.
Some of them are also really shit with bills.
Yet sadly, thanks to my lousy pay, I’m unable to afford to live alone.
I’m forced to live with other bloody people.
Thanks to the good schools in my area, and other niceties, despite the recession, houses are still valued at over £300,000 in my street.
The knock-on of living in an area which isn’t full of chavs and mostly free of fucktards, means I couldn’t rent a one-bedroom flat here without nearly doubling my salary.
According to RightMove’s iPhone app, I can’t even downsize and down err… people. Switching to a 2 bedroom flat and finding someone who would only wind me up slightly, would still involve me paying another £100 a month in rent alone, plus increased council tax and other bills.
It makes me laugh to hear people who own property moaning about the value dropping by 0.1%. “Oh woe is me. I’ll have to wait another year to retire”.
Arseholes.
If a £300,000 house drops in value by even 20%(and the market shits itself at 1%), then it’s worth £240,000. As long as you don’t sell it, it makes no difference to anyone.
If you’ve cleared the mortgage, then just sit and wait, or sell it if you need the money. If you’re going end up in negative equity by selling, then don’t sell it.
Property is an investment after all. Investments can/should go down as well as up.
Frankly a depreciation of 20% in any other area would be superb. Imagine if a £200 Xbox was worth £160 5 years later on eBay.
To people on a salary of say £20,000 the difference between a £240,000 house and a £300,000 house is absolutely nothing. Even two people on £20,000 each, buying a house together. No difference.
Just who do these price rises benefit anyway?
I once got chatting to someone who owned a large house in the Clifton area, worth an absolute fortune. They told me it was no benefit to them at all. If they sold it, they’d still have to buy another elsewhere, which in the nicer areas, would also have risen a lot. Unless they were planning on living in a shed, whether it was worth £200,000 or £400,000, it was no benefit whatsoever.
Now as I’m grumpy and tired. And tired because grumpy. I’m going to attempt to get an hour’s sleep while my neighbours bang around and randomly shout, before I go back to my badly paid job where stoners can’t decide which fucking cigarettes they want. I hate people.
As a younger geekier person, I played a computer game called Beneath a Steel Sky. A lot.
Near the end of the game, you (the main character) insert a circuit board into a rubbery lifeless thing in a laboratory, and complete its transformation from silicon, to android.
Upon awakening, it near-instantly asks ‘when do I get my accessories? Nails, hair, teeth? etc’ to which you reply something like ‘forget it – they’re more trouble than they’re worth’.
It was this morning that this seemed most true, as I sat in the Orthodontics section of Bristol Dental Hospital, waiting to be seen.
There’s apparently no shame in adult dental work, and there’s a lot more adults having braces than ever before.
That said, they have no ‘adults’ orthodontics section, and I was directed by the receptionist into a room where I was the oldest person there by around 15 years.
I sat there, surrounded by the coloured sofas, random toys, and collections of parents temporarily bereft of their offspring, trying to steady my nerves by browsing the net on my iPhone and checking out what Ariane Sherine was up to on Twitter.
But then, I don’t know if it’s my lack of sleep, or if I’m really that paranoid – but I started to worry that this looked quite bad.
Me, a single childless man, 20-something, in a room full of children holding effectively a camera.
I started waving it around so there’s no way I could focus for a photo if I wanted to, but then it could have been the new 3GS model with the video camera.
I covered the screen but then it seemed like I had something to hide, so I angled it down towards my crotch so there’s no way I could be taking photos of young children. There – THATs fine. Oh no, wait!
My social angst was disturbed by a nurse calling me into a different room, and I’ve never been so glad to go in to a room full of dentist chairs and drills in my life.
I was ushered into an office-type square, and the orthodontist introduced himself while the nurse offered to take my coat. Thinking she wanted to take it away somewhere, I spent an age trying to remove my car keys from the pocket, joking “not that I think anyone’s going to steal them, but it’s the most expensive thing I own”. She then took it and hung it on a hook 2ft from where I was standing.
I reintroduced myself to the orthodontist so I could actually catch his name.
And then we had a bit of a chat. Me not knowing what notes he had, he immediately told me braces were an option.
I thought he was some kind of genius for being able to diagnose me without even looking at my teeth properly. Or maybe he had really good eyesight. I for some reason tried to talk without opening my mouth as far, as if testing his ability.
He got out the tiny mirror on the stick and had a proper look at my teeth, and told me it looked like I had at some point had a tooth removed. I motioned the symbol for “two” with my fingers, inadvertently flipping him the V-sign. I don’t think he noticed/minded.
First, the news I liked hearing. My teeth are fine from a hygiene perspective. A sticker and a lollipop for me (if I were in fact a child).
More good news followed.
If I don’t want braces, that’s fine. He doesn’t think my teeth will all fall out, or realign themselves vertically while I’m asleep.
The tooth fairy will have to look elsewhere to mine their raw materials. (What the hell do they do with all the teeth anyway? They can’t ALL be rounded off and made into Tic Tacs, surely?)
That’s where the good news ended.
I mentioned I had seen a woman in the paper (some wife of..some..celebrity. I don’t follow celebrity news much) who had near-invisible gumshield-type braces (known as “Invisalign“), nobody knew she had them, and now she had lovely teeth.
Sadly, such braces would be no good for me.
They could possibly straighten the top teeth a bit, but they would then be even more out of place with the bottom ones, and more noticeable.
I then commented that you could have them on the inside of teeth, so people couldn’t see them. (Oh yeah – I’ve done my research.)
Sadly, they’re complicated, require a lot more work, and quite commonly have to stay on longer.
So how much work would be involved in the horrible metal, front-hanger-on ones then?
Monthly checkups, rubber band adjustments, and I’d need to keep them on for two and a half years “at least”.
I’d likely need another two teeth extracted, and worse still – that would only straighten them.
It would require x-rays to be sure, but to fix my overbite may involve an operation to realign my jaw. That sounds painful to me.
On the upside, having braces (of the non-“Invisalign” variety) makes no difference to vocals, so it wouldn’t stop me cocking about on radio.
Or harm my successful singing career or 27-octave range.
The real kicker is that it has no health/medical benefit to me whatsoever.
My teeth are perfectly healthy, and if I choose to just keep on brushing, they’ll remain able to chew my food, bite people on full moons, etc.
No. IF I do it – I’ll be doing it entirely for cosmetic purposes.
I commented to him that I had no intention of being a soap star or a male model, as if either would be possible even with slightly straighter teeth.
Essentially we’re back to where I was when I saw other people with braces at 13-14 – worrying a lot.
Who will take a 27-29 year old man seriously, if he has braces?
When I launch my business soon, given I already look younger than I am and I think people like to buy from people who appear experienced/knowledgable, would having braces make me look even younger, and/or scare them off altogether?
Do women prefer a man with teeth that aren’t straight, or a man with a mouth full of scaffolding? I might never have sex again.
If I lived in America, I’m sure I’d have been forced by law to have them done years ago, but in Britain, does anyone really care that much?
Can I really bring myself to go through all of this just for straighter teeth?
The only time I really worry about my teeth is when I visit the dentist, or when I’m really tired or upset about something unrelated.
And even then it’s the last thing down a very long list of moans.
“…and I’ve got no money, no hope, I’m fed up with life, my car needs a service, I’m boring, “My Name is Earl” has been cancelled, I did a shit radio show three weeks ago………. and I’ve got bloody horrible teeth”.
Years ago, I mentioned to someone I was attracted to about my teeth, and they quite openly told me they’d never even noticed.
Bad teeth do run in my family. My dad has terrible teeth.
And my siblings have teeth-related issues, though luckily none of us have any real plans to have children, so I guess the buck stops here. Well, not right this minute – in 50 years or so.
I guess it’s something to ponder on, and likely do nothing about.
The orthodontist gave me some leaflets before I went. I don’t know if it was deliberate or an unconscious act, but THIS one was on the top.
I’ve just been to the Job Centre to sign on, as it’s that time of the fortnight.
There was two queues of people waiting at reception (two members of staff working on it), and I suddenly had a wondering: Why do I have to queue at reception?
I queued regardless, because everyone else was doing it.
When I got to the front, they asked who I was, I said I was there to sign on at my appointment time, and they asked me to take a seat.
This is what they did last time.
They don’t write it down, or make a note of who I was, so what was the point of asking?
I pondered this point some more while I was sat down in reception waiting to be seen.
As I was doing so, a black guy wandered in and had the sheer audacity not to join the queue, and attempted to just walk into reception, where he’d presumably have taken a seat and waited to be seen for his signing-on time.
He was immediately approached by a running security guard complete with uniform, walkie talkie and everything, to ask who he was.
He explained calmly he was there to sign on – and was that alright?
The security guard glanced him up and down, and then checked for invisible backup behind him, before negating to actually tell him whether this was OK or not, and wandering off.
Several questions crossed my mind really.
– Why do they need security (there is 3-4 of them)?
I’m assuming they have some money somewhere in order to pay people in emergencies, but I doubt it’s in reception.
and perhaps more importantly:
– Why do we all have to announce who we are, if we know the prior procedure already, and they don’t do anything with that information anyway?
Not only that, there’s two people at reception. It would be only one if they were just using it for actual general queries, which would free up an additional person to carry out the signing, reducing the wait (and workload of other staff) further.