Day Eighty-eight - Game of pricks

The worsts jobs I ever had were, as I recall it, within a short span of time of each other, but I can't remember now whether they were before or after going to London to live there with that couple who I was friends with. I think it might have been after, though. What did happen before I moved to London was I got a job working as a security officer in the headquarters of one of the big banks. Back then, whenever I was unemployed, I always sought a jobs like these. I think I might have went to some interviews, but for some reason or the other - maybe they weren't interested in me, and maybe I wasn't too keen on where they wanted to station me at - it never worked out, until just before summer 2000 when I got an offer that I found acceptable. The pay wasn't great, really, because I'd only be working week days, and then in one of the only two available shifts : either from 7 A.M. to 2 P.M. or from 2 P.M. to 9 P.M., but then again, one week I worked the morning shift, and the other I worked the night shift. What did I have in mind a job working as a security officer was going to be like? I sort of thought it would be a continuation of preety much what I'd experienced during my time in the air force's military police. Loads of hours just standing aroud, pretending to be guarding something, maintaining the illusion that I ahd some kind of artificial authority, that sort of thing.

And I wasn't wrong, not really. It was mainly just standing around for a bunch of hours, raising and then lowering an automated gate to let cars with the proper clearance into the subterranean garage, and that was it, really. I didn't do anything besides that, it was as mindnumbing as it sounds, and those daily seven hours always seemed to stretch on forever. I din't learn anything useful there, and nor did I make any friends - if anything, I found there a distinct lack of camaraderie like I had felt in the military. We weren't brothers-in-arms, we were barely eveb co-workers - honestly, it felt more like a competition than an actual job. There was an inner hierarchy of spots where you could be assigned to be on duty, and everybody else seemed to be stabbing everyone else in the back just for a shot at one of the primo spots. I didn't much care for my time there, which was short, really - by october I was already on my way out. One of the only things that made that job bearable is that it was, quite literally, next to where S. lived at the time, and whenever he had some free time he'd come and visit me, and we'd talk for a few hours - that would always help while away the boredom. Sometime during that time spent working there, the opportunity arose for me to move to London. I didn't think twice.