The Idler

Jelly Beans

If you’ve ever sent off for free stuff, you will know that you leave your details on an answerphone, and then, magically, the product appears on your doorstep. Well, actually, it’s not magic. Somewhere along the line is a shaven monkey with a headset strapped to their head, deciphering unintelligible recordings and typing addresses into an computer for despatch. I was one of those monkeys, helping teenagers and bored single mothers get their grubby hands on free jelly beans.

Work would kick off at 0900, when I sat at a large circular desk. There were partitions radiating from the table, spreading out far enough so that you couldn’t even see the unfortunate person next to you. Not that I would have wanted to see them anyway: the place was staffed by enormously fat, legging- clad middle-aged women who would occasionally honk and snort at each other, but thankfully never at me.

Set up in my own private hell, I would listen to endless answerphone recordings, and blindly tap them into a computer. Monotony was broken by people who left abusive messages on the phones, and on one occasion someone had played their flute at the telephone. The headset had a microphone, but it was never used; I went for up to 4 hours - literally - without making a sound. My one-hour lunch break was spent on my own in the local Wimpy so I wouldn’t have to communicate with the braying fatballs that were my co-workers.

A highlight of the job was the mildly smug feeling when a person refused to give their phone number, but we already had it on file from some handout-grabbing session they or their contemptible families had called in for previously. That, and sending torrents of jelly beans to my friends.

I quit after 10 days to become an ‘office assistant’.

Marc Hockfield