J) The Office

Never ever work in a financial advisor's office. Ever.

No matter how desperate you are, do not be tempted. Become an asylum
seeker, a prostitute, a tramp with a skinny dog, do anything but enter
the world of pensions, mortgages, investment bonds, ISAs and
coffee.
Just in case those emphatic words have not convinced you, I will tell
you my story. Be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted and at times
makes harrowing reading.

It all started one sunny, unsuspecting day last summer. My neighbour
(God knows what is wrong with her) works in a financial advisor's
office and she asked me if I would like a job for the summer holidays.
Na?ve and innocent, I agreed to have an interview with her boss.
I don't remember much of the interview except for the bit that went:
'So if you work full-time all summer holiday you can earn ?600.'
It may not seem much to all you high-flying adults, but to a 14 year
old whose sole income is ?7 pocket money a week, ?600 is a dreamlike
amount of money. It was certainly enough to win the conflict in my
head, which went something like this:

'You don't want to work all summer holiday, you'll be knackered!'

'?600!'

'But you'll have to get up before 9.00 every morning!'

'?600!'

'But?'

'?600!'

'OK, I'll take the job.'

So it was that on the first day of my summer holiday I got up at 8.15,
spent an awkward car journey with my boss and found myself in a
stifling office with a small fan in the way of air conditioning. I was
introduced to the Financial Advisors, a breed of people who I imagine
to wear suits all the time, even in bed, and who have their own
language. Instead of the handshake I was expecting, by way of an
introduction I received an incomprehensible jumble of jargon.
'Hi, I'm Robert, could you get me a quote from The Exchange for a
Scottish Widows ISA in trust with bonds in Jupiter and Small European
Companies, with a maturity date of the 16th of November 2025, no, make
that the 18th of June 2027. I'll be needing it in 5 minutes.'
They soon realised quotes for Scottish Widows ISAs were not my strong
point, and instead gave me the task of phoning up a company to obtain
details of a bank account. So while all my friends were blissfully
asleep, I was having this conversation:

'Good morning, this is Beth Sutton from A &; C Investments. I am
phoning for details of account number
PGJEILEK120034576830584673957HHI837536U794646, client name Mr. S
Pocock.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch the number. Could you repeat it
please?'

'Of course: PGJEILEK120034576830584673957HHI837536U794646.'

'Thank you. Oh no, wait a moment. Oh dear, I seem to have deleted it.
I'm afraid you'll have to say it again.'

'No problem: PGJEILEK120034576830584673957HHI837536U794646.'

'Thank you. Ah, it would appear that the account has been
terminated.'

'That's great, but I really wanted to know the balance.'

'I'm not sure you understand. There is no balance - there is no longer
an account with the number you specified. Unless of course you got the
number wrong?'

'No, I'm quite certain the number was right. Could you tell me what
happened to the account, then?'

'It seems the client is deceased.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Mr S. Pocock is dead.'

'Dead?'

'Yes, D-E-A-D.'

'Oh. Right. Well, sorry to have wasted your time. Goodbye.'

I was demoted to filing.

Now what exactly is the point of filing? As far as I can make out,
filing involves putting pointless pieces of paper that no-one is ever
going to use again into folders with other similar pointless pieces of
paper just because whoever had the pointless piece of paper in the
first place was too lazy to put it with the similar pointless pieces of
paper.
Watching paint dry is positively orgasmic compared to filing. After
about an hour of it I could bear it no longer, so I escaped to the
kitchen to make coffee. During my time in the office I became quite an
expert in coffee-making, putting painstaking care into every aspect of
it. But even if you knock individual grains off a spoon of sugar until
it is level, there is a limit to how much time you take to perform the
operation.
So I made coffee at every possible opportunity. I would watch like a
hawk, and when someone finished a mug I would swoop in with a fresh
offer. I'm surprised anyone managed to get any work done at all with
the number of trips they made to the toilet.
After a few days I discovered a new time-waster - biscuits. I went to
the local shop and bought packs and packs of biscuits. I then proceeded
to arrange them on plates to go with the coffee, spending as long as I
could placing them in perfect patterns.
I think after a while my colleagues must have got sick of the coffee
and biscuits, because they came up with a job for me. I had to copy
down every single policy number in every single folder in every single
drawer. Two sides of the room were taken up with drawers.

I am sure there was no point to this exercise other than to bore me to
death. And if the boredom wasn't fatal enough, a touch of annoyance was
added too - the policy numbers were impossible to find. Some of the
policies seemed to have two numbers, some none at all, and some were
littered with numbers that weren't anything to do with anything.

My paycheques at the end of the week dulled the pain slightly, in their
exciting and official-looking blue envelopes. But even the money, the
money which had mistakenly driven me into this hell, could not
compensate for the sheer mundanity of this 'work'. I looked at my
paycheque for a while, sighed, then enquired:

'More coffee, anyone?'