Tea, Coffee, and Me Ch. 01

On my way to Interview Desk Five, I glanced at the other five interviewees.

Unsurprisingly, all of them were male, and upon seeing their glum faces and their hunch-shouldered, defensive postures, I saw the first tangible signs that things didn't bode well.

Nowadays, females were not obliged to work for a living.

Though not all females went along with the so-called female-friendly ways of the AFP - some, to the extent of protesting in the streets and participating in rallies and, after ignoring repeated warnings from local AFP representatives, ending up in prison in defence of their equal-rights values and beliefs - they were in the minority.

In fact, unless females wanted to work for their living (for career reasons or entrepreneurship - or choosing to work purely from a moral standpoint), they were not only allowed but actively encouraged by the AFP to claim the government's ludicrously generous Ladies of Leisure Living Allowance.

Benefits to recipients of the LLLA included: Automatic payment of their utility, phone and Internet bills; free bus, rail and Tube travel; cost-free admission to gyms, swimming pools, cinemas and theatres; and their pedicure salon, hairdresser, and coffee shop tabs paid upon presentation of their AFP-Supporter ID cards.

Hence, since they could live comfortably from proceeds of the AFP's male taxation-supported scheme (on a sharply rising scale, male workers were deducted tax from their gross income from a starting-point minimum of fifty percent), I was not the least surprised to see job-seeking females conspicuous by their absence.

I saw the second tangible sign of ill omen when I saw my interviewer.

These days, the Job Centre staff were all female - the AFP were of the view that male staff might be empathetically disposed towards male job seekers and would be tempted to stray from the rigidly mandated constraints of their remits and take it upon themselves to lean towards leniency.

My interviewer was a girl who was about a year older than me, whose Careers Adviser name tag told me she was Toya Tomkins.

When Miss Tomkins didn't say anything for some moments but merely regarded me, seemingly appraisingly, my rapidly growing nervous agitation became such that I took it upon myself to open our interlocution.

"Good afternoon, Miss Tomkins," I said respectfully, remaining standing.

From the discreet distance at which I stood, through the kneehole of her desk I observed with a leg man's appreciation the toned shapeliness of Miss Tomkins' bare, olive-complexioned legs, and noticed that she wore a comfortable-looking pair of well-worn red leather flats.

Miss Tomkins did not deign to return my polite pleasantry of the day or reciprocate my engaging smile but, crossing her right leg over her left and then dangling her well-worn red leather flat precariously from her toes as if it was something she did all the time, held out her hand for my Letter of Notification.

The Job Centre's Letter of Notification was their legally enforcible document.

Letters of Notification were sent out to all school leavers who had no work or training to go to upon finishing full-time education, which was why I had received mine.

Among other recipients of the dreaded official notices were Unemployment Benefit-claiming long-term unemployed, who had reached the end of their statutory two-week (soon to be reduced to one week) entitlement. For them, it was likely to mean a Placement.

For recipients thus advised of their upcoming Job Centre interview or apprised of the details of their assigned Placement, ignoring or not responding promptly or appropriately to these summonses or dictates was in both cases criminal and could incur anything from a stiff Social Servitude sanction to Detention and Rehabilitation custodial consequences.

I now handed mine over.

And only then did Miss Tomkins, with a curt nod towards the seat opposite her, indicate that I sit down.

As favoured by Prime Minister Caroline Flynt's Authoritarian Female Party government and therefore worn by their 'foot soldier' CSOs as a part of their uniform, I was both dismayed and discomfited to see that although a civilian Miss Tomkins supportively wore her hair in the AFP's trademark adopted but severely adapted concave bob style.

At seeing it, I felt the familiar sense of foreboding; a feeling of dreadful apprehension - for wearers of the unprepossessing hairstyle seemed, ipso facto, to exude threat and emanate menace.

For though Miss Tomkins comported the cocky confidence and arrogant authoritative assuredness of all AFP-empowered employees, her almost militaristic-like haircut was the finishing, fear-inspiring touch that gave her dyed-in-the-wool AFP apparatchik appearance an air of implacable harshness that otherwise she would not have projected.

I sat there, remaining silent, minimising direct eye contact, and hoping my facial expression was bland enough to be deemed neutral.

That I'd left full-time education with low grades would no doubt be reflected now, I thought, manifested in the dismaying standard of the work openings available to me.

Miss Tomkins leafed through my Final Term's teachers' reports and read the summary of my school grades appended to the Job Centre's Letter of Notification. And as she did so, she glanced at me several times, seemingly consideringly.

Upon having read the document, Miss Tomkins' hand then slammed down several times with thumps of fateful finality as she rubber-stamped each page with Brighton Job Centre's crest.

She then scooted on her castor-wheeled swivel chair to the long bank of grey metal filing cabinets lining the back wall; her bare heels, popping out from her well-worn red leather flats each time she propelled herself.

I watched her pull open to its full extent the long drawer labelled 'L-N', and insert the multi-paged document into a green file folder, in one of the several box-files marked: 'M'.

As Miss Toya Tomkins scooted back toward her desk, the momentary images of the bottoms of her slightly grubby bare heels and not least the even more fleetingly glimpsed suggestions of narrow, somewhat sweaty-looking pale olive-skinned soles, were still on my retinas.

Miss Tomkins then outlined my employment options - of which because of the limitations imposed by my abysmal academic accomplishments (although, only a few of years ago, pre-AFP, my end-of-education results would have been graded as above-average), she decreed I had just two:

1) Assignment to a Placement, facilitating one of the AFP's so-called female-friendly schemes.

But not duties female-friendly 'light', as often performed by the in-work free time-sacrificing auxiliary volunteers. But providing service/s and functions altogether more demanding, demeaning, and infinitely more disagreeable.

My hackles raised, I felt the almost uncontrollable urge to protest; to rant and rave against this, albeit, now all too common outrage.

But somehow I managed to stifle it; to nip the vociferous outpouring in the bud.

The consequences of such an outburst would not merely be deleterious, detrimental - but disastrous.

Miss Tomkins apparently understood that I realised the injudiciousness of giving vent to my emotions, as was attested by the smug smirk on her face as she then read out the long list of vacant/undermanned female-friendly Placement positions for my consideration.

When I did not volunteer a preference, Miss Tomkins highlighted the Placement vacancies that, due to both the ongoing expansions of established facilities to meet ever-increasing demand, and the newly operational projects and schemes furthering AFP ambitions of a widening diversity and more widespread availability, were most urgently needing to be manned.

Uppermost of these were 'Sock Room Attendant' and 'Air Purification Technician'.

Sock Room Attendant:

Assigned to assist (or temporarily replace, during the absented incumbent's undergoing of medical and- or psychiatric treatment for the increasingly common affliction of Community Servant Burn-Out Syndrome), run-down or washed-out Sock Room community servants, hand-washing the city's (or a nearby town's) females' dirty socks.

Air Purification Technician:

Assigned to man - be strapped onto supinely - during both outbound and return flights, one of an aircraft's Seat Line-serving computer-controlled under-seat railed conveyances (Air Purification Technician Service Vehicles). To attend push-button summonsing female passengers who, upon automated sequenced demand, took their turns in acquiring access to his sealed-mouthed, fixed-in-place face via their automatically retracting footwells.

With admiration in her voice and adoration in her eyes, Miss Tomkins proudly informed me that the Sock Room and the Air Purification Technician concepts were the brainchildren of Prime Minister Caroline Flynt herself.

I hadn't known that - but it didn't surprise me in the slightest to learn of it.

I remembered the day when ... maybe two years ago now, a TV programme I was watching was interrupted by an AFP broadcast, and a beaming Prime Minister Caroline Flynt announced the imminent introduction followed by the nationwide rolling-out in the very near future of the laughably titled Air Purification Technician service.

And then about a week later, out of sheer fascinated interest in this latest outlandish female-friendly scheme, I had watched on AFP TV the coverage of Ms Flynt presiding over the pre-launch ceremony.

At the time, it had struck me as odd that the AFP Transport Secretary, Yvette Carter, was not presiding - that she, herself was not taking the plaudits and basking in the glory and claiming the kudos for introducing the much-awaited and excitedly anticipated new female-friendly service.

But yes - thinking back, I think I had, seen the glowing, realised-ambition pride on Ms Flynt's face as she, herself cut the ribbon for the inaugural Air Purification Technician-served flight: SH 123 Manchester-Corfu.

AFP TV covered the Sunshine Holidays aircraft's mid-afternoon return to Manchester Airport, and I had watched that, as well - the earlier programme had given its follow-up show such a big, sense-of-occasion build-up, piquing my interest as to what the returning female air passengers were going to say.

The media were there en masse.

The national daily editions and local weekly issues and regional monthly magazines of the AFP Times were by then the UK's only newspapers and periodicals.

Standing alongside the AFP Times' chroniclers, though, foreign sensationalist red-top tabloid hacks and their better respected broadsheet brethren alike vied for advantageous position along the Arrivals Hall barrier rail.

Some looked on, pens poised on pads, while others scribbled away twenty to the dozen as jostling and shouting national and international TV journalists with boomed microphones accosted Flight SH 124's first appearing homecoming female holidaymakers as they pushed their suitcase-laden trollies of Duty-Free and dirty washing through Terminal 2 Arrivals.

I watched, along with millions of other captivated domestic and foreign TV viewers, as the badgering, pushy inquisitors followed their brighter, bubblier, more loquacious prospects outside to continue their interviews in more depth and greater detail.

Responding to the TV journos' cheesy-grinned, blatantly leading questions, the Grecian-suntanned female air passengers had nonetheless genuinely wowed and enthused, shouting over each other in their eagerness to recount their recollections of the new AFP-subsidised in-flight service.

And, how they had laughed!

Had laughed, chuckled and tittered as, looking unabashedly and unashamedly into the TV cameras they gave everyone at home their fondly remembered, often comedic and sometimes ribald account/s of their experience/s with the Air Purification Technician they'd push-button summonsed to their retractable footwell on the inaugural flight's return from Corfu.

Of course, there had been a tremendous amount of press and TV coverage of Flight SH 123's arrival in Corfu.

One such aficionado of particular note on the historic outbound flight was a stunningly beautiful girl who told everyone at home that her name was Anne-Marie, and that recently turned eighteen she was now "old enough to become an air hostess!"

Anne-Marie said that she'd had such fantastic fun, sitting in Seat 22 D. Tormenting with her "stinky feet", Air Purification Technician "Danny", who's automated under-seat railed Service Vehicle responded to the in-sequence demand of the push-button summonses of female passengers seated in Seat Line D.

So much so, said Anne-Marie, that having gleaned job-related information from members of cabin crew and procured from the flight's Chief Stewardess her promised personal assistance with an insider's influencing word with Personnel, she had already taken the first steps to becoming a Sunshine Holidays air hostess.

And why?

So that she, too, could share in more fully and enjoy more entirely and indulge in more completely - luxuriate in, more decadently - the air hostesses' previously undreamed-of fabulous perk of the job:

During the turnaround interlude at the destination airport, the same sealed-mouthed facial 'access' to the Air Purification Technicians as enjoyed in-flight by the service-availing female passengers; and then upon their return to their Sunshine Holidays crew room, their relieving and relaxing post-flight, hands-on foot-service attentions of the 'Techies' ...

Assigned to a Placement, I would earn the equivalent of the Unemployment Benefit to which as a school-leaver I was not entitled to claim.

2) Take up an urgent employment vacancy:

A full-time job at minimum-wage, working for a small company called Harper's Conference Catering.

Ah, this was more like it, I thought - until at Miss Tomkins' relating the dismaying, disturbing, and outright disagreeable details of the job description.

Miss Tomkins, picking up on my growing alarm and increasing dismay at what she was telling me, said that if I wanted to be difficult, I had a third option: Enrollment to a three-month ideological female-friendly indoctrination course at the Detention and Rehabilitation Centre two miles north of Brighton - the notorious Greystone Prison.

Mindset adjustment therapies, designed to instil into subjects a perfect understanding of all aspects of the AFP's female-friendly concept, were conducted by Greystone Prison's all-female prison officer training-instructor staff - the infamous browbeating, cane-happy, face-slapping, ball-kicking, Foot Service-teaching 'Jailhouse Blues'.

Miss Tomkins confidently assured me that was I to choose this third option, within half an hour of being incarcerated in the Intensive Cure Wing of the detention centre I would be begging to be let out of Greystone Prison and pleading to be assigned as first offered to a Placement.

Because by comparison, CSO-supervised hand-washing of females' dirty socks in a Sock Room; or forced inhalation of the fumes from push-button summonsing female air passengers' feet (ostensibly to improve air quality), and then serving at the air hostesses' post-flight feet back in their crew room - would seem like a let-off.

Miss Toya Tomkins told me that as my Careers Adviser she strongly recommended that I choose option two.

And that if I wanted to get into her good books - which wouldn't do me any harm, but might, just possibly do me some good - I wouldn't wait until Monday.

But start at eight a.m. tomorrow, Friday.

To please her, and to show willing to my new employer by getting her out of a fix.

Noticing my vocational indecision, Miss Tomkins reminded me that my only viable alternatives were to opt for a Placement as a Sock Room Attendant or an Air Purification Technician - and she told me that if I wouldn't or couldn't choose, she would decide for me.

Realistically I had no option but to opt for option two.

After I had respectfully stood to gratefully accept and profusely thank Miss Tomkins for the invaluable benefit of her career advice and the incalculable helpfulness of her wise counsel, she handed me her personalised Job Centre card to give to Mrs Hilary Harper tomorrow morning when I reported for work.

I had got up to leave and had almost reached the exit door, when Miss Tomkins stopped me in my tracks when she said, "Oh, and David ..."

I feared the worst.

Dreaded, that for all of the respect that I had so humbly accorded her, for all of the reverence I had self-belittlingly bestowed upon her - for all of David Manners' meek, mealy-mouthed manners - Miss Toya Tomkins was still going to slap some form of sanction on me anyway just because she could.

But when I turned around and retraced my steps to a discreet distance from her interview desk, to my surprise it was to see that, no longer playing hardball, her harsh, hardline, hard-faced countenance seemed to have softened slightly, post-interview.

Underneath it all, Miss Tomkins was a strikingly attractive young woman.

Miss Tomkins didn't immediately say anything. And soon feeling somewhat flustered under her apparent new, unofficial appraisal, I averted my gaze respectfully downward.

And through the kneehole of her desk, I couldn't but again note the beautifully sculpted bone structure and toned shapeliness of Miss Tomkin's bare, olive-complexioned legs. And to observe that, as if habitually, with one leg crossed over the other she was dangling from the tips of her toes her comfortable-looking well-worn red leather flat; her prominent, somewhat grubby heel, free and clear.

After Miss Tomkins had said nothing for what seemingly was some time, but just slowly swung her shoe-dangling foot up and down, varying the precariousness, and repeatedly flexing and angling her finely shaped ankle to facilitate ever more examples of footloose expression, I finally looked up.

Miss Tomkins quickly looked away.

"Er, yes, Miss Tomkins?"

She might have intended to say something, and maybe, she hadn't.

Perhaps, it was just some sort of psychological trick.

A cruel-minded tactic; a part of the game, that all of the Job Centre interviewers routinely played.

A ploy, that they all used, to last-minute discomfit their interviewees.

"Um, nothing, David. Just, don't be late for work tomorrow morning. And ... um, ask Mrs Harper to call me. My direct-dial number is on the card I've given you. I'll be here in the office from eight. And tell her it's important."

***

Mrs Hilary Harper came as a pleasant surprise.

I don't know what I'd imagined.

But when at eight a.m. on the following Friday morning as instructed I turned up at Mrs Harper's business premises, it wasn't the red-haired, green-eyed beauty she turned out to be.

I wasn't good with ages, but I guessed my sex-appeal oozing employer was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.

Mrs Harper asked if my Job Centre interviewer yesterday had given me a clear understanding of what she expected of me as her employee.

And when red-faced I said yes, she produced a Harper's Conference Catering staff badge and pinned it to my shirt.

Mrs Harper then briefly introduced me to her two assistants: Amanda, who nodded, slightly reserved but agreeably enough; and Zoe, who smiled, and whose eyes lingered on me somewhat longer.

I then passed on to my new employer Miss Toya Tomkins' personalised card and related her message about the importance of giving her a call at the Job Centre.

Mrs Harper looked at her wristwatch and said that she would just nip back into the office and give Miss Tomkins a quick call before we set off.

While I waited with my two new female colleagues, I maintained a respectful unobtrusive silence as between them Amanda and Zoe discussed the workday ahead and talked about what they were going to do over the weekend.