low paid

This article was accepted, and paid for, by a mainstream news organisation about ten years ago. They'd set it for printing in their magazine, then pull it out at the last minute, and say it was too libellous (hardly - it's wet) and negative (so what) to print. Then, the next month, they'd set it for printing again. Then, they'd pull it out. This went on for years. Sad wankers are probably still at it.

But enough. This is an article about the sort of monotonous job that people all over the planet are stuck in now:

A small group of Phonebet operators celebrated the company's birthday this year by bursting all the birthday balloons in the staff cafe with lit cigarettes. A guy called Matt proposed this little rape. Matt is a witty, long-haired, unwashed individual of about 50. He is perhaps Phonebet's least sentimental member of staff. Like most people who work the phones in this huge call-centre, he's paid about ten bucks an hour for the monotonous, low-level data-entry job that is taking phoned-in horseracing bets from the thousands of people around the country who make them each day. Unlike many of his workmates, though, Matt sees no reason to feign gratitude for this employment. So he doesn't. He is often late for his shifts, and, when he is in work, spends most his day heading outside for a fag.

Anyone who tries to wind him up about this usually comes off second best.

'Where have you been?' centre supervisors hiss at Matt when he wanders in, past the supervisors' table at the top of the room, at least an hour after his shift has started. 'This shift started at ten.' Matt always keeps walking when the supervisors start in on him. Some operators find it hard to understand why Matt hasn't been fired. The consensus usually is that either Matt isn't as perverse as he pretends, or he's living proof that it's difficult for operators to get the sack. The work is so boring, badly-paid and pointless that it is not at all unusual for operators to fail to turn up for shifts, or to arrive late and leave early and claim that both were genuine mistakes. Hundreds of people who start work here drop out after a week - they claim their RSI is playing up and go back on the dole or the sick, or they find a slightly less monotonous job in another call-centre, or they go back on the weed, or whatever.