I got dressed into my work robes that consisted of an old ripped pair of jeans and an old tatty Nike t-shirt which was covered in an unidentified grimey substance, and just before I left home to start my working career as a grease monkey, or an ‘automobile engineer’ as the company I was working for put it, I stood in front of a large mirror with a silver frame around the edges of the glass, which is situated in my medium sized bedroom. I gazed at myself in the mirror and said to myself, “come on Liam, you can do this!
You’re a tiger, you’re a lethal weapon like Mel Gibson!” After reassuring myself with these unwise words of wisdom, I took a deep breath, switched off my bedroom light and headed out into the big World to start a career in the field of automobile engineering, or as I like to put it, making tea.
I started the long walk to Wimbledon Chase train station and on the way I wondered what my many friends were doing at that moment in time. I assured myself that they were most probably nervous too and that I was worrying about nothing and I would be fine at work. I walked into the station and bought my return ticket from an orange shabby old machine that had half of the buttons missing. Of course me being Mr lucky, the button for the station that I wanted to commute to was missing. I had to buy a return ticket that was valid up until the station after the one that I was travelling to. This of course meant that I had to pay more money than I usually should have had to pay. The machine printed out my tickets but then forgot to present to me my change.
Frustrated, tired and cold I made my way to platform two. I walked up the steps onto the overly crowded, heavily vandalized platform that was covered in graffiti. I gazed at the train time information board and saw that the next train was due to arrive approximately two minutes later. I strolled along the platform and found a seat on a bench halfway along the platform. I sat down next to an elderly woman that was wearing a red scarf and a bright green woolly hat, which damaged my eyes when I looked at it. The elderly woman, in my opinion, smelt of a mix between mouldy cheese and cat food. After a while the stench of the peculiar old woman became too much for me to handle and so I stood up and paced the length of the platform again.
After travelling the length of the platform a few times the following muffled announcement was made by a woman with an extremely high pitched yet manly voice, “ I regret to inform you, but I have received information that the next southbound train destination Sutton is running approximately 25 minutes late. I apologise for any inconvenience caused. “
I looked at my watch in disbelief to see that I was due to arrive at work in 20 minutes time, which meant that I would already be five minutes late when the train finally did arrive at the station, not to mention the time it would take on the train and the time needed to walk from St Helier station to my work experience placement.
After this announcement was made more than three quarters of the citizens waiting for a train left the station in a last attempt to find a different route to work. Thankfully the bizarre old women that I had to sit next to earlier left too, meaning that I could sit on the bench for a second time but on this occasion in peace and without having to put up with her foul stench.
The hands on my watch seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace and the 25 minutes in the freezing weather passed extremely slowly with the minutes seeming as hours. Finally the twenty-five minute wait had come to an end and the South West Trains train arrived 27 minutes late. I managed to fight my way on to the immensely overcrowded scrap heap of a train and bustled my way through the carriage to find some standing space as all the seats were taken. I looked around the carriage to see that the floor was absolutely sheltered with litter. There was dried chewing gum stuck to the floor, crisp packets everywhere and polystyrene cups that were earlier filled with coffee to wake up the commuters before they start work. The carriage also stunk of what seemed to be urine. In my head at the time I was thinking how much of a scandal the Public Transport facilities actually are and how I had failed to notice it before. If I were Tony Blair I would definitely sack the London Transport minister because he is a disgrace just like the Public Transport system that he is in charge of. The condition of the train was so poor that I wouldn’t allow a dog to sleep inside it.
Five train stations had passed with people leaving the train and new faces entering the carriage, and finally the train pulled up at my destination. I stepped out of the carriage and had to leap across the huge gap that was between the carriage and the platform. As I did this I noticed something rather strange, I was the only person to exit the train at that particular station, whereas dozens of people were getting off of the train at the other stops. As I walked out of the station I finally realised why I was the only person to get off at that stop. It was slap bang in the middle of nowhere to be precise. I looked to the left of the station to see the place where I would be slave labouring for two weeks. I took another look around to see that apart from that there was a run down chip shop across the road but that was it. There were no shops, houses or anything. I was thinking to myself the options that I had during my lunch break. The rundown fish and chip shop looked to be my only option, however there was a slight problem. The road that I had to cross to get to the chip shop was a dual carriageway and there was no pelican or zebra crossing in sight. How on Earth I was supposed to get across the road at lunchtime was beyond me.
After pondering on what to do on my lunch hour I walked in to a sky blue building, along a corridor and into reception. A rather attractive young woman in her early twenties approached me and asked if she could help me. I replied by telling her that I had work experience starting on that day. I then proceeded to follow her on her instruction and she lead me into a large garage, which unsurprisingly contained many cars, and introduced me to a man named Brian Wells. The receptionist then left us and went back to her duties.
Brian and myself began talking about my working hours and the tasks I would be carrying out. He then showed me the grand tour and pointed out the tearoom. In my head I knew that it was a hint. He really meant that this would be my home for the next two weeks. As soon as I had a brief look around the garage I knew that I was going to have a dreadful two weeks.
Brian then told me that I would be working with a mechanic called David Beams. Brian shouted out at the top of his cockney voice, “Beamsy!” I was rather startled by this, as it was very unexpected. After he had called out an old man who appeared to be Harold Shipman’s twin brother strolled along the dirty, oil covered workshop floor wearing red and silver Vauxhall overalls.
The Harold Shipman look-alike approached me and introduced himself as David Beams. While he was doing this I couldn’t help but think to myself how unlucky I was. My work experience placement was in a shabby old garage in the middle of nowhere. I also had the pleasure of working with a serial killer.
The two weeks passed dreadfully slowly and the tasks I undertook were making tea, making coffee, making hot-chocolate and running to and fro across a dual carriage way to the run down chip shop with everybody’s orders.
Tired bored and annoyed with Mr Austin for giving me a terrible work experience placement, I was just about to leave for the last time when the mechanics came up to me and told me to never forget them and to visit them regularly. I smiled and said thank you for letting me work with them. While doing this in my head I was thinking that they have a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing me again. I couldn’t wait to leave the garage. Work experience was possibly the worst two weeks of my life that have ever happened and probably yet to come.
After the first hour of work experience I definitely decided that I would never like a job that involves manual labour. I wouldn’t have the patience and I hated every minute of work experience.
