As pernicious as nose picking

Tomorrow, I must hustle for a job.  There was a scene in a series, Auf Wiedersehen, about English builders in Germany where one of the main characters says aggressively to everyone he meets, “Gi us a job!”, followed by, “I can do that, and then “Gi us a job!” repeated.  Well, thought I’d try that approach tomorrow.  I’m far too shy, it will do me good.  Face to face, it’ll be harder for them to say no.  Mind you, face to face, it will be harder to hear them say, “Sod off!”  The thing about most small islands, in my experience, is that jobs are rare and when available  naturally go to the locals.  On Rhodes in Greece, I tried for a job in a hotel.  My appointment with the personal manager went something like this.

 

Me, a bit nervous, knock on the door of a swanky office.  He grunts from inside and I take that as an invitation to enter.  I walk in to find a middle-aged man picking his nose and talking on his phone while seated behind a desk that should have belonged to the president of some Middle Eastern oil state.  At least he can multitask.  There was a running gag about a certain American president who was reputedly unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.  Anyway, he gestures with his phone for me to come in, while continuing to mine for gold. 

 

I approach his desk and decide I’m not going to shake his hand.  Then, I compromise, if he offers me the nose picking hand I’ll demur, but if it is the phone hand I’ll go for it.  Then, it occurs to me, what if he is an ambidextrous nose picker and I’ve arrived at the tail end of an orgy of nose picking all morning with both hands?   I decide it will be safer not to go for a handshake at all.  

Approaching his desk, I make sure I am not close enough for a handshake.  That feels much safer.  I needn’t have worried Mr Manager of Personnel is still talking on the phone and drilling a second shaft with his little pinkie.  I have a young nephew, who, when speaking on his mobile begins pacing up and down the room as if in a walking race.  One of my sons, who will remain nameless, will talk on the phone while scratching his ass.  Perhaps, we all have these little oddities when we are using the phone and only notice other peoples and not our own perversities.  Poor guy, perhaps nose picking is his phone thing, suddenly he hangs up and says in Greek,

“Well, what?”

Understanding him but not able to speak Greek in response I explain in English that I’ve come about a job they’ve advertised.  He leans back into his mammoth chair and gives the Greek no, which consists of a clicking noise made with the tongue against the top of the mouth followed by a quick nod back of the head.  Well, that’s a pretty clear no.  I thank him; Anglo-Saxon civility is as pernicious as nose picking.  It’s programmed in.

Leaving the office, I feel like I am in a different skit from the two Ronnie’s where one of them goes in to ask for a pay increase only to be rejected and humiliated.  As he leaves the same office, he is transformed into a schoolboy and his suit has changed into a school uniform complete with shorts and a cap.  He is so small he cannot even reach the handle to get out.  A wonderful image capturing all the vulnerability and feeling of smallness of the occasion.  

Later on, I’m talking to a friend who knows everyone on the island.  I describe my encounter and he explains that the personnel manager is the hotel owner’s cousin.  That is why he got the job.  And then in dark tones, as if this explains everything, “from one of the villages” waving his hand as if to some dark tribal outback. 

I am taken back to another conversation about the island being like a dog’s dish and no one likes to see another dog at the dish.  Especially, a foreign looking dog’s head.  It just means there’s less to go around.  So, I enter the fray with little illusion and a great deal of misgiving.  There are times when one really has to ask just how much rejection can a person take?  Can one overdose on it?  Does it do irreparable damage to one’s self-esteem?  To do what one loves and get paid for it is light upon light.  If writing could earn me money, I’d be in clover but the reality is these stories that are pouring out of me at present are a displacement activity.  You and I know I need to be out earning a living.  How does one reach mid fifties and be so useless at the basics of life?  Practice and perseverance, that’s how.  I have long perfected the art of putting off what needs to be done.  No more, tomorrow I’ll bite the bullet, but tonight I’ll have a big bun and some chocolate.  Challenging day ahead after all!