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From: Dave Death Category: Art Date: 21 August 2006 Time: 05:08 AM Review: My temp agency put me into a six week booking in the property department at Legal & General to do mail-merge work, i.e. sending out lots of form letters to addresses in a database. I know how to do this but swotted up the night before, printing out a guide to it. Arriving there, led along a warren of corridors, I found it a terribly grey lifeless place, with nobody under 40 even amongst the support staff, and chirpy young girls from Essex - who are the main delight of most City firms - conspicious by their absence. It was explained to me that half my work would be filing, since they file everything, including print-outs of every email. Without a good knowledge of which shopping centre is held in which fund, it is very arcane and hard to follow. The offices were entirely open plan. I was introduced to a succession of weary, soon-forgotten faces at whose beck and call I would be, since it seemed every secretary was on leave or had been hospitalised. I remarked to the person sat next to me that I had read up on mail-merge the night before, since although I knew how to do it, it had never been the main focus of my job. Ten minutes later, by which time it was 10.25am and I'd yet to get on to a computer, my log-on code having not been set up, the bald rotund bore opposite - from whose earlier handshake I had yet to recover - asked if he could have a word. He explained he had heard me say I'd had to read up on mail merge, and he therefore felt I was not suitable for the job. He had phoned my agency. I was angry and astounded - I'd spent £85 on a weekly railcard, I thought preparing for a job was a good thing; I have advanced Word skills. Did that mean he wanted me to leave immediately? Yes. So by half past ten, I'm out on the street, back amongst the light and the living. A block on, I started to laugh at the unfairness of it all, at the place, and what a fortunate escape I'd had. It astounds me that people spend so much of their lives working in offices like this, doing things like writing letters about lease renewals to stores in suburban shopping centres. Why aren't they screaming?