“Boss hurry up yeah,” a school kid who looked like he was in year 9 said to me without making eye contact, still looking out the window, keen to not miss his bus even though one came every three minutes.
“Fuck sake mancomeon!” the boy snapped at me as I trembled behind the counter, spooning depressingly sloppy meatballs into an Italian baguette, dripping sauce on my gloves. It had taken me a week to learn every combination of sandwich this franchise sold (who are we kidding, it was obviously S*bway) before the manager pronounced me a ‘sandwich artist’ with way too much enthusiasm than the title deserved.
“Do you want it with cheese, and toasted?” I asked this child who was speaking to me like a dickhead. As I asked I imagined punching him really hard in the ear, leaving him with tinnitus and a long reminder never to speak to people like this again.“Remember the COMBINATION,” my manager whisper-screamed in my ear. “Only threee meatballss.”
It was my first day serving in rush hour and I was about ready to crumble. I hadn’t minded it so much, at first - getting in at the crack of dawn to bake bread and cookies, arranging the fridges, daydreaming while doing salad prep. But the school rush was tense, and adult customers were often worse. One businessman came in and asked for a footlong, glancing at his fancy watch every 40 seconds, gently sighing repeatedly. Unfortunately it turns out I found a footlong really hard to carry to the grill. So hard, in fact - this long ass piece of bread shaking and flopping left to right under the tray I was holding - that I ended up dropping the whole thing on the floor. “I'm soo sorry, I’m new here,” I half smiled, blinking back the heat I could feel behind my eyes.
“I can tell,” he sighed, and I’d had enough. “Bitch,” I muttered, very quietly, under my breath. “Sorry?” he said, unsure if I’d said anything at all. “What salad would you like SIR?” I responded psychotically. At the end of the shift I hung my uniform up in the back by the freezers, t-shirt and all, and went home in a hoodie with nothing underneath. I never went back, I didn’t even want my wages, I just wanted to forget it ever happened.
I was 25 years old when I walked home in a hoodie and shame in my heart; I wasn’t a snob when it came to jobs, but it had been particularly hard because the gig I’d had before S*bway had been my dream job (at the time), and it ended before I was ready to let it go.
I’ve never been academic. I never could pay attention for long, could never stay in one place for long and more often than not, I doubted I had the intelligence to really try. After dropping out of college in a fit of impatience to make real money - EMA kept me going for the first year - I got a job at an insurance company, and I felt like a big shot until my first day. It was on the outskirts of the M25 and I was stuck in a booth with carpeted walls taking calls that came in through a headset I wasn’t allowed to take off. I didn’t have internet access on my phone back then so I’d smuggle in a magazine to read under my desk as I ate custard creams, brushing the crumbs onto the battered navy carpet because hey, everyone else did. I miss when media consumption was limited and simple like that - the closest thing to scrolling a timeline my mind had to endure was browsing those magazines, skipping over pages with ads of supernaturally beautiful celebrities selling perfume and inhaling stories like, well this:
But anyway, I tried many jobs - a carer at a nursing home (I quit after nearly throwing up while cleaning up diarrhea, let’s not go there), PC World, charities, admin for a scary but endearing lawyer who reminded me of my father and made me cry, telesales, marketing, leafleting, retail at a dodgy shop in Croydon that sold (potentially fake) Avirex jackets and Lot29 jeans.
I knew I wanted to write, but I didn’t know much beyond that. So I quit my sales job and started interning for magazines full-time, any of them, wherever I could, and nearly always for free. No money, but many perks for a 21 year old with little to no self-worth, waahey. Eventually I got a chance to write some stuff for MTV’s website and when a freelance editor position came up there I grabbed it with both hands.
My editor was (is) an incredible writer called JP. I remember being slightly (very) awed when Ghetts named him on ‘Who’s On The Panel’ after the show JP was on, ‘Top 10 UK MCs’, aired on MTV Base. It was an exciting time to be a journalist in the UK rap industry - there was still no exact formula to the sound, no exact method to success, it felt very experimental, very exciting to watch this thing grow.
I took over editorship from JP when he left (for other amazing ventures). Being under his editorship was the best learning curve I’ve had - I didn’t know it back then, but a good mentor is like gold dust.
I was in my early twenties when I took over the helm, managing a team of freelance writers and travelling the world exploring music, chasing Chris Brown down a red carpet (LA, 2013, BET Awards), sneaking into the W hotel in Hollywood to catch Miley Cyrus by the pool, flying to Paris for the night to see Gwen Stefani. I was backstage at every show and schmoozing my way around London on the days I wasn’t - one favourite memory I have is of Rye and I being invited to the London after party of Drake’s ‘Take Care’ tour. We said we’d try and get some quotes, but just ended up gawping as he tried to woo Rihanna in the corner of the Mayfair club all night.
I was that insufferable hipster squatting in skinny jeans down a sidestreet in Dalston rolling up in my bowler hat as the sun came up after yet another mid-week all-nighter and (at the time) I loved it.
I had been on a temp contract there, all this time. One day my boss called to tell me he was sorry, but my contract wouldn’t be renewed when it ran out - and that was in three weeks. I was the editor for *winces* ‘urban’ music, and my departure came as grime was on the brink of dominating the chart and going ‘mainstream’ - soon it would be dealt with centrally, interviews with Stormzy on the main page right next to an article about Geordie Shore. It was a shift way bigger than me, but that didn’t soothe the wound of not being a part of that shift.
That job loss was one of the biggest heartbreaks I’d experienced (career wise) and when I didn’t find another amazing job straight away I buried my head in the sand (duvet) and discovered a level of anxiety I never knew existed up until that moment and actually, I think I’ve been battling with it ever since.
I decided if I couldn’t write about what I love for a job I would do something, anything where I wouldn’t be at a desk, and I would write when I was off. Some time later I found myself working in that sandwich place, calling people names under my breath until I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t have the zen in me to do it, I was too angry to be there. In that moment of calling someone a bitch, I knew I’d rather go broke.
Things got better eventually, and my writing turned into something something else when I stopped being so afraid of the dark, and started exploring it. I needed to write things that were painfully real to connect with people the way I connected with so many people over music.
I went back to working as a carer in a nursing home for a while. I got fulfillment in providing comfort to those who needed it and ultimately realised all I needed to survive was connection with others, no matter the context. The owner of the care home was a man who made us call him Mr Robertson* as if he was our school teacher. Around 85% of my fellow carers at the home were not from England, and signs were plastered all over the staff room that read “SPEAK ENGLISH ONLY,” threatening those who didn’t with disciplinaries. Everything about him smelt a bit racist to be honest so as you can imagine, I didn’t last there long either. Bitch.
*Name changed for obvious reasons x
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Sandwich Bitch
Losing a job you love is tough but your writing is so amazing 💗
Mr Robertson sounds like a sandwich bitch