Merks Fable #342

Years back when I was still interested in doing radio* I was given a tip about a job producing a pre-recorded program which was sold to lots of radio stations around the country. One of these shows was an album chart show and the other was an 80’s show with Pat Sharp of Fun House fame.

My name was put forward for the job and I got a call from a guy called Paul asking if I could go up north to meet him, I agreed. We arranged to meet in Manchester city centre and the plan was to phone him when I arrived at Piccadilly station and he’d meet me – it was already reasonably late in the day by the time my train pulled in, I called Paul and he said to find a quiet bar and text him the location and he’d come find me.

So I headed off and ended up in the Piccadilly Tavern (god knows why), I got a pint in and grabbed a paper and waited. Now the problem with waiting for someone when you’re in a pub on your own is that you have no one to disturb you and a pint lasts half as long as it does normally – so 4 pints and no food later Paul turns up to have our chat/interview – I’m half pissed, he gets another round in.

We have a chat about the work and other random stuff and I think we get on – he tells me about his plans for the company and I tell him I don’t have a problem moving up north for the job. Sweet, he’s interested in taking me on and I’m interested in working for him so we leave it at that. Off I toddle back home feeling good.

A few days later Paul’s assistant (who’s name fails me) calls up and asks if I could go up and meet the rest of the staff and get an idea of the surroundings, she’s already been looking in the local paper for flats in my price range and would let me know if there was anything that would be of interest. I should call them when I arrive and they’ll come pick me up and take me to the office/studio.

The ’studio’ was located above an insurance brokers or mortgage place in Blackburn. Right near Ewood Park, the home of Blackeye Blackburn Rovers. I chatted to the outgoing guy who explained the job and then chatted more with the boss and all seemed cool. This was it, In a few weeks I was going to be moving to a strange new town doing a job I’d enjoy and being able to create I was excited**, they were going to call me over the weekend to sort things out, they had my mobile number.

I’d not given it much more of a thought until I’d not heard anything by the Sunday, my phone had been off for some of the time over the weekend but there were no notifications about messages or what not, I put it down to them being busy. Monday passed I went to work in Epson call centre pretending I gave a shit that their Scanner wasn’t quite scanning properly or their projector wasn’t hooking up to their pc the way they wanted it – I wanted out of this and a radio job. Nothing. By Tuesday I called from my office phone; “I left you a message on Saturday saying that if you wanted the job to get back to me asap – I didn’t hear from you so I presumed you didn’t want it…….I’ve urrm given it to someone else nowâ€?.

What?

I looked at my mobile, no little symbol in the corner, no missed calls showing. Fuck. Is he lying? was this is way of saying I wasn’t quite up to the job, or they didn’t like me? I put the phone down, I wanted to crawl into a little ball and cry but I had to go back and pretend to give a shit about colour matching and firewire drivers.

I looked at my phone again, tried to call my mum for some much needed sympathy; “I’m sorry you have insufficient credit to place this call�….hmmm I wonder how much credit I have. I called the number; “your balance is zero pence�. I needed some credit on my way home. Cut to a few hours and a tenner credit later I was sat at home scratching off the coating to reveal the credit numbers (it was when pre paid phones we’re pretty new and credit was put on by sticking in a really long code) and punching them into the phone

“Your balance is Ten pounds and zero pence�…….Beep Beep…..Beep Beep. A message notification appears on the screen.

“you have 1 new message…….�hello this is Paul, we’d like to offer you the job if you can get back to us before the end of today cause we want to move quick on this so if you can call me…….�

I hung up. Turns out that message notifications didn’t appear on your phone unless you had some credit on the account.

I have a contract phone now!

* Don’t get me wrong, If I was offered a cushy job on some cool station I’d snatch their hand off – phone in/talk show especially.

** Looking back it would have been pretty dull to be fair, getting pre-recorded Pat Sharp links and sticking the music over the top of them, then burning about 30 copies and sending it out to stations week in, week out would have got pretty boring after a while.