Dialogue: If you want a job, find it yourself

I would like to tell you all about the unbelievably unlovely way that I was treated by a woman who was serving as frontperson at the Winz offices in Levin last week.

What a hellish experience that was. Even now, I wonder what drove me to expose myself to it. Oh, the strange ideas I have.

I turned up at said Winz office on the premise of wanting to find a little fruit-picking work while visiting the sunny Horowhenua.

I wanted to find such a job because I thought it would give me a nice opportunity to get to know a few of the locals, immerse myself in dear old country life, perhaps spy on the kinkier excesses of country life on Auckland's behalf, and so on.

Alas, Winz Levin could not have been less helpful to me in my quest for fruit-picking employment.

In my 15 minutes in that office I was alternately ignored, patronised and sneered at by the woman who was on front-desk duty.

I can't say that I cared for it, either. As a result, I'd like to propose, and fairly forcefully, that the service ethic at Winz has some way to go.

It was this woman's curtness that got me, I think - that and the fact that she obviously thought that curtness in her job was appropriate.

Although it was all rather amusing for the first five minutes, it began to get a bit tiresome.

The first thing I asked Ms Reception was whether Winz kept a list of local fruit-picking jobs and, if so, where I might find such a list.

"On the board," she snarled, glaring at me with such hostility that I found myself apologising (which, may I point out, is not my style) for putting the question at all.

The board, when I found it (all I got by way of directions to the board was a sort of indifferent, half-wave of old Witchey-Poo's hand), was absolutely useless. Only a few jobs were listed and none were for fruit-picking.

I felt sure that there had to be another, more comprehensive, list of fruit-picking jobs somewhere (after all, this part of the country is full of orchards and market gardens and pastoral what-not).

So I trotted back to the reception desk and asked old Medusa for further guidance.

She glared at me again. I glared back, hoping, I think, that I could out-glare her, or at least stare her down a bit before bursting into tears.

Eventually, she told me to go and look on the computer.

The computer, when I found it, was absolutely useless.

I have no doubt that there were jobs listed somewhere on it.

The problem was that you needed a password to access the job-bank window, and the password was nowhere to be seen in the computer corner.

Fortunately, I managed to bleed the password out of our friend at reception. Unfortunately, the password she gave me didn't work. Unfortunately, too, this provided reason for further hostilities.

"That password doesn't work," I told our friend at reception.

"Yes, it does," she said.

"No, it doesn't," I said.

"Yes, it does," she said.

"No, it doesn't," I said.

By this point my mother, who'd turned up to take me out for lunch, which I desperately needed, was staggering out of the building, trying not to die of laughter.

Pity she didn't stay - things inside the building were getting even wittier.

Our friend on reception was busy telling me that if I wanted to sort out my problem with the password, I'd have to make an appointment to see the IT manager.

She was also telling me that she didn't like my chances of achieving this appointment anytime soon.

"The IT manager is busy for at least an hour," she said, triumphantly.

She then felt compelled to point out that she didn't fancy my chances of finding employment even if I did manage to one day access the job-bank screen.

"We take people's CVs, and we pass them all on to the employer, and he picks you out if he wants you," she informed me, in a tone which suggested that in her view, not even a sympathetic relative would select me.

It was somewhere around here, people, that I decided to abandon the whole Job Hunting With Winz concept, fun though it was.

I flamed out of the building, knocked on a few orchard-doors off State Highway One and got two jobs just by asking.

The moral of this story? If you want a job, get one yourself, or sign up with Morgan & Banks.

Winz, my friends, has a long, long way to go.