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Relatively recently – over the course of the previous month – I have become involved in the occupational consumer of time that some people refer to as a ‘job’. By which I mean ‘most people’, of course. At least the English speakers. The point I’m trying to make here is that an extremely large percentage of people who speak English call jobs ‘jobs’. Unsurprisingly.
However, there are a few of us who DON’T like to refer to that fun-filled time spent so-called WORKING at places with the staid, uninteresting term of ‘JOB’.
I refer, of course, to CREATIVE people like you and I. To whom the correct term is, in fact, ‘CREATIVE OPPORTUNITY’!
Yes, it’s time for I, Leslie M. Harper, PhD in ‘Whatever Fake-Sounding Degree I Made Up Last Time’, to take YOU along on my exciting guide,
HOW TO HAVE A SUMMER JOB, CREATIVELY!!!
Now, as we all know, getting a ‘job’ generally begins with applying for one. We here at the Creativity Committee of the University of Uttoxetercamfordbridgedam by no means want to LIMIT your imagination. We understand that there are more creative ways to achieving jobs available. The current head of the CCUU attained his position by standing outside our building every day for the past eleven years and performing impassioned mime acts depicting the desire and abilities he possessed to be a part of our humble gathering.
However, for a casual job it might be necessary to be a LITTLE more mainstream. Not consistently, you understand. Just so you can reach the job in question.
So the first actual step is to hand in a resume at a store or workplace of your choice. Because of our commitment to what we do, Professor Phoenix (secretary of the CCUU) and I recently took it upon ourselves to follow these intstructions and find jobs ourselves. While being members of the Creativity Committee is enjoyable, it doesn’t pay exceptionally well. We both applied to several different locations with resumes.
Now, the trick here is to make a good first impression. The interpretive dancing, performance art and reverse saxophone playing can come later. The typical conversation when handing over a resume will go something like this.
YOU: Hello, good sir or madam! What a pleasant shop/restaurant/cave you have here!
AMIABLE SHOPKEEPER/RESTAURANTEUR/HERMIT: Why, thank you, kind stranger. How may I assist you this fine morning or afternoon?
YOU: Let us be frank, honourable acquaintance. I have come to you this fine morning or afternoon, not for pleasure, but for purposes of business. I have in my possession a certain document containing details of my previous occupations, academic records and outstanding personal hygiene. I intend to pass this paper on to you, that you may consider, and – if fortune favours me – confirm, my prospects of employment in this lovely cave.
SHOPKEEPER: Why, of course, treasured customer. If you will swiftly pass me said document, I will pass it directly on to my manager/best friend/twin brother, that we may discuss the possibility of increasing our number of personnel, with respect to you.
YOU: Ah, thank you. Then I entrust you with this document, or ‘resume’, I have compiled.
[pass resume over]
SHOPKEEPER: Thank you indeedly for the honour you have bestowed upon my humbe location. I hope to contact you soon regarding the matter of your employment.
YOU: And I shall be waiting with considerable excitement to receive your response. Good day, Master Shopkeeper.
SHOPKEEPER: Good day, potential subordinate.
Phoenix and I both applied at seven different places and that’s basically how I remember the conversations going.
Having suppressed your creative urges until this point, you are fully welcome to bring them out at the interview you will assuredly be undergoing after the management of the place you applied receive your impressive resume. WOW your future bosses with the abstract portraits you sketch of them throughout the interview! AMAZE the management as you stand and recite all seventy two stanzas of the free verse poem you wrote after being inspired by an overtly attractive brick!* SURPRISE your interviewer as you cartwheel over the desk while describing your vision for a more environmentally friendly way of making trees!
The problem with these strategies – CREATIVE and WINNING as they are – is that, as Phoenix and myself can testify, they are unlikely to bag the job in question for you, unless the job you are applying for is one in an art-filled brick-inspired environmentally friendly circus. And the odds of this are, I have established after a great deal of extremely specific research, unlikely. Between us Professor Phoenix and myself essayed each one of the above strategies (as well as MANY more) at our interviews. And yet we received not a single job offer from these clearly unappreciative companies.
Hence we were eventually forced to concede our attempts at creativity, at least in regards to interviews. But that doesn’t mean YOU have to! You could…
Well, if you want the job, and it’s not at a niche circus, you might have to, you know, act normally. But it’s NOT selling out. NO. This is… this is just preparation! Early planning! After all, you can be creative once you GET the job, can’t you?
Right. So now we’ve sorted that out, you shouldn’t have any trouble with the actual interview. As a reader of this article, you’re surely already so charming and inexpressibly decent the matter of employment was pretty much settled the moment you entered the room, so long as you didn’t unnerve anyone with unnecessary theatrics. There is a time and a place for unnecessary theatrics, I assure you, but a job interview is not one of them. Apparently.
Congratulations! You have gained a job, the CREATIVE way!
Well, you know, not EXACTLY the creative way, but NOW is the time to let your inner creativity dribble free, as we discuss the three key aspects of creative possibilities in your new job: Atmosphere, Employment, and Information. Or, if you prefer, WHERE you’re doing it, WHAT you’re doing and WHY you’re bothering.
*Poem available upon request.
ATMOSPHERE
The place which finally offered Professor Phoenix and myself employment is one of Australia’s leading purveyors of clothing, electronics, homeware and the like. I’m not exactly sure what their policy is regarding the freedom of speech provided to their employees, which is why I’m not directly giving the name of the company. Certainly if this policy is anything like the policy they have regarding the freedom of time provided to their employees I’ll be sued to within an inch of my life. But if you’re Australian you’ve almost certainly heard of them.
The information above is certainly more than I knew at the time of my interview, when the manager questioning me asked me if I could explain, exactly, what their store sold.
‘Well,’ I hedged, ‘clothes. Yep. Clothes. You know… men’s clothes… women’s clothes… children’s clothes… babies’ clothes… girls’ clothes… boys’ clothes… formal clothes… What? Oh, right, yes, other things.’ I paused. And then paused for a bit longer. ‘Um… pencils? I definitely saw some pencils, y’know, when I was coming in… so pencils and clothes, yeah.’
And they gave me the job.
Anyway, creative opportunities regarding the ATMOSPHERE of the store. By ‘Atmosphere’, I’m most notably referring to the music played within the store, as well as the attitudes that give customers the optimally creative consuming experience of their life. As an employee, it is YOUR job to create this magical environment!
There are just SO MANY THINGS you can do with the music. Bring in a live band. Give a solo recorder performance, playing the sonata you composed the last time you accidentally spilled raisins over an empty music sheet and then just pretended they were notes. In fact, FORGET music! To remind customers of the native environment we all sprang from, play a continuous tape of moving animal impressions over the loudspeakers. Let the soft, melodic screeches of an owl ring out as they linger over the novelty gift baskets. Let the otherwise uninteresting shoe-shopping trip be enhanced by the melancholy bleat of those mountainy sheep things. And watch as all your customers race, screaming, from the store, accompanied by those fun snarling sounds a lion makes while chasing a defenceless zebra. Hooray!
What I hadn’t accounted for among all these great and noble plans was that – who would have guessed it? – casuals are supposedly not allowed to choose the shop music. That is, in fact, done by human resources specialists from the HQ of this organisation, and the same playlist runs around and around again every hour and a half. While this itself is creative DEATH, it is even MORE limited by the fact that in the middle of the Christmas season these songs tend to run along a certain theme. In the middle of a less-than-busy time at the store, I noted down all the songs played over the course of an hour.
1. That One Direction song about flipping hair and overwhelming people. A far from positive start.
2. ‘Winter Wonderland’. A little creative, I suppose, given it is SUMMER in Australia, people! SUMMER! I have a SUMMER job! There would be no point in having a WINTER job.
3. Irritating female cover of ‘Santa Claus is Coming To Town’, of which I swear one line was ‘We’re going to build a toilet’. Honestly. Go to your nearest… unnamed store… and listen.
4. Ad for store giftcard
5. R n’ B-ish song about someone whose heart skips a beat. Here at the CCUU, of course, we have a far more politically correct view towards those among us who suffer from cardiopulmonary issues and would never DREAM of glibly referring to them in this manner, no matter how creative it might seem.
6. A song called ‘It’s W-w-w-winter’. Apparently the store targets stutterers too.
7. Some ad for Masterchef
8. A swinging version of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’
9. Ad for Matthew Reilly’s new book about an attack on the Earth that can only be diverted by the strong, reluctant hero
10. Ad for Patricia Cornwell’s new book about an attack on the Earth that can only be diverted by the strong, reluctant heroine
11. A song about breathing air. Please. Not even a LITTLE creative.
12. ‘Christmas is a time to say I love you’
13. ‘I feel so close to you’
14. Bizarre cover of ‘Jinglebell Rock’
15. An ad by an excited male I didn’t quite manage to catch
16. ‘Mistletoe’. By Justin Bieber. Yep. Classy stuff.
17. ‘Oh, We Need A Little Christmas’
18. That Glee cover of that Wham! song I hate
19. Ad for store giftcard
20. Something about ‘Shaking Up the Happiness’
21. A different cover of ‘Jinglebell Rock’
22. A song about a woman who is in love with Christmas. At least, that was what I heard. A tragic, moving tale.
23. Ad for store gift card
24. A repulsively merry song about tiny tots roasting chestnuts
25. Different, syncopated cover of ‘Santa Claus is Coming To Town.’
Not a SINGLE TRACE of a triangle solo, or accidentally composed sonata, or animal call. Appalling. So, all in all, no matter HOW CREATIVE you are – and I’m sure that you are so creative even trying to DESCRIBE how creative you are is almost impossible to imagine, despite the enormous creativity you possess – there’s really not a lot you can do in relation to the musical atmosphere.
So, you know, there’s not much room for creativity – no! Wait!
Another part of ATMOSPHERE is the FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENT your customers access the moment they enter the store. This environment is totally under your control if, like me, you have spent time as a door-greeter.
Welcome the customers into the shop with a PERSONAL touch. Kneel in front of them, blinking back tears as you shakily clasp their hand and whisper ‘I knew you would come. I knew it. The prophets of old foretold it.’ Conceal yourself behind a rack of clothes before you leap out and merrily warble ‘Friends! Countrymen! Welcome to this place!’ Alternatively, you could try something a little different by rushing up to them the second they enter, clutching their shoulders and wheezing ‘Get out of here. Get out while you still can… before… he arrives. Unless… no… it can’t be… he is HERE! Save yourselves!’. Then point at another customer, screech violently and prance away en pointe. THAT is creativity, right there.
Except, you know, the aim is sort of to keep the job, so… well.. you might be better of with a casual ‘Hello, welcome to the store.’
But don’t let that dissuade you, my grasshoppers. Really. The next section is FULL of exciting opportunities for creativity! There’s ALWAYS time to be creative! Two steps left to go… plenty of opportunity for some creativity… not to worry.
EMPLOYMENT
Now, for the matter of employment. By ‘employment’, I am referring to the manner in which you spend your time during working hours.
Now THIS is a chance to be creative. The previous section, Atmosphere, well, that was always going to be difficult. But Employment – that’s ALL YOU! Why not entertain your customers with your freestyle whomping? That, by the way, is a real thing to do with dubstep, as demonstrated to me by Aviator on a previous, intensely memorable occasion. Or something else… train the children of customers in amateur acrobatics as you leap merrily across the stands of clothes! Conduct rituals in the manchester department, sacrificing a frozen chicken on a kitchen bench as you implore the pagan gods to take mercy on your chosen store! Customers just won’t be able to resist purchasing new microwaves as you demonstrate how easily you can contort your entire body to fit inside one!
That was my attitude, going into my first day of work. Soon, however, I made a frightening discovery: this particular department store has a very different policy to the one we employ on the Creative Committee of the University of Uttoxetercamfordbridgedam. People TELL you to do things. And THEY EXPECT YOU TO DO THEM.
After my initial difficulties, I spent most of my time divided between the registers and the Layby counter, occasionally veering off towards the clothes racks or fitting rooms. For me, the high-flying creative individual that I am, the registers were awful.
You log into a register, flash items past the scanner, put them in a bag, accept payment and move on. Again. And again. And again.
And while you may think there are opportunities for a little creativity while conversing with customers, THINK AGAIN.
I understand this is a little hard to understand for most lovely exciting creative people, so I’ve provided one or two examples.
DO NOT SAY:
YOU (Y): Hi, how are you today?
CUSTOMER (C): Fine, thank you.
Y: Ah, then I see you aren’t suffering from the rare, highly infectious, fatal strain of flu that’s been reported in this area. Luckily, not many people seem to… (begin a hacking cough, ending with an elegant sneeze over the customer) OH GOD CALL AN AMBULANCE.
C: …
OR:
Y: Hi!
C: Hello.
Y: What?
C: Hello… ?
Y: Oh, I apologise, I’m actually deaf to words with an odd number of letters in them.
C: What?
Y: I said, I can only hear words containing an even amount of letters. It’s a very real, and very tragic, condition.
C: Is there another register available?
Y: What?
AND DEFINITELY NOT:
Y: Hi, how are you today?
C: Fine, thank you. And you?
Y: Forget these tawdry greetings, see me DANCE!
DO SAY:
Y: Good morning, how are you?
C: Fine/great/poorly. And you?
Y: Fine, thanks for asking. Would you like a bag with that?
C: Yes/No.
Y: That’s $5,400.99*. Did you have Fly Buys at all?
C: Yes/No.
Y: Will you be paying with cash or card today?
C: Cash/card/leaves/a voucher.
Y: Right, here’s your receipt, have a great day!
*Unlikely to be actual price.
After seven hours of this, it tends to become rather a routine, leading to exchanges such as:
Y: Good morning, how are you?
C: Fine… actually… it’s not morning, it’s 6:00 p.m….
Y: Fine, thanks for asking. Would you like a bag with that?
C: I didn’t … yes please. Oh, here’s my Fly Buys card, do you need that?
Y: That’s $0.56. Did you have Fly Buys at all?
C: Yep. Right here. And here’s a dollar coin, that should cover it.
Y: Will you be paying with cash or card today?
C: I just put that coin in front of you.
Y: Right. Yes. Thank you. Here’s your receipt, have a great day!
C: Thank you. (leaves)
Y: … I just missed something there, didn’t I?
Dull, dry, messages learned by rote. THE VERY OPPOSITE OF EVERYTHING CREATIVITY STANDS FOR. Yes, maybe this part isn’t overly creative… but it’s a job, isn’t it, people warned me there’d be some semblance of routine. Read on, I promise you there WILL be more opportunities for creativeness later on… really, there HAS to be… of course there will be. What am I talking about? There’s always time for some creativity. Hold on to your hats, treasured readers, it’s about to get CREATIVE!*
*Not actual guarantee of creativity.
INFORMATION
Wahay!
Let’s say it again…
INFORMATION!
Wahay!
As a valuable team member at your place of work, it is a large aspect of YOUR JOB to be fully informed about whatever it is you actually DO as a valuable team member at your place of work. By this method you can (a) earn money and (b) have all kinds of creative fun. And, having acquired this information, you are responsible to then hand it on to the consumers. Assuming they want it.
For example, I was recently walking around the kitchenware area when a customer approached me and inquired as to the location of matching sets of drinking glasses.
As a truly INFORMED member of the kitchenware staff, I could have then imparted this key information to the informee in any number of exciting ways. I could have meaningfully beckoned for him to follow me, leading us both on a quest that would test both our endurance and inner strength almost to breaking point. After years of travels that confronted our preconceived notions of ourselves and our purpose in life, leading us both to become stronger and better characters, we would have stumbled across the glass sets one day, dust-stained, exhausted, but with a sense of inner contentment unmeasurable by contemporary standards.
As it happened, I didn’t do that, but only because I don’t work in kitchenware – I was on my way out of the store, to go home – and I had no idea where the glasses were.
Still, there were plenty of other opportunities for me to give information. As a fairly versatile member of staff/someone who wasn’t good enough at any one thing to be permanently stuck with it – I oscillated between a number of jobs, one of which, as employee in charge of the fitting rooms, I hoped would be an excellent way to distribute my information.
It wasn’t. It turns out that people considering buying clothes don’t CARE about information. They just wander out past you, throwing you the clothes they don’t want to buy, and go. That was the extent of my job.
Just… not in this section… or the last one… or the one before that…
Let’s face it. THIS STIFLING WORLD IS NOT MADE FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE, no matter WHAT the woman said last time I went to get my fortune told. We’re too good for them… that’s it… it’s THEM, not US. There’s NOTHING WRONG with living life the way we members and honourary members of the CCUU want to. Not like the staid shop owners or uninteresting, so-called ‘NORMAL’ employees of this world. They dare to fire ME… ME… well, Phoenix and I will get our revenge. BE REVENGED UPON ALL OF YOU! WE WILL REMAKE THIS WORLD THE WAY IT SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE BEEN!
Creatively, of course.
Next in the series: HOW TO DESTROY, TEAR DOWN AND THEN INTERESTINGLY REBUILD SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT, CREATIVELY!
Coming soon to a town near you.
Praise for the HOW TO… CREATIVELY! series:
‘It’s pretty darn creative.’
- Leslie M. Harper, Head of Creative Psychiatry at the University of Uttoxetercamfordbridgedam and Specialist in General Excitingness
