Four weeks and counting

It appears to be a long time since I posted in this; maybe I have been too depressed by being trapped in Call Centre Hell to motivate myself.

I went back to my last-job-but-one in the middle of June. Sitting in my old seat, tapping away on my old keyboard and wearing my old headset while answering the same old questions, I wondered if my PGDE had been some kind of surreal dream. It was as if I had never left.

A month later, I'm in a call centre in Erskine. I'm doing the same job, sort of, but in quite a different environment. The tattooed, gruff-voiced and frankly scary man who showed us round spent most of the time telling us what we weren't allowed to do, while assuring us that this is a great place to work and we would all be really happy here. Hmmm. When I read the notice on the wall saying "Only food given as incentives may be consumed on the call floor", I could not escape the image of Professor Skinner and his pigeons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_reinforcement) and wondered if the employees were strapped to their chairs, only being allowed to have a tea break when they had taken a certain number of calls or made so many sales.

Never mind, a week or so and I'm outta there, although that means I am much closer to starting my proper job and that is terrifying! I visited my school twice before the holidays and am pleased that my new colleagues all seem nice. I won't have my own classroom, but myself and my fellow probationer - or NQT, as East Renfrewshire likes to call us - will have a desk and a shelf in the English base, so that is better than nothing. They basically said to me "There's the book cupboard, pick what you want and put it on the wall in the base". Panicking, I picked novels for all my classes, including two I had bever read before. Having finally finished Lord of the Blasted Flies, I am now regretting at least one of my choices, but at least there are a lot of resources on the internet for me to steal/adapt.

I chatted briefly to my new PT and said what I always tend to say when faced with an intimidating prospect..."Ach, I'm sure it'll be fine". I was rather taken aback when she answered "No, it won't be fine, it'll be hell. You'll be in tears every day". Good of her to tell it like it is, but hardly encouraging! For the record, I have not been in tears even once thus far, but I shall bear her warning in mind and try not to feel like a failure if it all becomes too much for me...