So here's an attempt

To write a litte more about my transferral to living la vida Anglais, as it were. I'm scared that I won't find a job. Or, I'll find one that I hate and it'll colour very day that I spend in London - grey light outside, grey days of a hateful job, with only the warm light of home at the end of the tunnel.

Working at ABSA, eish... it taught me some things. Life is shite when you have a job that you hate. I worked with some people every day, people who hated their jobs and their lives. It had more to do with the treatment of employees than anything else. On the one hand, if you didn't do extra work and try harder all the time, you were seen as not being a team player. On the other, giving your all often meant neglecting your home life (with reagrds to time spent at work) and the lunches and days off which were due to you. One woman I worked with - her son shot himself a few year back, thereby mentally retarding himself, and she threw herself into work so that she wouldn't be seen to be losing her grip or neglecting the bank. Now, her mother is desperately ill - last stages ill - and this woman feels she can't keep giving and giving and giving to her job.
Customer service is a bitch, too. I have made this informal list of sorts, just in my head, of things I will never do when in a bank, or restaurant, or with any type of frontline personnel. I will never ignore someone when they greet me, or demand that they speak my language when I perfectly understand the other they are speaking, or roll my eyes while my spouse/partner works out how the pin machine works, or belittle a person in front of the whole bank. I will never call a trainee stupid to her face and make her cry. I will keep my bad day to myself. I will not blame my mistakes on someone else or ridicule them, simply because I know they cannot talk back to me.
I saw this every day. The good people, the nice clients; they were few and far between. Some people's mothers did a shitty job.

And how ABSA won 'Best Company to Work For' for two years running is beyond me.