Assignment 7: Job From Hell No.2
		It was a small solicitors on the Bristol Road (small as in one female solicitor and a very bored looking bloke on reception - reception being the tiny front area with a desk, a chair and a battered table with copies of Woman’s Weekly from 1960).  It was my only day of work that week and only my second or third temping assignment. I was keen to prove myself reliable so, despite the fact that there was a blizzard raging and the radio advised people not to make car journeys unless it was imperative, I struggled into the city.  Just as I approached the place where I thought the solicitors was, the snow plummeted down so thick I could barely see my hand in front of my face.  And I was freezing!  I rang them on my mobile and, through the howling gale force wind, screamed “Where are you?”  They gave me directions and I arrived only 15 minutes late, despite the appalling weather.  I was shown to a sparse room - in fact, room is too good a word for the broom cupboard I worked in; dirty white walls, no windows, just a frosted (and dirty) glass partition dividing it from the tiny solicitors office next door.  The table was about 100 years old, and the computer wasn’t much better.  I started work.  It was updating some office manual and they’d booked me for two days.  I was determined to do it in one.  I’ve never typed so fast in my life.  When I went to make myself a coffee, I discovered the grimy kitchen - peeling, mouldy wallpaper, stained cupboards, and a cooker I didn’t want to stand too close to in case I caught something; it didn’t look as if it had every been cleaned!  And when I asked where to go for a quick cigarette, I was shown through the kitchen to the ‘yard area’.  I can’t begin to describe how filthy this was; pigeons were happily living out there (and had been for quite some time), and there was at least 15 years worth of household rubbish strewn all over the place.  I curbed my smoking somewhat.  At 5.30pm, I was finished (thankfully).  I had worked my butt off trying to get the manual finished so I wouldn’t have to return for a second day - I’d even worked through my lunch hour.  I presented my time sheet to the solicitor.  “9am-5.30pm?” she said, “But you arrived 15 minutes late this morning”  I pointed out that I’d worked through my lunch break, and she reluctantly signed it.  I raced into the blizzard still raging outside, glad to escape.