NORTHERN PLANNER

The two worst jobs I ever did were both in a call centre.

The first was selling insurance for burst water pipes and blocked drains. Phoning people and asking them for money, for something even less interesting and useful than Celebrity Big Brother. People incandescent at having Eastenders interrupted, others hopping mad at me refusing to talk to anyone but 'the account holder' (it was with a water company). You find out a lot about yourself doing a job like that. 

But it wasn't the numbing mind clamp of boredom I found tough, it wasn't the abuse. It was the feeling of being excluded. You don't work in a call centre if you're doing amazingly well in life and every call was a little exposure to the kind of lives that seemed in another dimension to me back then. You could hear happy families chattering in the background, kids answered the phone and shouted for mummy or said Dad wasn't home yet, or partners calling to their beloved.

There's that story of African forest dwellers who laughed themselves silly at the tiny trees when they left the forest for the first time, not realising they were actually far away. It's a bit like that working in a call centre in my view. You can be perfectly happy with economy baked bean, cycling everywhere because you can't afford the bus, bedrooms with mould in them and even no girlfriends, but that's much, much harder when you are physically exposed to how the other half live.

I'm a little luckier these days, but I've never forgotten how it felt, those calls with my nose pressed against the glass, looking at a life that seemed very, very far away. You won't be surprised that I'm very nice to people who cold-call me, no matter how invonvenient it is.

The other call centre job was both worse and better. It was better because people called me instead, for something they wanted. It was worse because they had a medical condition and needed 'screening' before they could get travel insurance. I got the lot, cancer in remission, terminal illness. Tears, impotent rage (not at me at their lot). Of course, most calls were just boring blood pressure, diabetics and sprains, but every now and then there was a searing reminder of the how transient and occasionally cruel life can be. It was a very different intrusion this time, into the way different people deal with things – from denial to defiance, from despair to wild optimism.

Most of all, it was a window into the incredible bravery in everyday life.

That was really the case with the first call centre job too. I always knew I wouldn't be doing this for long, some of the people I did it with had no such knowledge.