Oda Rygh

I have all respect for recruitment consultants. I have in fact more than once thought I should become an IT recruiter, a career a good match for my technical flair, my relationship management abilities, and general ego. However that industry seems to be in a bit of a dry spot when it comes to starting level jobs, so I have turned my eye to other jobs matching my skills.

The perfect job was advertised. I applied to it. I got called in for interviews, so far so good.

Being no fool and having a mortgage to pay, I also applied for a job at an old employer of mine doing multilingual tech support. I enjoyed this job previously, and the company is rather ok to its employers. Laid back, free coffee, no ridiculous quotas for numbers of calls, and last job I had there I enjoyed and only left to get more experience elsewhere.

So I had 2 job-applications at the same time going on, both for companies I like, both jobs that I would like doing and be amazing at, and both of them through recruitment agents. The difference between the two was like night and day. The one representing me for one job I wrote a linkedin recommendation for before I even got my second interview:

“As a recruitment consultant, Martin is professional and friendly. In dealing with him I was always kept in the loop of developments in my application, and any worries I had were eased by Martin’s good sense of humour. Unlike many recruitment consultants, Martin did not leave the impression that I was a commodity, and care was taken to ensure that I would enjoy my new role, as well as being suited to it. The impression was that I had him working for me and my best interest, as opposed to being pushed through to secure a quick sale. I would highly recommend applying to jobs advertised through Martin.”

Other reccomendations of Martin from people he had got jobs were on much the same theme.

Ok, so one of the recruitment consultants rocked. That is all very nice. But one didn’t. Not wanting to be mean I will not mention names, but rather refer to her as Miss Pushypants. Miss Pushypants works for a large recruitment consultancy where I think she does mostly call-centre recruitment. I am not sure if it the low status of callcentre work, the low pay of it, or the incentive-structure at the consultancy which is to blame, but Miss Pushypants was rude. Very rude.

It started at the first interview I had with her. I ran after work from one side of Edinburgh to the other in 25 minutes. I brought sensible shoes. Then we had a chat, and all was well. Except when I was given advice on how to pass a competency-interview. I had passed one before at the exact same company. But a little help is always nice, and being a bit too patronising when explaining the STAR-system could maybe be explained by her average candidate not having done one before. But then it came: “It is smart wear, I know you are allowed to wear what you want in the scottish government but you can’t wear that.” Yes, I was explained what to wear to an interview as a 23yearold with a degree and had my runningshoes criticised after I had made time for meeting her before end of play on a very short notice.

And I was offered an interview. Unsurprisingly. I am the only Scandinavian in the village, and when I last did that job I did it very well. In preparation of applications being successful, I had arranged two days off. This was not good enough for Miss Pushypants. Miss Pushypants wanted me to have an interview ASAP. But that is not what she said: What she said was “That is not acceptable for the company”. So I tried to arrange a meeting very early or very late. My core hours at the Scottish Government were 10 to 4, and working around that should not have been a problem. When I protested that I did have a real job and daily duties, Miss Pushypants made some stuff up about the person who would interview me not being too happy, and that they all work shifts (true, but not relevant), and that any postponing would be very unfortunate. Yes. That is right. The Recruitment Consultant made the following impression of their client to a potential employee:

“They are an inflexible corporate deathmachine, and you are just another cog to them, they care little about your life, job, or you in general, and they want this to be as fast as possible to get it over with.” -which, as mentioned earlier, they are not. Having seen their recruitment from the other side, I also know they take great care in choosing who they hire, and that they don’t have such a draconic worktime-policy at all.

I went to the interview. It was chilled, relaxed, an old colleague of mine was unsuspectedly there, gave me a hug, and an endorsement. I showed  the interviewer my old six-month review to back my claims up. I took a technical test, sat in on a conversation or two, and went home. It was all good. I was offered the job. I had told my interviewer that I had another application in the pipes and that I would have to give it a few days before I accepted. He thanked me for my honesty, and said it was naturally completely ok. He was not “very unhappy” about me stalling.

Over the next few days Miss Pushypants was checking up on me regularly. This is her job and completely ok. I used having another offer in order to try to speed the other job application up, and it worked. I expected a final reply this Friday or Monday, but no luck. So I stalled Miss Pushypants. Kept her updated. And so on. As far as I am concerned, I was applying for a permanent job, a job I was going to have for at least a year, and with several options, I owed it to both myself and all the possible employers to not jump on the first offer.

Miss Pushypants got more and more impatient, and by now it was fairly clear that it was her. All her. Which is good, because if I hadn’t known better, I would have believed in the corporate deathmachine. And not have wanted to work there anymore.

On day six, I was told the following: “You can’t go on like this Oda.” The tone was as patronisisng as ever, and made even me (a sworn scandinavian when it comes to not using any titles) want to tell her that it is Miss Rygh to her, thankyewverymuch.

Today I was told my other job would still be a week or two. Giving me a few options:

1. Accept the job from Miss Pushypants and drop out of the other job

2. Accept the job from Miss Pushypants, not sign anything, and stay in the competition

3. Accept the job from Miss Pushypants, keep the other option, and then quit after a few weeks.

4. Drop out of the Miss Pushypants job.

Option 1 would make me miss out on the dreamjob. Option 2 and 3 would be dishonest, and I don’t want to arrive, take the training, and then leave without having done much work. It also looks horrible on a CV. What was left was to take the chance and drop out of the Miss Pushypants job.

So I phoned her and said as much. And I was given a hiding. A real verbal shower of rude, patronising, and displeased tones. “You can’t ever do this again, if we work with you again you will have to accept within a day or two, this is completely unacceptable, I have a service to run”.

This made me happy that I had turned the job down. I will happily not get paid for a couple of weeks to rob Miss Pushypants of her commission (Clearly her motivation for doing the job fast, cheap, and poorly). How anyone with manners like that can maintain accounts is beyond me. How she can maintain customer service accounts even more so.

More to the point WHAT was unacceptable? Taking my time deciding about a permanent job? Having more than one offer? NOT just accepting the job and then quit three weeks later? Of course the last option would leave you with commission…

My suspicion is this: The difference in levels of service was in direct proportion to the pay and status of the jobs. The Callcentre Job was treated as if I should be happy to have an offer all, that I was a faceless, skill-less moron who needed guided through every step, and paternalistically corrected when I was misbehaving, like an errant child.

So, Miss Pushypants from Search Consultancy in Edinburgh, you are right. This is not acceptable, and it won’t happen again. Because I will use someone else. And tell the company you were representing to use someone else as well. And tell any Scandinavians I come across to avoid your company and any company you work for like the plague.

I know you have a service to run. I know being pushy is your job. I appreciate the search for the quick and easy sale. But you are losing your client and your employer a good reputation by treating adults with such bad manners you made me happy about losing a job offer, even if I didn’t have a better option, just to spite you. It felt kinda good. And it is Miss Rygh to you.

This is in praise of farm work.

When I was little in school, I was smart. REALLY smart. Far too smart. I read ten years above my age. I had general knowledge way above most adults in primary. I spoke english. I was SMART.

I never had to work for a thing in my life. Ever.

In order to shut me up, my teacher gave me books and allowed me to read in class. I essentially had dispensation from education. Because I already knew it. This did wonders for my ego, and wrecked my self-discipline.

If it hadn’t been for farm-work. I was raised on a farm that had grain, two large houses on it, and my best friend was a son of a farmer. I was taken to farms to see where milk came from. Before I was 10, I could identify inflamed teats from the milk produced, knew how to clean the milkingmachine, and knew how you bred animals to get a better cow.

Farmwork you cannot get out of just be being clever. The cows need feeding, every morning. The Hay needs to get in before the rain comes. If you ever wanted to feel the chill to your bones, the fear for your own life, work on a farm when the feed is to be taken in, and remember that your ancestors lived to have you because they survived a winter. Many winters.

Reading Hamsun’s Growth of the soil makes you get a vague idea. But only when your hands are bleeding from lifting hayballs onto a tractor after dark..  Because it might rain tomorrow…  Because without hay there is no lifestock through winter…  Without living things, you will starve…

Farmwork taught me to work. I painted houses, I mowed lawns, I kept chickens and sold their eggs, me and my pal had projects making us fairly rich, as I recall.

It was honest work. It was life-important work. It was work you could not avoid, not be too smart to do, not skive away from. And without it throughout my upbringing, I would have ended up in a bad place.

This is to honest work. A day of labour. The reward of cold water at the end of it. The five minute break between planting trees where tea happens. The realisation that you are working for something greater than yourself, for food or the forest, or animals. The exhaustion that makes sleep so welcoming at nine in the evening. Real work. Honest work.

Blood, sweat, and laughter.

I am an immigrant.  have come from abroad to steal your men, take your jobs, live off the dole, work too long hours, and refuse to let my husband that I have imported from rural Norway go out. I am a threat to everything british, will never adapt to UK law or customs, and my food probably smell funny.

Here is my guide to successful social integration:

1. Avoid immigrant-cliques.

This is possibly the most important step. And where you are most likely to fail. It is COZY in your own little group of people who think these foreign people around you are as weird as you do. And who have movies from home that you can borrow, and who know where to get ingredients for your favourite food you mum used to make. Not to mention that getting to speak in your own language once in a while is very nice on a tired and confused brain. It is all nice. But DON’T. Here is why: You are in essence emphasising “specialness” and how you are “Not from around here”. Having a group of friends with the same fears and experiences and language as yourself is not only exclusive, but cause tribalism. You end up affirming that You People versus Us People thing just by your social group. And with that narrow a friends circle, noone can get in. You are stopping yourself making new friends! Keep the immigrant cliques for once a month movie clubs, cookery lessons, or religious activity.

2. Fall in love

Fall in love with your new homecountry. Some aspect of it. Any aspect of it. Up to and including a person in it. Develop a deep and nerdy passion about the culture, or history, or food, or political system, or supermarket food labelling (God Britain Rocks at food labelling!). Catch yourself slagging off some aspect of your home country when with people from back home. There is a reason you chose to live there. Do not hate your new homeland. Love it. And tell your new countrymen why you love it here. (“Your boys and/or booze are easy and cheap, your education good, and it is easy to shop for gluten intolerant vegetarians if you have them visiting. I love it here!”) Why should you do this: Not visibly loving your new homecountry makes you one of those immigrants. You know which ones. The ones who want to live in their country back home really, but with all the advantages of having moved. Also, gaining the trust of the locals is all about rubbing their patriotic ego. Being able to do it with some level of sincerity helps.

3. Immerse and create a new tribe

Do What They Do. First find a group you belong to. The best bet you have here is to go by education level, parental income and political orientation. If you are an upper middle class leftie from an academic household, go for groups/subcultures/clubs that have people mainly from the same background. The old socialist truth that nations do not matter but class does is true. You are likely to have more in common with some groups in your new country than others, and trying to immerse with people you have nothing in common with is doomed to fail. (There is no accident to the fact that I am marrying a man with leftist parents from academic backgrounds.) Go to a bookclub to discuss Kafka, go to a supermarket parkinglot to drive a car round and round in circles, go to a LARP, a footballgame, a political party, and build a stronger tribalism attached to common interests than the one attached to common nationality. Why: Your enemy is tribalism. But it is also your friend. Building successful relationships and a sense of belonging helps when you are feeling all alone in the world. You are not. You have your clan, your group, your people. And they are from round here and when you are stuck with a problem regarding tax and need to know how it works, they can tell you which form you need to fill in.

4. Adopt new habits, but keep your own too.

You may very well never eat fried food for breakfast. That is ok. But find some way of marking your belonging. I find that eating haggis and drinking Islay drams help. “Oda, she is from norway, but she has been here for so long she eats deep fried haggis suppers!” and conversely “Oda has been over there for too long, she eats haggis but refuses to have pickled herring!”. Also remember that integration is not about assimilation. The trick is to assimilate enough in areas that don’t matter to you. This in order to make the immigration-sceptic monoculturalists nod approvingly and shut up. Then you can keep your own weirdness on areas that DO matter. Why: Monoculturalists are annoying. Saying you eat haggis makes them go away. It really is that easy, and yes, monoculturalists are that shallow. Cause they are dumb. That is why. They probably don’t even know they are monoculturalists, but think they hate asylumseekers and “nigs” and people “taking their jobs”. Which doesn’t even make sense, since they often don’t work.

5. Be white and female and from a nationality with positive pop-culture connotations attached

Sorry, not much help really. But it is easier. Women can cross borders far easier than men. It may be a remnant of patriarchy where a woman eloping magically changes allegiance. Or it may be that we are seen as less threatening. Or we may be easier to approach. Or something. I dunno, but being a girl helps.

Being white helps even more. Coming from an admired cultural background is also a plus. Though being a blonde Scandinavian can lead to interesting propositions in pubs from men, the fact is that the initial impression is of a Viking. A Viking with horns on the helmet. A COOL viking with axes and stuff. And swedish porn. With horned helmets in. (Nevermind that Norway is a fairly prudish country..)

6. Accent.

Learn the language. Well. Then adopt a non-specific accent. For English I recommend somewhere between RP and New England American. Noone can place that. Then add slang and dialect words from your local area. The idea is to not hide the fact that you are foreign but to mark that you are belonging to a place in your new homecountry. Why: Hiding foreign-ness is a lost project. Just forget about it. But get the language right. It is a tool for communication, so make it clear, unmuddled, correct, and good. Invest TIME in language. Think in it. But realise that you are communicating not just by what you say, but how you say it. Adopting local slang is saying that you belong.

In essence: Become one of them. Get rid of isolationist behaviour. Join the dark side.

Have fun with your immigration!

Your geek is fuelled by caffeine. Just get used to it.

Caffeine can be found naturally in a wide range of natural geek foods, such as Mountain Dew, Irn-bru, coke, coffee, and caffeinated soap.

Caffeine serves many purposes in a geek’s life. It is an aid for 78-hour coding sessions, a powerful fashion statement (Your geek is not a jock – jocks drink beer and do not write elegant code) and a hobby much like collecting butterflies.

There are several ways your geek may enjoy caffeine, but there are a main few types of caffeinated geeks:

The Reckless: Will have more than humanly possible, miraculously without heart failure. To him this is an endurance: a roaring proof of his virility and zanyness. This is the guy that eats caffeinated soap. Stop him if he passes out. Bless.

The Addict: Will joylessly drink cup after cup, just to avoid the headaches and to stay up.

The Recreational User: In it for the rush. Just let him have it and make sure he stays off cocaine. The dot com times are over, and he has to buy you an iPhone instead.

The Gastromand: This man will buy coffee that has been crapped by civets. Will own a Gaggia espresso machine. Will write endless newsgroup posts about the perfect cortado. This may seem a bit boring, but think of it like this: This is endless nerding over something which results in you ALWAYS having a great cup of coffee.

Or possibly not. It may afterall be a wide range of interesting illnesses.

I honestly do not care if it is anthrax, bubonic plague, ebola, the common cold, or an abscess in my lung which is causing this. The result is the same: Me wanting to have a very, very cold bath.

Still having all the water.
Still got all of the previous symptoms, with the added fun new one of me having a lumpy throat. Lymphnode-tastic.

Consider this an ODE to drugs. I happily admit I am hooked. I am a junkie. I get the shakes if I miss a single dose. I am desperate for more, more, MORE!!!

Paracetamol. I declare you the fever-reducing drug of the month! In delightful combination with pseudoephedrine, my favourite decongestant and the ingredient of choice for meth-labs.

You are ill, you have a runny nose, a sore throat, you can’t move, your head hurts, you can’t breathe properly, and worse, you are alone at home and need to eat. But you are too ill to shop.

I present to you: Egg drop soup.

The basic recipe is like this: You head up stock. You thicken it with some flour, you maybe spice it a little or put some soy sauce in, and then you drop an egg in whilst stirring briskly. Done.

Variations include using a pack of noodles, then drop an egg in whilst stirring briskly. Or put some macaroni in, then drop an egg in whilst stirring briskly.

Egg drop soup done properly has silky threads of eggwhite running though it and is an art of some controversy.

That is not the point of todays soup. Todays soup is meant to be a cure for all ills. It is watery enough for you to get some liquid, soothing enough for your throat, has stock and carb so will keep you alive, replenishes salt, and the egg is the protein you need in an easy-to-swallow, no chewing needed format.

This soup is also a great way to survive as a student on noodles without getting malnourished and dying.