Bradford Middleton, 8/8/2016
Current Occupation: Low-grade sales assistant for big supermarket company.
Former Occupation: Student, Music PR, writer, admin serf.
Contact Information: Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton on England's south coast. When he isn't writing stories and poems he can often be found on the check-out at a local supermarket. For more from him follow @beatnikbraduk on Twitter.
Read his pieces from 2014 and 2015.
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WORK (GROUNDHOG DAY FOREVER)
I’m just grinding out the hours
The hours until it is all over
But right now it feels like it will last forever
Work
George, from behind his podium
Keeps raising the age and now there is talk
That maybe I’ll have to work to seventy
Work
Every day is like Groundhog Day
As I say, every single bloody day,
To the same colleague at the same time as I arrive at
Work
A 3 hour shift is the normal for me
This means I must go in five days a week
Five days of the same old issues
Work
I’ve got to move on but where can I go?
What if the next place is worse than this one?
It ain’t beyond the realms of possibility
Work
I could get a job sweeping the streets
Getting cold, wet and permanently sick
And tired from a relentless schedule
Work
I did 3 years at journalism school
But the Argus will not employ me
When all I want to do is write
Work
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TRAPPED AT WORK
It’s been the longest seven years of my life working down the same shop
I’ve experienced working for two different companies and with hundreds of different colleagues all in this space to which I always seem to return
But yet here I remain unable to change, trapped in this bastion of the under-achiever
With some who will inevitably get out leaving me I wonder where?
Still here, along with all the other lifers, realising slowly the inevitable conclusion
Or on the outside, not knowing, but maybe finally living!
I got trapped where Mick Jones got lost seeking a guaranteed personality and all I wanted was some kind of existence
But I got confused about how I’d landed here down this supermarket aisle and now I’m unsure of if there’s any way out
And with the eternal thought in the back of my mind that somehow it will be even worse than this
Worried about how this will affect my already fragile grip on what is real
As my concept of reality shifts everyday and always further away
Taking me with it to be lost in this existence in a supermarket
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ANOTHER JOB SEARCH BEGINS
I can’t find a job to pay my way and i can’t stand living skint all the damn time
Got to get something better but what if it ain’t in this town? There ain’t many round these ways
Unless of course you fancy shop or bar work as, alas for me, the real money in this town
Lies in the simple bricks and mortar, whether owning, building or refurbishing
And the life of a part-time sales clerk and struggling writer isn’t replete with wealth
So I can’t afford any of that business, so…
Could i go back to a simple office job after so many years away or would that be a fate worse than death
Awash in a sea of new technologies and procedures that will doubtless boggle my poor mind
But can a full-time job in a shop actually mean it could be better
A nicer flat in a building that ain’t on the verge of collapse, a sense of space and a place where I can feel at home
How about i get a job in something i trained in, journalist, that’d be just fine
But in this town all the local rags are freebies and no one gets paid and the one who really should
Are now charging students to write stories for them
Well how about something in music; that would have been fine 20 years ago
When music meant something beyond selling gig tickets and hits on you-tube
All in a bid to just show how street and cool you wish you were
How about i teach, i’m not qualified but i do have a masters
American literature graduate, 2006 my CV reads, invariably terrifying possible employers
Into thinking i’d be wanting to run the place inside a year
But i just want a job that means I can earn enough to live a bit better
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