Eleven Years.

 I wrote this fresh from leaving a job I was tiring of, at the time it was a bit of a rant to myself, not intending to put it up on my blog. With fresh eyes, it shows I was tired, so tired and drained. This is a lesson to anybody, that, when you stay still too long you will ultimately destroy only yourself.


Eleven years.

Quite a long time in anybody's lifetime eh? That’s how long I worked for my last company.  Eleven years. In the year 2000.  Millennium night, didn’t spend it with my family.  I worked.  Put the time in.  Put the effort in. Never took time off.

I had Bowel Cancer.  Ordered to take a minimum of a year off.  Went back to work in six months.  That was five years ago.  Never had a day off sick since.  My cancer has left me with half the digestive system I had five years ago and ALL the problems that it gives me hourly.  Sometimes half hourly.  Sometimes every ten minutes or so.

Eleven years.

Quite a long time to put up with bile and piss covered seats.  Eleven years. Quite a long time to get beaten up.  Stabbed.  Verbally abused.  Spat at.  Sicked on. Robbed.  Molested.  Throttled.  Bottled.  Held hostage.  Dragged out of my cab and nearly gutted.  Dragged out of my cab and kicked under it.

Eleven years.

Three company owners come and go.  Rules change.  Cabs change.  Staff change.  I change… The Public change.  From happy drunks to coke fiends.  Women change.  From coy to cock hungry.  Fivers and twenties change.  don’t earn enough of them.  That never changes.

Eleven years.

Spent nine months being bullied by a small insignificant human being.  Locked out.  No earnings.  Passed over.  My work given to others.  Held on.  Toughed it out.  No help from the boss.  Left out in the cold.  Picking up scraps.  Regularly coming home with less than a Tenner for a nights work.  Regularly earning less than the minimum wage of a sixteen year old.


ELEVEN YEARS.


A Blessing.  A release.  Thankful.  Thankful my tyre wore away to the webbing in three days.  Thankful the wheel assembly that should have been attached to the wheel hub wasn't.  Thankful it never killed anybody.  Thankful my ranting letter to the boss fuelled by a goading controller made its point.  Thankful I was sacked for complaining about it.  Thankful I called him an idiot when he rang me.


Eleven years…


Thankful that its fucking over.


Two thousand four hundred and thirty one shifts, times an average of fifteen jobs per shift, times an average of two persons per journey. 65,000 miles per year travelled.

You do the maths.  I’m fucking tired.

Eleven years.  I’m done.

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