Attack Of The Corporate Automatons!

Fig 1: A new batch of Titan Travel tour managers prepare to meet their clients

PREVIOUSLY, I HAVE been rejected for a part-time typist’s job because I couldn’t produce an original of my English O-level certificate from 1977, and didn’t even get an interview for a temporary supervisor’s job at a carrot farm because my CV included a photograph and was considered “too jokey”.
Undeterred, this month I applied for a job as a freelance tour manager – “four to eight weeks a year” – with a “multi-award winning tour operator of Quality Escorted Holidays Worldwide” called Titan Travel.
Their advert said applicants should possess the following attributes:
Experience of managing people as well as the ability to organise yourself and work on your own initiative. CHECK!
Presentation skills are essential, as you need to be able to provide interesting and enthusiastic commentary on areas visited. CHECK!
Smart appearance. CHECK!
Flexibility. CHECK!
Excellent communication skills combined with experience of working in a customer-facing environment. Um, if they meant “dealing with the public”, DOUBLE CHECK!
The advert continued that “previous experience in a tour manager role is not essential, as full training will be given,” and added that applicants should send a covering letter “specifying the geographical areas of the world with which you are familiar and your level of knowledge.”
So I sent this letter:

Maggie Hide
Head of Tour Management
Titan Travel Ltd
HiTours House
Crossoak Lane
Redhill
Surrey
RH1 5EX
19th March 2007.
Dear Maggie,
Re: Vacancy for Tour Manager, advertised in The Guardian 19th March 2007.
I wish to be considered for the above post.
I’m an ex-TV presenter, failed stand-up comic, part-time football referee, former adventure tour guide and freelance English teacher.
I’ve managed deadlines, budgets and egos as a TV producer and Features Editor of a national newspaper. I’ve managed tears and shyness in the classroom. I manage tantrums and hysterics every weekend on the football pitch. And I’ve managed dramas and emergencies in the middle of the Sahara Desert with the nearest phone and line manager a two-day camel ride away.
I’ve travelled all over the world – hey, who hasn’t? – but have particular experience and knowledge of Latin America, North America, the Middle East and Europe. (I worked for four successful seasons as an Educational Tour Director, whose job was to bring the history of assorted crumbling, European cathedrals to life for groups of easily-distracted teenagers – and their heard-it-all-before teachers - from US High Schools.) And what I don’t know, I’m really quick at learning…..
I enclose my CV, including photo, letter of reference and testimonies from satisfied customers. (I have also sent you copies of this letter and CV by email.)
Yours sincerely

Ten days later, I received this “summons” from Maggie:

Dear [Jack]
Thank you for your reply to the advertisement in The Guardian, further to which we would like to invite you to attend a half-day group introduction to Titan Travel. This will include an outline of the company and the role of the Tour Manager, followed by a one-to-one 10-minute interview, which will allow you the opportunity to tell us about yourself. The details of the time and venue are as follows:
Date: 11 April 2007.
Time: Registration 0900 hrs. Meeting begins 0930 hrs.
Venue: Renaissance London Gatwick Hotel
Povey Cross Road
Horley, Surrey, RH6 0BE.
Telephone: 01293 820169
For this initial meeting we will not be offering travel expenses. Following on from this meeting, a list of potential Trainee Tour Managers will be contacted and invited to attend a second interview. Travelling expenses will be reimbursed for the second interview.
Accommodation can be booked at your own expense, at the Renaissance Hotel. A special rate of £95 Bed & Breakfast is available if you advise when booking that you are attending the Titan Travel function on 11 April 2007.
We do hope you will be able to attend and look forward to receiving your confirmation by return post/email.
Yours sincerely,
Maggie Hide.

OK, so on the plus side, I’d been selected for interview without having to fill in an application form. And, um, that was it.
On the minus side, however….. Well, there appeared to be quite a few things on the minus side.
The most obvious appeared to be that Maggie hadn’t actually read my CV or letter properly. If she had, she would have quickly ascertained a couple of quite important facts. Firstly, that I lived 530 miles away - in Scotland - from the venue of the interview. And secondly, that I had a successful career as a “tour manager” already behind me.

SANGRIA

Also on the minus side was that if I did choose to make the 1,060-mile round trip, it would take up two days of my time and cost around £250 in train and air fares, meals and hotel accommodation, even at Titan’s “special rate”. In return, I would be granted a one-to-one 10 minute interview which will allow you the opportunity to tell us about yourself. Now ten minutes would probably be long enough for a 16-year-old school leaver with a paper round to recount their personal history, but my own lifetime of modest achievements would take considerably longer(the tale of how I dissuaded a depressed school teacher from topping herself after one sangria too many in the shadow of the Alcazar in Segovia would take half an hour on its own). And after all that, even if I ended up getting the job, the length of my contract would be an epic four to eight weeks a year.

Fig 2: Jack Havana proves that charisma and personality inspire confidence in students/customers

Hmmm. I couldn’t understand why Maggie appeared to think I would honestly want to travel all that way, and at all that expense, just to hear “a group introduction to…the company and the role of Tour Manager”. (I once travelled to Edinburgh for one of these “group introductions” so beloved of brain-dead HR managers. It was for an English language school in Spain called ModLang, and while it was an eye-bleedingly dull 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back, at least it only cost me a cheap day return on the train). I’d already learned a lot about Titan Travel from its website, and I’ve been carrying out the role of Tour Manager to rave reviews for quite a while now. Also, if she thought I could afford all that time and money just for a 10 minute interview, then why the fuck would I need a wage-paying job in the first place?

CLAMMY

Then I remembered a line from the original advert: previous experience in a tour manager role is not essential, as full training will be given.
A cold, clammy feeling gripped me. Could Titan Travel be one of those companies that trains its tour managers to recite parrot-fashion a load of boring bollocks about how old this cathedral is, how tall that skyscraper is and how many years it took to build that bridge? Could it be one of those companies whose tour managers are wheeled off the corporate conveyor belt with all the charisma and individuality of a circus-trained seal? Could it be one of those companies looking for bubbly, blond(e) and cheap X-Factor wanabees who couldn’t get a job with easyJet?(That would certainly explain why it was giving only 10 minutes for candidates to talk about themselves)
No, surely not. All it would take would be a brief note to Maggie pointing out how far away I lived; that a whole page of my CV contained glowing references from people I’d previously served in a customer-facing environment; and that she was giving me less than a fortnight to arrange accommodation and travel for a date slap bang in the middle of the Easter holidays. (Crikey, you’d have thought a “multi-award winning” travel company would have realised a minor detail like that!) She’d understand and be sympathetic to my predicament, surely? Wouldn’t she?
So I sent this email on 2 April:
Dear Maggie,
Thank you for your letter of 28 March, inviting me to attend a half-day group introduction to Titan Travel on 11 April.
Unfortunately, I will be unable to make it. As someone who is stupid enough to live north of Watford and currently surviving on a freelance teacher's wages, I can't really justify a two-day, 1,000-mile round trip which will cost about £250 for the sake of hearing "an outline of....the role of Tour Manager" - a job I have successfully done for the past three years - and a "one-to-one 10 minute interview". I hope you understand.
I had rather hoped that the detail contained in my CV - including photograph, letter of reference, copies of certificates and glowing testimonies from satisfied customers who I have escorted on trips before - plus the fact that I live 500 miles away, might have been enough for you to consider conducting my "10 minute interview" over the phone. Perhaps even more ambitiously, I hoped it might even have earned me a "bye" to the next stage of your recruitment process, when travel expenses would be reimbursed.
I now realise I was being very naive indeed.
Ho hum.
And would you believe it, dear readers, I am still waiting for a reply. Maggie – who, you would hope, trains her Tour Managers to be polite and courteous at all times – couldn’t even be bothered to send me a couple of lines in acknowledgement, even if they were only: Tough shit. That’s your problem for living outside London.
So what, you may think? Titan Travel is a “multi-award winning” company while I’m just a loser who can’t even get a job as a part-time typist. Well, of the three awards trumpeted on Titan’s website, one appears to be for “selling long haul and short break holidays”(“Travel Awards 2006”), while the others – a Telegraph Travel Award for Best Tour Operator, and 2005 British Travel Award for Best Escorted Tours Operator – appear to have been based on the opinions of readers of The Daily Telegraph and people who need to be escorted when they go on holiday. Here's a typical customer's useful tip: "Take a pen and paper, it comes in handy for jotting down notes, i.e. conection times for the coach, suitcases in or out of your hotel room. Believe me everybody was asking each other for confirmation." Thanks for that to Tony Mayhew who holidayed with Titan last year.(You can read his full review here) It's a shame that Titan's expertly trained Tour Managers couldn't have pinned that kind of information to the hotel noticeboard. Meanwhile, for another opinion, check out Telegraph.co.uk's consumer rights page here.

RECTAL

So not only am I quite glad I didn’t attend the “half-day group introduction to Titan Travel” - which I suspect would have been only marginally less gripping than being stuck in a lift with Richard Madeley - but I’m also pretty sure that if I was ever to book one of their escorted holidays I’d find it about as enjoyable as a rectal endoscopy.
Meanwhile, my crusade to be treated as a literate, sentient life form by the HR managers of the world and defeat the evil forces of corporate automatons everywhere – and maybe one day get a job - continues……
NEXT WEEK: Jack visits a recruitment fair for the Golf Open 2007 and is surprised to find employment legislation being flouted by…….the Job Centre!
© Text and Fig. 2 photo Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction in part or whole prohibited without Jack’s say-so.
This week, Jack Havana recommends…..
BOOK: The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton. Should be compulsory reading for all aspiring tour managers. Brilliant. Review here.
FILM: Office Space(1999, DVD). Mike Judge, creater of King of the Hill, turns his attention to the McJob culture and corporate automatons in this under-rated gem starring Jennifer Aniston. It’s exactly how I imagine the head office of Titan Tours must be like. More here.
MUSIC: Girlfriend, by Avril Lavigne. And not just because of the video, honest. Say It Right, by Nelly Furtado. Also not just because of the video. Plus I’ve just seen The Don by “teenage Dundonian upstarts” The View on MTV, and it’s brilliant. All of which proves I'm eclectic if nothing else.