Wage Monkey - Part The Second

It quickly became clear that the majority of the blokes I was to be stewarding with (and they were all men at this particular event) were of a criminal persuasion. They'd either recently been released, were currently inside and seemed to be participating in some of community service programme or were yet to be apprehended for criminal activities that they were currently indulging in. Only a couple of people there seemed to be fellow students like myself. The rest were the sort of people who listed "beating up students" as one of their hobbies (which actually reminds me of a trip to Carlisle but that's a story for another time). To say that I felt a little bit of a fish out of water would be something of an understatement.

The day itself was fine - reasonably boring and with little in the way of banter with my agency colleagues - if a little on the low paid side. Still, I'd got through it, it hadn't taxed me and I'd made a fairly small amount of cash. I reckoned it was worth going back for more so I signed up for a day of stewarding the cricket at the Oval. This is where I went wrong.

From what I can remember, it was something like a ten hour shift and, for this, they played a flat rate of about £30. oh yes, a handsome wage for a handsome day's work. We had to be there for a briefing at about 8 in the morning - which meant that I couldn't get cheap travel and had to pay around £7 to get there. Having been mini-bussed previously, I had not realised this was the case and had not factored this in before signing up. Suddenly my earnings for the day were down to about £2.30 per hour. This did not bode well..

To Be Concluded