Five train stations had passed with people leaving the train and new faces entering the carriage, and finally the train pulled up at my destination. I stepped out of the carriage and had to leap across the huge gap that was between the carriage and the platform. As I did this I noticed something rather strange, I was the only person to exit the train at that particular station, whereas dozens of people were getting off of the train at the other stops. As I walked out of the station I finally realised why I was the only person to get off at that stop. It was slap bang in the middle of nowhere to be precise.
I looked to the left of the station to see the place where I would be slave labouring for two weeks. I took another look around to see that apart from that there was a run down chip shop across the road but that was it. There were no shops, houses or anything. I was thinking to myself the options that I had during my lunch break. The rundown fish and chip shop looked to be my only option, however there was a slight problem. The road that I had to cross to get to the chip shop was a dual carriageway and there was no pelican or zebra crossing in sight.
How on Earth I was supposed to get across the road at lunchtime was beyond me. After pondering on what to do on my lunch hour I walked in to a sky blue building, along a corridor and into reception. A rather attractive young woman in her early twenties approached me and asked if she could help me. I replied by telling her that I had work experience starting on that day. I then proceeded to follow her on her instruction and she lead me into a large garage, which unsurprisingly contained many cars, and introduced me to a man named Brian Wells.
The receptionist then left us and went back to her duties. Brian and myself began talking about my working hours and the tasks I would be carrying out. He then showed me the grand tour and pointed out the tearoom. In my head I knew that it was a hint. He really meant that this would be my home for the next two weeks. As soon as I had a brief look around the garage I knew that I was going to have a dreadful two weeks. Brian then told me that I would be working with a mechanic called David Beams.
Brian shouted out at the top of his cockney voice, “Beamsy! ” I was rather startled by this, as it was very unexpected. After he had called out an old man who appeared to be Harold Shipman’s twin brother strolled along the dirty, oil covered workshop floor wearing red and silver Vauxhall overalls. The Harold Shipman look-alike approached me and introduced himself as David Beams. While he was doing this I couldn’t help but think to myself how unlucky I was. My work experience placement was in a shabby old garage in the middle of nowhere.
I also had the pleasure of working with a serial killer. The two weeks passed dreadfully slowly and the tasks I undertook were making tea, making coffee, making hot-chocolate and running to and fro across a dual carriage way to the run down chip shop with everybody’s orders. Tired bored and annoyed with Mr Austin for giving me a terrible work experience placement, I was just about to leave for the last time when the mechanics came up to me and told me to never forget them and to visit them regularly.
I smiled and said thank you for letting me work with them. While doing this in my head I was thinking that they have a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing me again. I couldn’t wait to leave the garage. Work experience was possibly the worst two weeks of my life that have ever happened and probably yet to come. After the first hour of work experience I definitely decided that I would never like a job that involves manual labour. I wouldn’t have the patience and I hated every minute of work experience.
