Chronicles of the Box-Office # Epilogue.

This is the end of the Chronicles of the Box-Office.

After over two years working on the river, this is with immense relief that I have finally taken upon the opportunity of a small scholarship, to resign and get my freedom back. I feel relieved, but also strangely empty, exhausted, perhaps even disheartened.
There is not much to miss though. My Chronicles of the Box-Office were scarce (to be honest, I lacked funny material), and carefully avoided the worst moments of the job.

I have been stuck eight hours a day in a telephone-booth-sized-box, among dirty carpet, messy wires, cigarette smells and mice. I’ve been freezing cold in the winter, shivering with the wind sweeping in through the money tray. The summer has seen me heat-struck and sweating like a pig behind my greenhouse–style window. I’ve been deemed as ‘useless’ by customers when I could not answer their (irrelevant) questions, had (several) customers wishing me to be fired, got (very frequently) insulted because of a boat being late/full/cancelled/ or, even, ugly (hilarious, really). Among my top insults: ‘stupid’, ‘uneducated’, ‘strange’, ‘French’ (which, uttered by the average working-class-football-freak-beer-drunker-sporting-tacky-England-football-top, means something really, really rude), or even effing foreigner.

On busy days of endless queues, having to explain customers that ‘the next available boat will be in one hour and twenty minutes’ and that ‘they should queue on the pier is they want a chance to board’ was like calling for public lynching, and I spent the best of last summer apologising because of late/full/cancelled boats. How many times did I want to cry out my frustration because people would never say ‘hi’, ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, and find that abusing a ticket-agent is the most soothing action after queuing for a long time? Sometimes I felt it would have been less offensive if people had swept dirty shoes smeared with dog’s poop on my back, or snorted greenish snot to my face.

Perhaps one of the least enjoyable aspects of the job was working with a largely misogynist, macho, racist and xenophobic team of watermen, who called me The French Bird for the best of those two years, and who only spared me the worst jokes because 1- my fiancé is English, 2- I am not Black, nor Asian.

After setting such a picture of the job, I wonder how I have managed to stay there more than two years without jumping in the river, punching a customer, or spitting to a captain’s face.
I am surprised I have only cried a couple of times or so, out of frustration and anger.

What surprises me the most is, as much as I know I won’t miss the job, how empty I feel. Admittedly, it was not always as ‘dark’ as described above. There have been nice moments too, good days laughing with customers and watermen alike, a much-welcomed solidarity bond between foreign staff, and, frequently, the satisfaction of having been through a busy and hectic day without incident, without drama.
I realise that, little by little, for the past two years, I have been shifting from PhD student full of energy, hopes and ambitions, working for my food and rent while trying to get something better… to ticket-agent, bitter, sad, stuck in my job and grinding my teeth, feeling less than nothing because abused by customers and colleagues alike, wondering if I’d ever get positively through and interview, wondering if I’d ever get to do something meaningful in my life, wondering if I….
What happened to me? How did I end up there? Why couldn’t I get out of this infernal spiral? Why did I lose confidence? Why could I not find another job? Why have I spent two years of my life, of my precious youth, in a box? I feel like I am now in a time of re-construction, of reunion with a long-lost myself, whom I’ve missed dearly.