Tuna spooner

 The ad read:

Spoon operative. NMW compliant.0-45 hour p/w

And I didn't have much else to be getting on with, so I applied.

They led me into a long shed, lit by strip-lights. To my left was a pile of tins of tuna, to my right a big dish full of the sort of bags you can get change from the bank in. A conveyer belt rumbled squeakily in front of me, and there. just in front of it, in its own dish, was the spoon.

I was, I was told, responsible for the spoon. If I lost, or damaged the spoon, in any way, I was financially liable. I discovered over time that this was only true up to the point. Many of my fellow tuna spooners, I learned, had customised their spoons. Some had had little motivational slogans engraved on the handle, like "one spoon at at time" or "do it for the kids". Others, the older, more battle-hardened tuna spooners, the ones who spoke little, and smiled less, had filed their handles to sharp points to make shivs, the better defend their pile of little plastic bags.

If we lose any plastic bags, we are told, we are financially liable for them.

I watched a short instructional video in which Gary Barlow, wearing a hair net, showed me how to put precisely one spoonful of tuna into a bag. After that, I got to it.

It's not the worst job I've ever had, you're out of the rain, at least. But it generally only clocks up about twenty hours, so it's not really enough to live on. And it is quite boring, spooning the tuna. No one talks much, we have a "bags per hour" target. If you hit it, they text you a smiley face. If you don't, they text you an angry face. Three angry faces and you're fired.

I haven't had any angry faces yet, though, and Steve, my manager, says that I've been doing pretty well. Keep it up, he says, and they might move me onto cutting peppers in half. It's the same money, but you get to see a different part of the shed.