I've only worked a few 4-hour shifts, but the time goes fairly quickly, and thus far anyway, the British are generally more receptive to such calls than I would have expected. I for one hate getting such calls, especially at the dinner hour--guess when my shifts tend to be--but at least I'm not expected to hassle them or try to get them to buy anything. I really had to find a job, and this is the only one I could get so quickly. (An American accent seems to help here, too, kind of like how we like British accents in the States.) I figure I'll hold onto this job through December, at least. Unlike at some other jobs, they never even asked if I could work over Christmas. Maybe that's because their terminology for someone like me is "part-time casual worker." Minimum wage here is something like £5.45 an hour (which is close to $9.50)--much closer to a living wage than at home. And this pays a bit more.
I've also finally gotten registered with the National Health Service and opened a bank account--on the fifth visit to the branch! You'd think banks would be leaping over each other to get people to deposit money in them these days. But they make it very hard to do business with them. At least twice I rushed to the bank right after class, waited in line for 45 minutes (the English stand in queues a lot), only to be told that there just wasn't time for me to open an account before they closed for the day. (Would it break the bank for them to staff both of their Meeting Point/information kiosks so the could handle twice as many people?) OK, maybe I'm being the impatient American, but really...
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