It’s about these beanstalks

Housing charities: are they made up of altruistic, can-do, folk? And are the recipients of their beneficence deserving? That may be the view from the comfort of your expensive suburban living room. It’s a different picture when you’re manning the phone lines at one of London’s biggest housing charities, which is where my temp agency has placed me. I now find myself in closer contact with the farcical than the philanthropic.

My office is in an inner London housing estate. You just walk through the gate, past the teenagers smoking crack, turn left where there’s a hypodermic needle on the ground and it’s the first door on your right. When my sister asks me about my new assignment I mention in passing the fear of falling, putting my hands out to steady myself and somehow getting punctured by an HIV-infected metal spike. The phone line goes a bit quiet.

Walking to work this morning, I’m not too worried. I actually really like the kids who play on the estate. Gwen Stefani’s hit Hollaback Girl is saturating the airwaves and the little girls are singing it as they cycle around. Stefani’s cheerleader chant of “This shit is bananas –

B-A-N-A-N-A-S!” is transformed into “This shit is bananas – B-A-A-A-A-N-S!” Wasn’t one of New Labour’s 1997 election pledges to teach children how to spell bananas or something?

Today is the first day of my third week. It’s not yet 10 o’clock and two tenants independently request pest control for a mouse problem. The first mouse was sighted darting solo through the woman’s garden; the second had the audacity to be seen crossing the lawn of a

local park “really near my building”. I try to explain gently that our pest control people only attend incidents of mass infestation in multiple adjacent properties, and that mice are actually entitled to live outside. I am met with angry embarrassment from one caller and suppressed tears from the other. It only gets less logical from here.

“I’m calling for an update on some problems with my kitchen: getting the cupboards replaced and finalising a date for the removal of the beanstalk,” begins the morning’s next caller.

“The bean … ?”

“Yes, beanstalk, you did hear right. It’s grown quite high in my kitchen. You keep accusing me of feeding the thing, but I swear I’m not. When will someone arrive to cut it down? And also the taller one that’s in the hallway?”

One of my entries reads: ‘Security door broken. Teenagers getting in. Used condoms everywhere. Bones and grease from fried chicken on stairwell; people slipping over’. Apparently ‘Fix security door, clear rubbish’ will do

Is this the wrong time to make a fairytale-based quip? It takes 0.25 seconds to decide it would.

A lesser operative would have crumbled … I make arrangements for the beanstalk to get the chop, and the workman with whom I arrange it exercises no such comic quality control.

I file my first few reports of the day and not for the first time my colleagues try to tell me that there’s no need to write such graphic accounts of the tenants’ problems. One of my entries reads: “Downstairs security door broken. Local teenagers getting into building. Used condoms everywhere. Bones and grease from fried chicken on stairwell; people slipping over.” Apparently “fix security door, clear rubbish” will suffice. Fair enough. What about this one? “Tenant terminally ill.

There will be no second chances to help her!!!” Just the first sentence is fine, I’m told. Tch.

What’s a drama queen to do around here?

Despite the drama embargo, I’m getting on well with my colleagues, who survive the day on doughnuts and chats between calls. But today one overzealous operative insists on punctuating her work by regurgitating the wretched Crazy Frog tune. Marching around the office with her headset on, she storms past you shouting “ring-ding-ding-ding-ding … can you call a plumber in the east London area? … de-ring-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding …”

For the most part the charity run a pretty tight ship and I’ve come to like and admire some of my bosses, but a few of the tenants’ maintenance problems have been unresolved for years, somehow falling between the cracks of the system. I’ve been handing out my direct line number left, right and centre to help people skip the lengthy muzak-party of the call-centre queue, but this afternoon I come to regret it: my direct line buzzes a call through every 10 minutes or so on top of my other work.

I’ve already developed friendships with quite a few tenants, but just as I’m making some headway on getting their floorboards/toilet cistern/beanstalk problem fixed, my journalistic alter ego taps me on the shoulder and I’m offered some writing work. I’ve made good friends and not-bad money, but this shit is, indeed, bananas.