As an ex-sex worker, I am in a privileged position as regards understanding the difficulties of customer service. Granted, there are only handful of occupations in which the gratification of the customer is so literal and, um, obvious, but I imagine there are lessons learnt there which are generally applicable in the wider world of dealing with the public.

As a result I try to be - how shall we say - forgiving in matters of poor front-of-house. Some jobs are a bit shite and grind down even the sunniest of dispositions. I understand that not everything is directly to do with me, and sometimes the person on the other end of the phone is just not having a good day, nowt to do with me. But still:

- When I've stood outside my house for half an hour, and the minicab dispatcher insists two cars have been by already but I was a no-show, do you not think it might occur to her that she's been giving them the wrong fucking address?!? Alas, she would rather argue with me about whether I was in a position the cars could see than to doublecheck the address when offered it. I've spent a statistically significant portion of my life waiting on taxis; you, honey, are an undermotivated 19-year-old with no apparent communication skills.

- The Post Office. What universe do they live in where people are at home awaiting deliveries between 10 and 2 on a weekday? I took the morning off work to wait for a special delivery which they won't leave with the neighbours or let anyone else sign for, so you might think they would consider delivering said item sometime that day. Or give me an information number which does not cost the Bolivian GDP per minute to ring from a mobile, only to repeat recordings of the website address as read by Irene Handl on quaaludes. "Did. You. Know. The. Fastest. Way. To. [light nap] Arrange. Redelivery. [cup of tea and a biccie, dear?] Is. To. Visit. Our. Web. Site. On. The. Inter. Net..." [sound of me kicking chair out from under my noose]

As for Zoe la Williams, she's just bitter that I asked Erica Wagner to interview me instead of her. Witness:

No feminist - first, second or third wave - can endorse prostitution because disproportionately often it has a violated or dead woman at the end of it.

So presumably we can't endorse life, either, then. Cos we die no matter how smugly or self-righteously we live, dear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, you know what? Fuck it. Gloves off. Mizz Williams is having a laugh at the expense of everyone who takes her writing seriously; she knows fine well I exist and am real, being as I am, after all, mates with her mum's neighbour.

So. When you have had a job that was not directly the result of growing up the pampered and privileged daughter of someone with actual soul, when you have ever had a job out of necessity rather than swanning around doing as little as possible to keep yourself in the manner to which you are accustomed, and indeed, when you have written a book for publication rather than taken a fat advance and pissed the money up the wall in a swell little cottage in the country entertaining your friends, then you, Zoe Williams, can stand nose to nose with me and criticise. Until then, you're just earning money off my immoral acts (should the local constabulary be notified?), or in other words, just a columnist-whore.