Many people suggest that those who bemoan the demise of our manufacturing industry are merely stuck in the past and/or snobbish and that service industries are every bit as valid as “making things”. 

Well I’m a programmer by trade, so you won’t get any argument from me about service industries being a perfectly valid way of making a living. 

However, for one thing there are a limited number of service industries that can be exported – and if we import most of our consumer goods then we need to export something to pay for them. 

The other issue I have is that so many of the service industries I’ve seen first hand do very little to improve life. 

For example, when I was doing some work at an advertising agency, we went out to one of these daytime tv secured loan companies, where they explained that they never give anyone the amount of money they ask for. 

Their computer screen tells them how much equity is in the callers property, so if someone rings up trying to reconile £5K of credit card debt and they have £20K equity in their property, they will have an innocent sounding chat with them “have you had a holiday this year?”, “no? well why not borrow another £5K and have a dream holiday?”  “How’s your car?”, “Knackered is it?  Why not borrow another £5K and get a newer one?”.  etc etc. 

Not exactly ethical in my mind to be putting temptation in the way of people who are already reconciling existing debt – but the employees who get callers to spend the most get rewareded with luxury holidays and other incentives.  A far cry from the days when in order to get a mortgage you had to put on your best suit to see your bank manager, and he’d send you away to save a bigger deposit if he didn’t feel you were ready for the financial commitment yet. 

It’s no wonder our collective debt has spiralled out of control.  And of course houses are only worth what people are willing (and able) to pay for them, so many of these people who borrowed against equity may well now find themselves in negative equity thanks to some pushy operative obsessed by some prize on offer. 

A flatmate of my ex used to work for a food magazine selling advertising space.  She was very good at it, and got headhunted by an IT recruitment firm. 

This was a surprise to me as she barely knew how to switch a PC on, but she had a half days training in the buzz words she needed to know, and she winged the rest. 

The agency would charge employers 1/3rd of the candidates first year wages if they stayed for at least 3 months.  For the typical programmer earning £30K, the agency would cop £10K  and pay £1K commission to the operative, who could earn £100K per year if they went at it hammer and tongs and worked weekends and late evenings. 

Again there were incentives such as taking the whole office on a shopping trip to New York for the weekend if everyone met their targets. 

Part of their routine was to wait until the successfully placed employee had been in their new job for 12 weeks, and the the agencies commission was therefore safe, then they would make a “courtesy call” along the lines of “How are you enjoying the new job?  I’ve got this new vacancy that I think you’d be perfect for, and it pays an extra £5K per year”. 

If they successfully managed to lure the employee away, they’d then make a “courtesy call” to the employer, acting surprised when they were told that they had left, “but I’ve got another candidate here that is even better”. 

The agency were really doing very little for their £10K or so per candidate placed.  The people on the phones were merely sales people, they didn’t know or care whether the candidates they put forward were any good or not, all they really did was put people with certain keywords on their CV in touch with employers looking for the same keywords – and charging through the nose for it. 

This company traded under various names  – it wasn’t a one off, it’s pretty much how most of them operate. 

Another company I came across recently ring you up and act like a recruitment agency who are really keen to see you.  It turns out that they spend 3 hours ripping you to shreds, telling you you’ll never find another job, but they can help – if you hand over £7,000 for their personal development course! 

Another one promises “a guaranteed job in IT”.  A pretty bold promise – but of course it turns out they merely want to try and sell you £12K of useless training, and the guarantee involves giving you back a couple of grand from what you spent on the training. 

At work recently, us and a few of our clients recieved unsolicited phone calls from companies claiming they can get us on the front page of Google.  Intregued I looked into it further, turns out they set up a google adwords campaign for you, with them taking a healthy cut of your budget (you can easily set up a google adwords campaign yourself and put 100% of your budget into the adverts, not to some dodgy middlemen). 

Don’t get me started on advertising agencies.  All these old blokes on BBC 4 laughing about selling people Musk and Tweed perfumes in the 1970s to easily lead women, even though they stunk, shows, if anyone was in any doubt, about the lack of sincerity that goes into advertising. 

I could go on all day, but I wonder if all these kind of companies who do nothing for humanity other than leech off it, were closed down, how much of our service industry would be left. 

And what kind of nation it’s turning us into, when so many employees ignore the immoral nature of their work and get lured by promises of expensive bribes. 

On a brighter note though, Happy New Year!