Boots SUCK!

I am sitting here typing this with a red mist of rage in front of my eyes. Here is why.

Quite some time ago, I applied for a position on the Boots summer 2007 placement programme. The company now specify that if you want to do your pre-reg year (your first year post-graduation) with them, you must satisfactorily complete an 8-week summer placement with them between the third and fourth year of your course. The shower of cunts make no bones about the fact that they treat it like an extended interview, as if hiring a graduate straight out of a rigorous and demanding course presents a substantial risk on their part if they have no direct Boots experience, and it has recently become standard corporate policy that whichever store you do your summer placement in, that's where you'll also do your pre-reg. It's all part of standard corporate policy to get the costs associated with human resource management down. Right down. Down to the absolute bare fucking minimum and to hell with the students themselves.

I applied for a Boots summer placement while I was in the second year of this degree, last year. My main selling point was my first year results: I'd got a 2.1, and I spent a lot of time on the application and got it in well before the deadline. I heard nothing back for ages, and in the end, I received a rejection only because I e-mailed them, badgering them for a response. I since found out that some people in my class had been made offers. The secret to their success? They'd worked with Boots before, mainly during the college year, as counter assistants. Once they'd got their foot in the door, they were first in line to be considered for the placements that counted later. In short, getting a pre-reg with Boots depends on you getting a previous summer placement with Boots, which in turn depends on you being lucky enough to get a job with them prior to that (by whatever means possible, because the ongoing low-end jobs are no doubt more accessible to those who know the right people). It's pure nepotism and it fucking stinks!

I applied for Boots again this year. Once again, I was early. Once again, I heard nothing for ages, while certain classmates of mine who had worked with them before were quick to receive notification of offers in locations that were their first or second choice.

Boots got back to me today at about 3:30pm by e-mail, with an offer of a placement. In Wick. Fucking Wick!

For those of you who don't know where this is - and I didn't, until I looked it up on Google - it's almost right at the tip of the United Kingdom, relatively near John O' Groats. I asked for somewhere roundabout the South East, where Brighton is, and I got somewhere that couldn't be much more north.

Not only that, but they have given me until 9am tomorrow to reply to them. If I didn't have work this evening, I'd likely have either gone home, or gone into town and not checked my mail until tomorrow, and by then it would have been too late. Oh, and they've attached two documents, which I must fill out with reference details and reattach them when I reply.

The options open to me now are:

1. Tell them to stick their offer up their arse.

The most tempting option. They've very obviously prioritised me at the bottom of the pile, and for them to give me less than 24 hours to consider this offer is taking the extreme piss.
'We aim to meet your prferences (sic) and the offer is the best match we can make between the information you have given and the placements we have available' they told me in the mail. Loosely translated, this means 'We have given summer placements to all the people who have previously been pulled into Boots by their parents, and now we have a few dumps left, which we may as well give to the rest, in case our current crop of little darlings realise what a shower of wankers we are and decide not to work for us after they graduate'.

Unfortunately, this chain is all over the UK and Ireland like a rash right now, and it wouldn't benefit my career to start limiting who I work for before I even graduate.

2. Politely decline, explaining why.

Again, reducing my options before I know what else is on the table. Just supposing I couldn't get work anywhere else for the summer? I'd either end up in the Co-op supermarket in Kemptown for the summer, or worse, back in Mallow with my parents and no money. That way lies suicide.

3. Accepting for the moment, until a better offer comes along.

This looks like the best option. I might get a placement in a hospital in Brighton or snag a job in a pharmacy that's within commuting distance from here, and if I got one of those, I could just write back something along the lines of 'Sorry, but due to circumstances entirely within my control, I'm leaving you in the lurch'. Or something.

Bitching apart, this is what happens in all corporations once the number of applicants for something exceeds the number of jobs. Rather than genuinely screen out the worthy applicants, the company just takes the laziest, most risk-free, cost-effective way out, regardless of whether it'll benefit them in the long run or not. I'm not overtly depressed. I'd never have stayed with them anyway, I'd have just used them to get experience and then set up my own place, but it would have been handy from a money point of view.

Oh well, fingers crossed something better presents itself.