Brianna Parkins: The idea of national service has merit: here are the new rules

It was never really going to be a go-er was it? The Tories trying to bring back National Service, ie, military conscription. You know the thing they tried to bring in during both World Wars and afterwards for a bit? Maybe it was Rishi Sunak yearning for a time when colour television hadn’t been invented and you could blame the Germans for everything going wrong instead of your own mishandling of housing policies.

The whole National Service idea seemed like a cheap last-ditch appeal to older voters who believe this generation of pronoun-using, quiet-quitting, internet-addled snowflakes could benefit from joining the armed forces against their will. Give them a bayonet and send them over the top just like in the good old days. That way you’ll never have to hear them complain about housing affordability again.

While the latest crop of British 18-year-olds won’t be mandated to die for their king and country thanks to the latest election, the idea of National Service has merit. I have long advocated for everyone below the age of 25 to do a compulsory year in a minimally paid customer service role before gaining full rights as an adult citizen.

You may choose to serve in either the hospitality or retail branch depending on your strengths, weaknesses and ability to not vomit while cleaning up someone else’s vomit. You will need patience, resilience and the self-control required not to headbutt the public despite their attempts to be the rudest they can possibly be to you.

If you can tolerate absolute doses clicking their fingers at you, yet also taking forever to decide what to order despite the line being six-deep, serving in your local bar or nightclub might be for you. The incentives of this option include disturbing your sleep pattern with shift work and having your weekend on a Monday. You will leave with fond memories of finding a prosthetic leg on the dance floor and wondering how its owner got home without it, watching couples fight at the end of your shift and the indelible knowledge of every Sean Paul song lyric in existence.

This will never come in handy except to haunt you in your dreams for years to come. It’s the kind of terrifying sleep paralysis demon where you find yourself back at the bar making eight porn star martinis for the hen party who keep insisting “there’s no alcohol in these” while they turn every vertical support beam into a stripper pole. To be fair, with enough drink, the world is your stripper pole.

If you enjoy being bossed around by managers who derive their energy from bullying teenagers on the correct placement of coat hangers, might I suggest serving in the retail wing. You will have to argue with an irate customer that you have indeed “gone out the back” and checked for their size but as it’s a small storeroom and not a warehouse, you simply don’t have it, despite what the website says. If you can gentle-parent a grown adult stranger having a temper tantrum about a particular brand of slippers being sold out, you can take on whatever the world throws at you afterwards.

This is precisely the reason to support the Brianna Parkins policy of compulsory customer service duty. They are often the most demanding jobs both physically and mentally, with the lowest remuneration. But the personal development they offer is priceless. For instance, I know that if I have to I can both talk down a belligerent six foot man or wrestle him into a headlock until security can bundle him out the door. Both are useful conflict resolution tactics. I have not tried the second in an office context but never say never.

I know of journalists who were offered jobs because they worked in the roughest bar in town with a wise old editor reasoning, “If they can handle that, they can handle anything.”

Those of us who have worked the Christmas sales or a New Year’s Eve bar shift without seriously considering breaking a limb share the same motto as the Marine Corp – “the few, the proud”.

[ I’m glad I never got the things my younger self thought I wantedOpens in new window ]

Lastly, I truly believe these jobs make for better and more empathetic people in the world. People who don’t snap at the waiters serving them or the checkout attendants scanning their groceries. People who know a job or an occupation isn’t a measure of a person’s intelligence, just a measure of the opportunities currently available to them. People who understand what it is like to be treated or paid poorly and vow to try to change that if it’s within their own power one day.

That’s much more of a service to the nation than playing pretend soldiers with guns in ditches.