h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am looking for work again. It is such a degrading thing to do. I know it shouldn't be, I shouldn't let it, but it is. I am a university educated woman, highly respected in her field, with excellent references and managerial experience, who just wants to get out of the industry for a little break (and try and save some money at the same time for a trip to the UK) and I can't even get a crappy job answering the phones in a call centre. Apparently you have to have specific "answering the phone experience" to get these jobs. My "real" job deals with people in stressful situations, high levels of responsibility, requires a high level of adaptability, basically I have to be able to do EVERYTHING but apparently I don't have the specific experience of being able to say "Good morning, how can I help you?".
Now I don't know about you but I have spoken to these people working in these call centres and they don't appear to be mensa members to me. In fact most of them appear to have less common sense and customer service ability than the average garden snail. I usually have to call back two or three times just to find a sensible operator who can answer my questions (or at the very least can admit when they can't but know somebody who can).
If I could just sit back and be comfortable in the knowledge that these companies are missing out on employing the best (although not specifically qualified) person they would ever hire it would be fine. Unfortunately I need to earn money to eat (and more importantly to smoke) so unless the theatre industry in Australia dramatically picks up it's socks or I win the lottery I guess it's out to the shopping centre tomorrow and canvassing some shops. Yes. Retail. I think I am suitably underqualified to sell things I know nothing about, to people who don't know what they want, for people who already have way to much money and don't know what to do with it. Yes. Retail.