TNG day and stress headaches galore

Today was my jobsearch day. The room was uncomfortably stuffy, hence my current migraine-plagued state and the general feeling of illness produced in the room.

I am feeling much less optimistic than last week. This is because the man whilst has had some ideas about new placements for me, seems determined to ignore the areas in which I expressed the most interest and, to be quite frank, the rest of the staff indulged in emotional manipulation to convince me that, hey, I can’t afford to be be picky- in this situation.

Whilst this is true, it’s not a very comfortable prospect to face when only the evening before I had been thinking hopefully about a placement that would then enable me to apply for the further training course in the area I am most interested in that I’ve had my eye on, as well as making plans for the possibility of the course doing nothing for me be preparing for things next year.

I would go into more detail,but now I have to go to a youth group meeting and be cold for an hour or too.

My nanoing is definitely going to suffer.

TNG: Jobsearch Day- and my first ReviewDay

Today I stood for half an hour in the cold and wet waiting to be picked up by the Bus Of Doom to take me to TNG offices for another jobsearch day. Last week’s was so dreadful and pointless I couldn’t even come up with the energy to blog about it.

Today’s wasn’t much better. All day typing out application forms and feeling distinctly pressured to meet ‘joblead’ targets, despite the fact that there weren’t actually, a lot of jobs within my even Possible fields that I hadn’t already applied for. Grr.

But I had my first review session with the man who puts people on placement. He was completely suprised when he was told that I was doing my shop job, he’d somehow got the idea that they had snapped me up so quickly for a specific project that involved utilising my skills, not for me to become a shop-floor supervisor (which basically means ‘carry on as you have been doing only now if the till is out you will catch the blame and if no one’s working hard enough, it’s also your fault’). Lately I’ve been sorting my head out a little regarding directional pulls, assisted by an offer of casual work (not enough hours to escape the dole at all) within one of the fields I had been considering. So I mentioned these things to him and he has concluded that he will now work at getting me a more suitable placement. I thought that he was doing that already, but at least he’s on the right track now. Fingers crossed!

The shop itself was wearing on me a little these past few weeks. I have always found it hard graft, being not particularly suited to retail although competant enough. Some days have been better than others, but I’ve had several days where I am basically responsible for some people who, for one reason and another, physically can’t do a great deal, or are not capable of finding things to do, this leads to my treading a thin line between picking up their slack myself on occasion, and then at other times trying to give them jobs to do without appearing to be ordering them around. If the Manager would deign to confirm my supervisory role then I would not have to tread quite so carefully, but Manager is a hard person for people to get on with quite often, and I’ve already nursed a few wounds from that cutting tongue in the past week, even indirectly aimed missiles graze quite badly.

 

So, yes, I’m definitely hoping that they might find me a placement more suited to where I want to go. In the meantime, I’m also doing nanowrimo! Yay

shame?

Today was a particularly hard day at work. The shop in which I work sells furniture, among other things and this means handling quite a bit of money. A lady came in to buy a particularly pristine suite, for £150 plus £5 delivery. She brought the money in the envelope and counted out some for me. I counted it and found £140, so I counted it twice more in front of her and she counted the other money she had, agreed that she’d given the wrong amount, and it was all sorted amicably. Or so I thought.

A while later, the manageress got  a phonecall from the lady saying that she believed I had overcharged her. I explained what happened and the manageress told me not to worry too much, but as there had been a (thankfully not my fault) issue with the till she reckoned I’d probably made the mistake and the lady would get her money.

This isn’t really a big deal. Accidents happen to everyone once in a while, particularly when the tills are feeling tempremental or one is feeling particularly mithered. But I feel so guilty. Because it was my mistake.

Long after everyone had passed over the incident, the till went wonky and added the sub total to the final total so that, despite someone paying the right amount, the till feed had doubled it. I have seniority to fix the till feed in these incidents and have been allowed for some time to do so for others who have made mistakes. But I felt I had to get the manager and explain what had happened and fix it under her supervision.

Why? Because I’m on TNG. And we’ve had thievery from people on TNG and other placements before now and somehow, despite that they know me, they trust me and I’m not some stranger to them and I have my CRB check from them and everything, I suddenly felt paranoid. That the stain of being no longer a simple volunteer might somehow make them think I’d…become someone to be viewed with suspicion.

A strange reaction, and a silly one. And probably a hypocritical one- we’ve only had three thievery incidents from tng or similar placement people in the past six months, which is low compared to the amount of people the shop actually takes on.

TNG: “wrecking my head”

Yesterday was my first ‘jobsearch’ day where, instead of going to the shop I volunteered at which has taken me on placement I hopped on the horrible bus of doom and nausea and was taken to spend the day at TNG ‘jobsearching’.

There are many things wrong with this: my computer is a  whizzy and respectable little thing, they have about eight lower-ability computers and about 20 people there on ‘jobsearch’. Additionally, I discovered when I finally did get on a computer that the website I needed to access in order to apply for a job was blocked and none of the advisors had any sort of pass-code to let me on to it, even if I permitted them to watch me do so to ensure I wasn’t doing anything BUT applying for a job.

But that isn’t the thing that has haunted me since.

One of the people at TNG is a woman with a distinctly steely manner. She sat down next to me (interrupting my filling in applications, I might add and causing me to start late for dinner) and began asking me about my career plans and such and I explained my current predicament and how I would be very happy with admin or some other job that would serve whilst I sorted myself out a bit more, but career wise there were several avenues I was looking at and whichever one I managed to get my foot in the door of would likely have my fealty.

She told me that she believed that everyone at TNG could go out and walk into a job, but they kept setting themself up to fail.

She told me that by applying for a minimum of 20jobs per week was me ’sitting on my backside’ and not doing anything.

She told me that ‘deep down’ I knew what career I wanted I just needed to go out there and GET it.

She told me that I was very good at ‘talking the talk’ but was not walking the walk.

Finally, when I insisted that I hadn’t been spending my time being completely idle (several work placements, voluntary work and doing several other quite major things which I don’t like to go into detail here because it would simply serve as a distraction from the Everyman purpose of this blog as a whole)  she told me that I was still ‘not walking the walk’ AND had I ever considered pursuing my talent freelance?

If I hadn’t been fighting not to cry by this point I would have replied “Yes. I have. I’ve also considered starving in a ditch.”

“Well, it happened to [name of famous person] it could happen to you.”

Well I’m sorry, I’m not going to go freelance, condemning myself to a continual existance without the security of routine and order that I crave in employment and condemning myself to become a parasite living on my family’s non-existant wealth because freelancing in that particular industry is one of the hardest things to do in the world. So hard, in fact that my ELEVEN YEAR OLD SELF considered and decided that such pleasures would have to be relegated to hobby status because it wasn’t a viable career path for me.

In other words, the woman, to borrow a phrase from my fellows “was wrecking my head” in the worst possible way. I now wander around surrounded by thoughts of gloom and worthlessness that someone doesn’t actually see how bloody hard I’m trying.

TNG Has A Moment

So, I was ‘on placement’ at the shop that I have volunteered at for some months from Wednesday onwards. Before I could go, I was told I needed a ‘jobsearch’ day and that mine would be Friday.

Today, I phoned the man who does the placements on a completely unrelated matter (I had some information that might help a fellow sufferer) and he said “Oh, I’ll be in [the  place I volunteer at] tomorrow, so I’ll get it off you in person.”

“But, I’m not there tomorrow. I’m at TNG for my jobsearch day.”

“You don’t go to your jobsearch day in your first week!!”

…Oh.

Well….thanks for TELLING ME  O.o

TNG-Day 2

A travesty of disorganisation today. The people working there may be nice, but nothing can excuse the intense boredom of being from just before 9am till well after 12.30 without any work to do because some booklets hadn’t been finished/sorted/given to us. Our tutor handed out a few of those riddle games and a general knowledge quiz that enabled me to work out ‘Spot The Other Graduate On The Table’ and I finished my library book by 10.30am.

I had brought a sewing kit with me, but after the Health And Safety lecture yesterday warning that even some items of jewellery may be considered weapons I decided that the scissors I’d packed to cut my embroidery threads probably had best stay well hidden.

When the booklets finally arrived I was disappointed to find they were basically glossy ‘fill out’ boxes in order to create a CV. Like the one sitting next to me on the table. But I had to still fill out the information. Application forms are bad enough for making one do this over and over until one can repeat one’s marks and years of attendance in one’s head- but to fill out eight or so pages that Would Not Be Going Anywhere was quite painful.

Things picked up in the last quarter of an hour as I was allowed on the computers and managed to fill in and print off an application form;I finished the envelope just as the Horrendous Bus came to take me home.

But things are improving! Owing to the shop I already volunteer at often accepting TNG people, the minute they heard I was going on there they were all “WE’LL HAVE YOU. COME TO US!” and so that is what I will be doing. Tomorrow I shall be working there hurray!

TNG-Day 1: Induction

So, I arrived at my jobcentre and was picked up by the Pillar Box Red Van of Doom to take me to TNG. No one spoke, but that was quite fine with me as I was occupied in both trying to work out where exactly the centre was but also trying to keep down my morning drink (I’d forgotten about breakfast, probably a good thing) as I am prone to mild carsickness, but it has not been an issue for some time. The driver may be a friendly gentleman but the juddering, halting, wobbling of the travel made my stomach feel distinctly unhinged.

Once dropped off we were given no direction as to where to go but I found myself at the foot of a flight of stairs and went up, loitering until someone had pity on me and told me where to go.

I then proceeded to spend the entire day in a stuffy room which, I was informed, had recently suffered infestations of both human and dog fleas, and fill out forms. First basic info: Name, Number, Employment Record, Qualifications, then more of Name, Number, Name, Number, Sign Here Please.

Later, we were given somewhat more taxing forms, in the shape of a thick numeracy test booklet and a thick literacy one. Cruelly, I thought, the numeracy was given first and my limited concentration for figures was taxed to the utmost by our location. The entire group was seated at a long office table in the corner of an open plan room. All around me there were phones ringing, computers clicking, photocopiers beeping, builders at work outside and people laughing raucously in lieu of ‘jobsearch’.

As anyone who knows my peculiarity of hearing- at once sensitive to background noise, but occasionally deaf to direct conversation and prone into artistic tempremant if interrupted when concentrating- they will tell you that this is not my ideal situation at which to concentrate. Particularly on the latter questions which involved dredging up memories of school in order to recall converting data into fractions, or – worse still- working out how long metres are.

The Literacy book was much better- the last question- protested by my fellows to be the hardest- involved spelling the word refrigerator. *glee*. Although one question involved something akin to the following:

The manager gathers the staff together and says, “Congratulations. You must have been horrendously busy during my day off, considering the shelves are unstocked. You must have been rushed off your feet, with no time to clean up the muddy footprints on the floor and Fred in particular must have been extremely busy as he didn’t manage to get time to tidy up the trollies littering the carpark.”

Question: What does the manager mean

A. She is happy with the staff

B. She is pleased everyone has worked hard.

C. She is being ironic

D. She thinks that Fred has done very well.

Blatently, the answer was MEANT to be C. But….but the manager wasn’t…really…being Ironic. Sarcastic was a much better descriptor.

So I wrote that on the paper. Bonus mark?

After more forms, and being made to watch a presentation which caused me eyestrain as the words were too small to see, we were allowed to go home.

Except those who required the minibus, who would have to wait.

Whilst waiting, a lady was checking the booklets we had filled in. On one of the pages had been a list of potential health/disability/issues. They weren’t simply a list of disabilities in the usual way, they included if one had any weaknesses say, lifting things, or with vision problems. So I was partially honest. In truth I should have checked more but omitted those I thought Ihad the best handle on that weren’t obvious (e.g. depression. I suffered from me, but it is not an ongoing problem in a large way and I certainly was never diagnosed. It was a long long time ago) so I ticked ‘Vision’ and ‘Allergies’ and then wavered rabbit-like over ‘Anxiety/Panic Attacks’ and put a small note

“Anxiety when in noisy, crowded, busy, brightly lit situations.”

And now, apparently, the lady suggested (without knowing about any of my skills nor the areas in which I want to work) that they could get me to a counsellor. Not on thy nelly, me love. I have a mortal fear of their ilk, and besides, if I hadn’t have written it, mostly, no one would have noticed as employment wise I’d never go for a job that would cause a major attack (very few places would, in truth, only say…the Asda on Christmas Eve *shudders*) Because obviously it is my crippling anxiety that’s preventing me from getting a job….O.o (I actually interview well, I’ve never had a problem with shyness in those situations at all)

Meh. So. I had a bad headache, took a tablet and ate something to line my stomach.

Then we went home on the minibus of doom. Mum picked me up and drove me home, which perhaps wasn’t the best idea as I was (and am now) atrociously ill after fighting it off for so long.

And I have a meeting to go to tonight. No rest for wicked rabbits!

TNG: It’s starting

Today I had to go to the job centre to have a preliminary ‘interview’ with a man from TNG. As my ‘Advisor’ had called it thus, I dressed, moderately, the part and endeavoured to make a good impression. We had a short chat in which he said that he was very impressed by how wide-range my experiences wore and told me, frankly, that the majority of people placed with them are people who, for one reason or another, played truant from school and have little to no qualifications and many have even less confidence at their ability to perform work tasks. As such, the majority of his spiel was not particularly relevant to me.

I told him about the offer made by the place I volunteer with and he was interested but said that he didn’t want to “just dump me” there where I could probably run-rings round the usual type of work required.

So this is how it’s going to go. On Monday I have to walk the 2miles to the jobcentre to pick up a minibus at 8.30am. This will take me to a nearby town and I will have three days ‘induction’. After this they will either have a better placement for me or place me in the shop I volunteer at and I will work there for 4 days a week and go to TNG offices once a week to ‘jobsearch’ (which I could do at home, and likely better but there you go). Unless something shiny comes up this will continue for 13weeks- until New Year’s Day approximately. This is a bit of a blow, in the sense that the next few months contain lots of my favourite days and holidays- including advent which, in a warren like mine is a BIG  preparation. On the other hand my real wish has been to be in paid in employment by then so there remains hope that this will be the case. At the same time, my amount of time to actually search for jobs-and my productivity with such ventures- is about to diminish somewhat which isn’t so good.

We will see where this takes us.

Ho-hum, hum-drum.

So yesterday I had my appointment at the Dole at 9.30. This was quite handy, as it meant I could get it out of the way, go to the library and then do other things with my day (baking, mostly). However, I live a couple of miles from the dole offices and thus got somewhat drenched by the very fine, but no less wet rain.

It actually went passably well. Probably because I just sat back passively and let the world wash over me. My ‘Advisor’ looked at the job-website for me (to little avail as I’d spent the weekend after coming back from holiday on Friday night applying for all I could find on there) and then printed off a couple of things.

She did manage to nearly (again) provide me with someone else’s job-search print out- which includes the person’s name and FULL ADDRESS in the top left hand corner. I pointed it out but (again) no apology. Data Protection? What Data Protection? *sigh*Lucky I’m honest really.

Then she booked me in to meet with the man from TNG. This will hopefully not be too bad, as the charity shop I volunteer at take a lot of people on through TNG and the manager was going to Have Words on my behalf because they like me and trust me and I’ve done all the health and safety and CRB hoops- and I already work there on the weekend. I’m hoping, in truth, to see whether, provided I do get to go there, I could appease TNG and only work 4 (or is it 3 if I have to go to the TNG offices once a week?) days of the main week and keep working on Saturdays, when the shop is at its most short-staffed.

Ah well, that’s all for Friday to deal with. I intend to try and make the most of the next couple of days whilst I’ve still the time and energy to do Life.

And the whimpering noise coming from the corner is…

I have just returned from a wonderful holiday in a marvellous part of the country, where there are fields and sheep and things to see out of one’s window other than fat pigeons and smoking factory chimneys and birdsong to hear rather than the sound of yobs joyriding  or smashing windows (I kid you not, three windows of the same house in my street in one week).

However, this blog isn’t about my holiday, otherwise it would tell you about the cheerful wonderful places I saw and stayed in and how I hope to relocate and get out of this town and live somewhere I can actually enjoy going outside. It’s about being on New Deal, and the Dole and all of that.So you get the depressing post.

I had barely been at home a few hours when the misery crept back. I’d fought, not always successfully, to keep it at bay and not think about the situation of Life whilst on holiday but back at home, looking through my emails and the ‘Dear John’ letters (a scant few considering how many applications) that had arrived in my absence, looking to see if there was anything new to apply for it all came pouring back.

I am so worn down by the whole process of being unemployed and miserable that I’ve pretty much had a career crisis. I was never…100% fixed on what exactly I wanted to do for a living. I just had a vague area and a few jobs in certain sectors that looked good and that I felt I would have the talent for. I was happy to relocate though, preferably, not to London. My first work experience whetted my appetite for one kind of job, only my recent work for the other company made me start to doubt my suitability for the particular stresses of the field.

The thing is that right now I would be happy with anything small. Even a little shop job or something I’d be talented at and reasonably enjoy like data input or admin- just for a few months or so whilst I sorted myself out and tried to find where my path actually is career-wise. The dole has not been helpful in any way to this, so much so that I certainly don’t wish to tell them I’m having basically a mid-life crisis before I hit my 25th birthday (I was 23 a couple of weeks ago).  I really feel I need a chance to stand back and take stock of what I actually want to do and whether I have the talent to do certain things, most of which means volunteer work on a part time basis if posisble. But the dole most certainly would not give me that kind of breathing space and I just…I’m completely babbling here, I do apologise…I’m just in a bit of a mess and, if anything, the New Deal system is making it worse by being both unsympathetic and terrifyingly carelessly in control of my life.

I had intended to go and sign up with an admin agency on my return from holiday. Now I know they’re sending for me all the time I can’t even guarentee an appointment time. It’s such a stupid mess.

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