The Last Farewell

I have been keeping this to my chest for some time, but I am pleased to inform you that I am now Off the Dole and in gainful employment! Huzzah!

On the day I signed off, I attended a meeting with my New Deal Advisor scheduled for 1pm. As I arrived at 12.50, she left on her lunch. I was then obliged to wait until 1.35 before being seen, and once I told her I was signing off she instructed me to come back at 3pm to finish off the paperwork.

Well, I suppose they had to remind me how awful it could be one last time eh?

I am now gainfully employed in administration, it isn’t my dream job but it is one that is far more suited to me than any of the free labour I have been obliged to do for the past few months has been. I feel qualified, at least.

I was planning on making an entry after my first day (consumed with a terror about jinxing things made me put it off) but the day after I signed off I was involved in a traffic accident (extremely minor in the sense that I am not hurt, but it rather threw me and I didn’t make sense for a couple of days thereafter) and life, being Utterly Crazy promptly provided me with information regarding a job I had supposedly got in October when I filled out the forms, but had heard nothing substantial back since and as it was only a casual work (one day on a weekend every now and then) I wasn’t hugely heartbroken, just rather disappointed as I really wanted the experience, and so it feels as if I’ve had my mobile glued to my ear talking to insurance companies (re my car), councils, other employers, HR people, IT people who are currently failing me in my current job making me a desktop fugitive.

Nontheless, I’m digressing.

I have….not exactly enjoyed keeping this blog, but I have appreciated the responses I have received and it has provided me with an arena in which to air my grievences about the complete failure of justness that is the dole, and New Deal in particular. I am no longer qualified to talk about that, although I may still make the odd post if I hear of something that might be interest to those who are still in the plight I have (utterly miraculously) somehow escaped from (I still don’t know why they picked me, I’m mostly relieved they did).

I hope that this blog was of some comfort to others, and that it did its purpose to stand as a report of my experiences whilst under the new deal. I wish everyone who has read or commented in a similar situation to the one detailed in here a prosperous, hopefully gainfully employed year and many thanks for your kindnesses.

-Coinan, the rabbit.

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!

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.

</whine>

It’s Saturday night. I spent the day at my voluntary job and had a brilliant day doing lots of great stuff and I also met another person working there who is a graduate currently on TNG. He is the first graduate on TNG I’ve ever met. He makes it look quite hopeful that it might be okay.

I still want to escape it, of course. Recently…career wise…the joblessness had been grinding me down. There were always several paths I felt I could happily tread and, owing to some recent happenings, I am less sure of where I want to end up. I would  therefore, at present, be very happy with a basic sort of job that I could do and reasonably enjoy whilst I try and work out exactly where I want to go next, and whether some of my goalposts need to shift around a little. I have always felt a little like this, because a lot of things I hope to do aren’t necessarily to do with a career but would be done in my free time around my job. Now, it seems all the more imperitive I do this, because I really need some time and space to think without the dole pressuring me and breathing down my neck. So, perversley, the best thing that could happen is for one of my smaller applications to come through soon.

I don’t know where I’m going to be next month. That’s one of the worst things about being unemployed: the constant sense of uncertainty. I’ve lost touch with a lot of friends because I don’t feel like I can contact and arrange a meet up in a few weeks, because I have no idea what might happen between now and then and I’m not the sort of rabbit who can bear to break engagements. Stupid, perhaps, because friends would understand, but it is an attitude that I can’t seem to shift.

Devastate

The New Deal Work Placement Thing has fallen through owing to the ineptitude of my local jobcentre. This may, in fact, be my last day in this company and the dole beckons with its cold, empty hands.