What do you get if you cross a naive jilted single mother with a cash cow? A bloody good blog. Here goes my last 6 months….
So amidst ‘embracing the gymnast’, I go on the hunt for a job. I’m desperate, to the point that I surpass emailing, taking in hand-written letters and flowers for the most basic of roles, and start begging strangers in the street to let me polish their shoes – on my knees, clutching a photo of my son and my coat soaked in tears and snot.
Along comes Robin Hood. And a job I adore, with the nicest most charismatic bunch of people alive (and a neurotic receptionist and a telesales guy with “8, or 9,” kids – more on that later). I’m in employment heaven; paid a decent wage, under huge pressure to get things done whilst juggling a million tasks resulting in an incredible adrenalin buzz, all whilst being told I’m wonderful. I love it so much I commute an hour each way and then move house to be near to the job.
At what point did I not twig that finance services don’t have used-car companies on their payslips…?
After a week of chest pain and a month of insomnia, I bolted without notice, having realised I was the only person in the office with my name attached to the company, and after being blamed for everything possible, including the cleaning staff threatening legal action for their lack of payslips… (one of which copied in ITV to their email, at which point I ran to the toilets and both laughed ‘til I cried and feared for my life).
The cleaners walked with me, bless them (not without an uproar of obscenities and ‘power to the people’ joviality). I gave them a lift to the station and money for a chippy dinner – it was the least I could do for their support.
So I return to unemployment. But the fact I’m not taking paperwork home every night and getting up early to do means I am back with the breathing space to blog. Which is good because I’ve been itching to share my pride at having a trampolining certificate and badge rubbed n my face, with my replacement’s signature standing loud and clear. I did the right thing and learnt to sew very quickly, returning my son to his father and the bendy lady with her badge perfecting secured to some specifically-purchased trampolining trousers. They’ve bought a house, he can’t afford to share the nursery payments. Oh and three weeks ago he wrote a crazy formal letter stating he, a former boxer and doorman, felt threatened and unsafe in my presence due to my violent behaviour around our son… I look like wine-taster Jilly Goulding, and I have the same degree of physical threat as her too.
So as a distraction to my award-winning anxiety surrounding ‘they’re gonna frame me for leaving the company’, I shall share my entertaining experience of working along-side Lancaster’s answer to Richard and Judy; the receptionist and the telesales bloke:
We start with Victoria (or ‘Tor’ as she prefers). This is one of the saddest yet humorous people I’ve watched, given her OCD. Allow your eyes to adjust to the bright orange glare of the perma-tan and avert your ears from the equivalent of a dog’s reception of a piccolo, and watch her make a cup of tea. 3 slices of kitchen roll are laid out, overlapped at precise angles. The kettle is filled and emptied 3 times before set to boil. A china cup is removed from the top shelf of the cupboard and unwrapped from a fierce coat of cellophane, then placed on the kitchen roll. The tea bag, individually wrapped in cellophane, is removed and placed into the china cup. The boiling water is poured from a dangerous height, to within a millimetre of the rip of the china cup. Then milk is added so that it spills all over the work surface. Both hands are then secured behind her back as the tea artist bows, in her painfully short skirt, and slurps the tea half-way down the cup, before filling it again to the brim with milk. Same every day. Oh and don’t even think about washing her china cup – it has to be done a certain way. Then re-wrapped.
Then there’s the UK’s most prolific meathead: Micheal, or ‘Big M’ as he calls himself. This is a man who can’t even tie his shoelaces but claims to have played tennis for England, ran multiple companies in the Bermuda Triangle, sold a patio to Britney Spears and fathered 8, or is it 9, kids:
Me: “M, how can you not know if you’ve got 8 or 9 kids?”
Big M: “Ah well, the fing is right, me ex hangs out wiv this kid who looks like me an’ me nanna asked her if it were mine an’ she went dead cagey.”
Big M earns up to 6 grand a month from the cash cow. Which he spends at KFC.
My brother was once asked in an interview if he had any questions, to which he replied, “Yes I do….have either of you noticed I’m wearing trainers?” I think mine will be a simple “Yes, please can I have a contract?”….
Mia Darlone 