Mum, am i stewing?...

It's been a quiet week on the jobs front this week. I did find some good possible jobs last week, and i rang up about them:

"Well, we are taking people's details and will be in touch next week" (not so far...)

So you give details, and then...you hear nothing. To be honest, i know i'm not the only one in this boat, and despite my background/roots, i still feel really sorry for those who have had decent jobs, for years, possibly turning up at the same place of work every day for the past 15 years, and now they're out in the cold.

Cruel victims of a capitalist structure going horribly wrong, or "Just the way it is"; you decide...

Hearing nothing about jobs you've applied for is, to me at least, worse than there actually being no jobs, as that was the position in the last town i lived in, before moving. Here, in "new town" there are now bits and bobs about but it's getting a foot in the door. It's so bad even agencies are frowning over a year long unemployment gap.

You could chase these people up, but i'm more of a persuasion that this is tanatamount to harassment. It's like cold calling, but i think from a employer/agency point of view, more annoying.

Maybe i am wrong but if i was a employer and i kept being asked every day "got any jobs mate?" by a stranger every single bloody day for a week, i would get cheesed off and promptly strike them off the list, pronto.

People say that you must not get disheartened, should not lose hope, but although i do know that one day, someone, somewhere will employ me i do really get so "down" about it all.

I do get like this quite often now. In fact, so bad sometimes, i wonder if i'm going to be on benefits long term, and before anyone rings the Daily Mail newsdesk, i would like to say on record that i don't want to be. I'm a worker, i come from a family of workers, my Grandfathers both grafted hard, working "on the land" (farm and field work) in isolated rural areas, and this "work hard" attitude is mine also.

However, i don't want to be exploited, it's not fair to be treated like shit, working long hours for minimum wage on a short term contract. I don't mind minimum wage, no sir, but not struggling and tugging my forelock for it.

I do worry that sometimes that i will end up like Lee Evans' character in the brit flick "The Martins", a bloke with family on benefits, and his life is so bad, all that keeps him going is entering competitions for dream holidays.

I just don't want that, i really don't want that...

Soon time for Tartan slippers and a Pipe...

I was doing something i'm kind of good at, Reminiscing, the other day, whilst on YouTube the other day.

I'm a child of the 80's, and as a kid, i loved technology, modern tech is great but i think the method of tuning your TV in manually using funny little knobs behind a little door is sadly missed!

I remember the TV/Radio shops you could get at the time, although we rented a wood panelled Philips colour set from a local dealer becuase the terms for my parents, being poor, were affordable, and apparently, Mr. Fox, the TV rental man, was a bit of a all round honest good guy as well. Sadly, his shop, and the model shop that was next door have long gone. They are now part of a car park for a branch of PC World.

We had Visionhire, Radio Rentals, and Rumbelows. They've all gone. Visionhire is now a card shop, so is the former Radio Rentals and the once very big Rumbelows is now a Phones4U.

It makes me wonder what happens to people when organisations like this cease trading, of course many find other jobs, but some people worked for these sort of places for years, and although it sounds a bit soft, i do wonder how people who spent years working for these sort of places adjusted to a new, streamilned business or alternative employment, or even retirement. Do they just get on with it?

Likewise all the people organisations like BT must have shedded since privatisation in 1984...

I actually wanted to be a TV Repair Engineer as a kid, this was the service depot arm of Granada Rentals/Visionhire years ago, looks like a good place to work!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDeD0MMzkqI&feature=channel_page

Spiders...

Something i've noticed recently, perhaps other places in the UK have it, but the weather has been a bit odd round these parts recently, and there is the biggest amount of greenfly and some really odd light coloured spiders with tiny bodies and comedy spindly legs...

Perhaps it's the amount of time this flat was vacant before i moved in, or just something i noticed...

More interesting topics next time! :-)

Don't Panic! we know what exactly is going on...

A wise old former soldier i once worked with once told me that "back in the day" when he was in the Army, you never volunteered for anything, ever, unless you were completely kamikaze.

I sometimes wonder if "Civvy Street" life is like that also. I, about a month ago volunteered to go onto a job hunting training course provided by a organisation with a number-letter-number configuration in the title.

I'm now wondering whether this is a mistake. I have learnt, via the magic of the internet that people usually get forced onto these courses, and in Sheffield, it is regarded as something of a punishment apparently.

My own course, is highly reminiscent of the things i hated at school. Although i left school donkey's years ago, i still remember and shudder at some of the poor attitude of the teachers, who , apart from a couple of cases, seemed to either be incompetent or megalomaniacal, or tyrants, or all three cases.

Some of the staff at the training course are reminiscent of my teachers, last week i was told that basically i have a negative attitude (no, i have a realistic attitude, which is different), a defensive attitude, and was somehow responsible for the 1973 Miners strike, despite it being six years before i was born...

I said that i fancied working in admin but was at a loss, despite IT qualifications, because i have no experience, and at nearly 30, perhaps a bit too old for a apprenticeship.

Apparently, i was the only one holding me back. Not the poor GCSE's that i have, not the fact i lived for years in a area where there were not many Office roles available, and you had to take what you could get, so i ended up in a factory.

No, it's me and my negative attitude. And apparently i have "issues" too.

To be honest, i get a bit sick of this "Your life is in your hands" crap. Ok, your life is in your hands but there are often outside factors controlling it, like lack of money, putting a roof over your head etc, so i try and make the most of what i've got, unfortunately i don't get very far but that's another story.

I wanted to use my time the other day trawling the local agencies, rather than the Northampton agencies i went to a fortnight (see previous post), and when informing a course leader about this, i got looked at as if i was something he'd stepped in:

"You did this a week ago, didn't you?", i informed him it was a fortnight ago in Northampton.

I was allowed to go in the end. Sometimes i just wonder if it's me or other people who are stupid, hold on, perhaps i'd best not ask...

The quest begins again...

Breaking news, as CNN might say, or Sky news, or the BBC for that matter...

"Shock news as Lewis Heyward turns his back on badly paid agency job with long hours, spokesman for Mr. Heyward said: In the light of tough economic conditions, he has decided to save what is left of his sanity, despite the money offered..."

Well, something like that. If you read my last post, you would have read that i had been offered a job working for a employment agency, working in a vegtable factory, for 12 hours a day, four days on-two days off for the princely sum of £5.75 an hour.

I am desperate, but i have had a huge, long think over the last few days. I didn't really want to do the job, i've done this sort of thing before, and it was bad enough when i was getting nearly £7 an hour and working a 8 hour day, so god knows what it would be like doing it for twelve on minimum wage.

Plus, i don't want to walk out of another shit job again, i've done it before and it's personally humiliating and embarrasing, because it's admission of defeat in a way, but i suffer with depression and despite medication, a bad situation becomes a very bad situation for me, so crap jobs are like sheer hell for me and i get what could be politely described as sheer stage fright but in reality is the situation of my nerves being frayed with stress, sleepless nights and believe it or not, the squits, and it's not like it's bad at first because of starting a new job then it gets better, it's just bad full stop.

Crap jobs did this to me, believe it or not, especially factory work, which can be hell if your face dosen't fit and mine was a triangle in a square hole on a couple of jobs, which ended in tears, which i won't go into too much, other to say that i've been bullied at work twice before and it's not pleasant, nor something with easy answers to. Especially worse still when management are too gutless to do anything about it.

So, after a long, long think this sunny weekend, i had to make a very tough decision, even more so as i am desperately skint thanks to my JSA being put on hold (see below) but i decided, in the interests of saving my sanity, to cancel my application for the job.

Things are going to be desperately shit now, but i still have my sanity despite the combined efforts of my local jobcentre to deprive me of money, and the uneasy unfamiliarity of the new letternumberletter jobseeking course i started last week.

NB: FOOTNOTE

Please agencies, stop advertising jobs that are filled or not available, i went to Northampton on Friday to look what was about, not a lot despite the ads in the windows...

On the subject of agenices, here's something interesting from the moneysavingexpert.com forums:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1717367

Viva los Job Applications!