Full Circle

Next month, on the 17th, i will have been out of work for exactly one year, and what a year it was too! I threw in the towel in a job where the more i learnt the more it pushed out the old stuff (to quote Homer Simpson...), and the chance to work with people you really wouldn't want to be anywhere near given half the chance. Cashed in the equity off my house and indulged on a mega bucks spending spree, moved to three different houses, in two different areas, but just couldn't get settled at all, brought and sold cars, and kept the local takeaways in business, but still, i have to say, the money didn't make me happy, and trust me, it was a stack of cash, but don't worry about blackmailing or mugging me: It's all gone. I have around three quid in my pocket at the moment and i was happy with that as i usually only have a pound plus coppers for parking, not that i pay for it much anymore, running the gauntlet i know, but it's parking or dinner. Dinner wins every time...

It's now May. I've moved for the fourth time in a year into a bedsit that would make a 60's town planner's heart cry for joy, but it's home for now. I hate it, but it's home, although i plan to spend as little time here as possible.

The new area i've moved to is rather well to do, and don't have the usual Jobcentre clientele, the last two times i've been, i was sat next to a (former) Journalist, and the other day someone who sounded like they had been a big noise in banking once, this also means for some reason that they don't have the usual "No job mate?, yeah, i know it's tough, just sign here and we'll see you agin in a fortnight, ta ta!" attitude, which although over-simplifying it, means that at least they know there is no jobs about at the moment.

No, these kindly folks are of the "Why are you on the dole?" school, made popular in the 80's TV Drama "Boys from the Blackstuff", they really don't take any crap. They've been condescending, vague, and forgot i was there for 20 minuites for one apointment, a phone call from them is like a bomb hoax, their phone manner is that bad.

I missed signing on the other day, my car broke down, and i was stranded 30 miles away at my fiance's house, i phoned the Jobcentre up, told them i couldn't make it and was politely informed that if i did not turn up it would involve filling out a form, to have a decision made on whether or not i should have my dole paid to me as "it's not a genuine reason" for missing signing on.

I informed them that expecting me to walk 30 miles was out of the question, but yesterday, i had to fill out all the "why weren't you here?" paperwork, and i'm now awaiting a decision to see if someone is petty enough to turn my dole down.

Dole this week is the last of my Contribution (NI Based) JSA, and although i have filled the paparwork out to get income based JSA, and a small loan to buy second hand furniture, i was informed yesterday that it still hadn't been sorted, i only filled the forms out last week, but when you live hand to mouth, if you wait for money, a day's gap is like a year.

Still, it's not all shit. Although i've had to leave my fiance 30 miles away to live with her parents, which broke my heart when i drove away from her, she was crying and i (perhaps rightly) felt like such a c**t. This really is all my fault. Shit.

It's a sobering thought. X-Amount of thousand pounds to nothing in a year, i really am a c**t.

The clincher here though is that i (sort of) have been offered work to start in June. Shit work, long hours, pocket money pay, but work. I'm hoping now to save up to put down a deposit on a small house nearer my fiance, i hope for my sake that it all works out, i couldn't stand this bedsit more than six months and that's pushing it. It's like one of those flats they give to the millionaire to see how the other half lives in C4's "The Secret Millionaire"...

I'm not looking forward to the job, in fact, i'm trying desperately to find out what else is about work wise so i don't have to take it.

Another plus point is that now i have been put on a free course to help my jobseeking skills, with free stamps and internet. Kerching, as they say...

Guess who's back in town again...

I'm back!

To be honest, i've not really applied for any jobs recently, because there isn't any. Now, to every true blood Daily Mail reader this sounds like i'm a very nasty dole scrounger, but i want to tell you i'm not. I'm a human being too and this is my story of why and how i'm still on the dole:

I'm in my late 20's, i left school to go to college because i was promised it was the best thing since sliced bread and it wasn't, i should have done a apprencticeship because i'm not academically minded, but i'm not stupid either. I then got on the manual low wage jobs conveyor belt because when i left college i had no money and no real skills due to poor schooling and toilet paper BTEC qualifications and had to support myself somehow. This was in the beginning of the economic boom times in the mid 90's and i was able, at one point to pull in a £14k a year job, good money for a unskilled blue collar worker at the time. Now it's all virtually gone. I sold my house to move to a area where i thought would be better prospects, and i lost my job during whilst looking for another house to buy, so i had to rent and find a job where i can at least have a reasonable standard of living either financially or emotionally. This hasn't happened and it was nearly a year ago since i had a job. I'm soon having to move into a bedsit, paid for by housing benefit. I am on the bottom of the pile now, after once owning my own place and a three year old car, i now rent and drive a banger, which i can't always afford to use. A chunk of this is my own fault, and i readily admit that. But don't look down on me. I will climb back to the top of the pile, and i will get to the top again, be it in one, two or three years.

Don't look down on me because i'm on the dole. Don't post your bile on websites saying that people are like me are dole scum and ought to do part-time bar work or whatever. What sort of job is that?, how could anyone live on part-time wages?. If you're on the dole, then you survive, that is all. I am lucky to have what little i have now and i count my blessings for it.

I don't apply for shit jobs because there is no point in applying for very short term work or part time work under 30 hours a week, because i wouldn't be surviving, i'd be drowning in poverty, and once the temp work is over then it's back to the dole queue, and claiming benefits again, and to be frank, i'd rather get one good job, with proper full time hours, even if it's minimum wage, rather than the dribs and drabs some people want us to do because "it's a job" or you think i'm driving your NI contributions up, well i paid into that system too and i'm using what is due to me in a time of crisis.

It must be great to work in Finance in Kent and look down your nose from the comfort of your new build three bed semi, but not everyone's that lucky. We can't all do very well for ourselves thank you, and it's not about survival of the fittest. If you believe that then you are really binkered. It's about being human, luck, chance, where you live and skill and it's a lottery with few real winners.

Rant Over...

Today i'm bitching about...The Used Car Trade

Sorry to divest from my usual job related rants people, but bear with me on this one! i'm going to ask a small, maybe personal question, and you don't have to contact me with an answer, but how much did your car cost, that is if you drive?,
£10k? £5k? £1500?

Now, let's face it, even if you haven't been in the position to buy a car for less than £300, just be glad you don't, it's a joyless, depressing episode. I sold my old Volvo recently as it wasn't going to make it through another MOT so i let someone else buy it to run it into it's grave because i doubted i would be able to afford to put it through another MOT.

I got a reasonable £300 for it, and started trawling the small ads to find alternative transport, one dealer had some stuff that looked cheap and promising so off i tootled to have a look.

Most of his stuff was dross, real heaps, including a mystery mondeo: "I don't know nothing about it, just came in on a trailer, no log book though."

So this was a man who really knew his stock inside out, always handy that. I said a straight no to what he had but he notified me that at his house, a few yards away, he had a Citroen ZX Diesel with a broken clutch cable. I used to work in the motor trade, and do a bit of car tinkering, where relevant so i thought it might be worth a look if it was cheap enough.

And shown it i was: it was grubby, the rear wheels didn't sit right and the rear window mechanism had broken, and so had the clutch cable, as said to give it it's due, it started "on the button" as they say and sounded very sweet. I thought it would be worth, to myself, with the extra work of putting a new clutch cable in, about £100-£150. So i asked the fine purveyeor of cost-effective automobilia how much he wanted for this shed of dreams.

£200 was the breathtaking reply. Ok, it had tax and mot but putting in a clutch cable without ramps etc would be hard work, so it was a "i'll have to think about it then" from me. You just can't really say "no, it's a bag of shit, mate and i don't want to be lumbered with it like you obviously are..."

Apparently, according to Arthur Daley here, it was worth £350 "all day" when fixed. That i doubted, Citroen ZX's are now obsolete and have a wildly differing value system where they can be worth £50-£500.

So, with my refusal in his ears, the vendor turned off the engine, shut the car door, and said sharply: "I've got things to do", walked in his house and shut the door. What a arrogant git. I didn't mean to annoy him, it's embarassing enough having to look for cheap wheels, but i didn't deserve being snubbed like that.

Trouble is, the used car "game" is full of people like this, more sinner than saint. It's a shame really, ok, at £300 you aren't buying the bells and whistles of a full customer service led dealer experience, but that dosen't mean that every customer has to be treated with, at best, contempt and at worst, the feeling of being treated like dog poo by them.

I once went into a part-worn tyres warehouse, four of the fitters stood there looking at me like something they'd stepped in, with grubby mugs of tea in their hand, i asked about having a couple of tyres slapped on my trusty Volvo, they said nothing but one miserably pointed to a chap in the office. At least i got joy from him.

It's enough to make you puke sometimes.

Michael Fish, where are you...

Hi All,

It's been a terrible week for weather hasn't it?, i guess, and this is where i sound like a trendy young vicar doing a sermon on Radio 2, that the weather represents the mood of the time in Britain, at the moment, ie shit. If it hasn't been snowing, then it's been raining. I drove up to Corby via (i think) the A47 yesterday, and it was like a apocalypse of snow, slush, wet and fog. Add that to the papers giving their usual "worst recession since the dawn of man" spiel, and you can see why more and more people are on anti-depressants...

There aint half been some clever....Bastards

So sang one of my musical hereoes, Ian Dury. What a wacky month it's been. As i type there's four inches of snow outside and although i'm cold, i'm still sweating thanks to a Electricity bill from e.on where our money owed to them, i thought, looked like someone's telephone number it was that high. And i can't pay it.

I'm back, still fighting, despite the recruitment "dead month" of January. To supplement my JSA i'm reduced to having glorified pawn shops with the name "Cash" in the business title, laugh at the items i'm bringing in to sell, ok, so they're not worth much, but FFS guys, can we stop the childish sniggering and casual remarks of "it's not worth much" or "that's old". Otherwise i really will start believing that you are the Bastards that you play act to get items of any value, for tuppence.

But it's not all bad news. There are a couple of jobs about, and i've applied for them, both Warehouse work, thankfully not in a food factory so i will see what happens to them, unfortunately, they're in Northampton, i had to do it because there's just nothing here, and if i don't earn something soon i'm going to be in dead schtuck, with a mounting council tax and leccy bill mountain...

I'm just looking for cheap digs at the moment, although i will be glad to see the back of where i'm currently renting, all electric, in the country, and very cold, "my bad" entirely. We just needed something bigger and cheap to rent, and lesson learned guv'nor, i won't rent a all-elctric house again!

Drifting...

It's been a strange sort of month, i actually gave up jobseeking in the second week of December as i tried to find out about being a lorry driver and basically, 1.) It's expensive to get the licences, very expensive. 2.) No guarantee of a job afterwards 3.) Poor wages. So that was me put off that idea, so i just got frustrated and gave up, not altogether you understand, just for christmas. I did though, have a throughly excellent Xmas and new year. And now, it's back to the grind.

Things are not looking good, i'm down to my last fiver and i miss home, Lincolnshire. I've not really achieved much since i came up East Anglia way, there seems to be virtually no jobs in the city (Peterborough, that is) and that was before the credit crunch, so god knows what will happen up here. I might migrate back to Lincolnshire, i don't know yet, but at least i gave what a lot of my generation's worth of townfolk want to do a chance, i got out.

I'm not sure if the grass is greener on the other side, perhaps, in reality it is, but it's finding the right fucking field that's the problem...

Realisation...

Well, that's it. A month of fruitless job hunting altogether. Last Thursday, i went to what seemed like the 71st part of the application process of working in a insurance call centre. To cut a long story short i actually applied for this job in June and i've been messed around with lost paperwork, re-shecduled interviews, etc-ever since. I was interviewed by some snotty woman, who, apart from being sniffy about me being a ex-car valeter, was dismayed that i could not recall the exact date i moved into my first house, eight years ago, likewise not knowing when exactly i started working for one firm in 2001, nor could i remember exactly when i was unemployed in 2000, who keeps records of these things?, i actually used to-up to about five years after the info was irrelevant, so no longer have it, and, apparently, due to some condition of working in Insurance, the FSA (Financial Services Authority) need the exact date and time you farted after eating chips and mushy peas on the way home from a shopping trip in town in Febuary 1997-obviously i couldn't provide that info, informed "Snotty" of this, who didn't like being told that piece of info, and i was informed that "none of our other candidates have this problem". Well, i was deeply disheartened not to be a walking dictionary of my life, and looking at the well presented, moneyed, young n' trendy staff in reception, i decided to axe my application therein.

I won't say "their loss", obviously, it's mine. But i've had a bit of a revelation, minor perhaps, but important to me. Perhaps i am going about this all wrong, i think one problem i have is that i've always dreamed of "leaving the factories", and i'm proud to say that by hook or by crook, i did that, firstly for a care home job, which lasted three weeks due to a major disagreement over training (i was f---ing the job up, and they wouldn't train me properly), and the Car Valeting, which thankfully did work, despite pitiful hours and wages. I've always wanted to hip, trendy and bright and moneyed, and i think that's always been a problem with me, because i live in a rented house, buy clothes from charity shops and drive a £500 Volvo.

Instead of fighting it, why don't i embrace it?. I couldn't work in another factory unless it was a really interesting job, but perhaps i could do something non-clerical, but still interesting-I've considered lorry driving, watch this space...