Over the weekend I’d done a fair amount of drinking. We [myself and the other two members of our band] had put on an all day music event called “The Triple Jump All-Dayer” which had been lots of fun and a massive success. Had we not forgotten to pay the sound man [our housemate] before we dished out the money, we would have broke even [we’re non-profit]. We were seventy pounds down, but hey, we’d had fun. Then the bar owner announced that we owed him forty pounds for hire, despite initially agreeing that we would get it for free. Because of us, his bar had been packed full of paying punters from 2pm until closing, yet he still refused to back down over this phantom charge. In two words - Greedy Cunt.
On the Monday morning I was still feeling the hangover. I logged on to the interweb to do some job searching and the first story I saw on the Yahoo! homepage was about shoplifting. I gave it a brief thought, you know, to save a bit of money here and there, but remembered that I wouldn’t have the bottle, and more importantly, I’d be just as bad as Greedy Cunt from the venue. Anyway, thieving wasn’t necessary as I’d got my food bill down to roughly ninety pence a meal. I’d cut out meat almost entirely and was mainly eating a soup made from carrots, sweet potato, courgette, garlic, lentils and onion. The ingredients came to just over two pound fifty and would last me three meals. The day’s job searching was rubbish, and in lots of ways very depressing. Something would eventually turn up, I thought to myself.
On Tuesday, I got a phone call from my Mum. The Royal London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames were advertising for an outreach worker. In fact, it was for two post’s, one full time and one part time. It was 30k pro rata, which even if I got the part time post would have been good enough for me. I’m low maintenance so a highly paid part time job would be perfect. I was qualified enough for the role and being a bloke would give me an advantage, plus my Mum reckoned that given mine and her work previously alongside the council, they’d recognise the surname [it’s not a common one] and I’d at least get an interview. I signed up to the council’s website and applied online.
On the Thursday I went to see Frank to sign on and show him my job hunting efforts over the past week. I had once again written down some nonsense about what I’d been up to and even included the phone call from my Mum as: phoned ex employer - received advice about a job - applied for job. Then in the box below wrote: received advice about outreach work - applied for job - wait for response. Frank either didn’t notice that I’d written about the same thing twice, or he did but let it go. I thought I was being mischievous, but I wasn’t, I was doing what they wanted me to do.
After seeing Frank I had to go and see Herbert, the next step adviser. On entry to his office he asked me why I was there.
“I dunno? Frank told me to come and see you”
“Yes, yes, of course, sit down”.
Herbert's office was massive but lacked furniture. I sat on one of the plastic chairs opposite him and looked around at the whiteboard and the empty space. Herbert seemed like a nice enough chap. We both had a mutual understanding that neither of us wanted to be there, which meant that the session was over within ten minutes. He gave me some great advice about CV writing and told me to re-upload my CV weekly on to websites like Reed and Monster. The session was short, but straight to the point.
I came away feeling inspired, the week had gone well, and armed with my new knowledge and an impending job interview, the following week was going to be a breeze.
