GingerNinja.net

It’s been a while since I posted a proper blog entry but for those of you who are reading this and are not already aware, I was made redundant from my post at Credit Suisse the day before my brothers wedding in December (gosh, I feel I can finally mention where I have been for the past 11 years. How refreshing!) and the gardening period finished on March 9th which meant I was now no longer being paid whilst I continued to apply for every job I was remotely qualified for. So, today I did something that I haven’t done since the summer I failed my A levels in 1992 - I signed on.

It was without a doubt the most soul destroying experience I have ever had. It never felt like this the first time around, but then again I wasn’t supporting a wife and 3 kids in 1992. I felt every single piece of motivational spirit being sucked out of me by Doug, my employment advisor, as he explained that I should have come in sooner and my chances of getting a back dated claim were minimal (Well, I haven’t seen one approved in 20 years…. and that I had to come in every two weeks armed with details of every job I have looked at and applied for to get my money and, more importantly, get my mortgage insurance paying out.

Doug is a middle aged man with very large HotFuzz style aviator glasses as his normal spectacles; bouffant grey hair complete with side parting; a charcoal grey suit coupled with a black shirt which someone has obviously told him would be slimming (it isn’t) all topped off with the annoying habit of saying Yep every single time I open my mouth to speak without giving a crap what I am actually trying to say. This is called Waiting to Speak and is the antithesis of Listening and very frustrating for a guy who is trying to get actual information as to how he can get out of the deep hole he has found himself in. It took all my strength not to shout in his face that I wasn’t some Channel 4 documentary benefit scrounger and that I didn’t want to be there anymore than he did, but I just sat there and took it because what else could I do? Do I really blame him? I guess not. After all, would I be any less jaded if I had been doing the job as long as him and dealing with the people that he has to - good, bad and indifferent?

So I stood up at the end of the interview and walked past the hoodies waiting to get their money - money I’d been providing not long beforehand - and walked outside. I had a list of errands I wanted to run in town but my brain wouldn’t work. I couldn’t think what I needed to do and Jo was too busy with the kids to pick me up so I went into autopilot and walked the 20 minutes or so home in a funk, trying to find a positive thought somewhere in my head.

I’m fine now, of course, and I gather that many feel like this but why? Why do we feel so awful? Surely there is a better way? I certainly want a job even more than I did before as I want to spend as little time as possible in that place.
Every cloud, eh?