fear and dis-peers

After a wonderful two weeks spent over sunny stateside with my beau (our first liaison in six months, since the proposal) it's a hard adjustment back to GMT times and to the quotidian. After one weekend of jet-lag erasing sleep in my (very humble ex-council) countryside abode, I went for a tightly scheduled jaunt to the city to catch up with old uni friends - slots of tea with friends, followed by slots of tea with more friends, followed by scheduled fun, sleep and more of the same. Perfect.

I started by having tea and cake with two friends from uni, and talking about the head-rattling bureaucratic processes of our state. The first friend had just found herself breaking the surface of a paper ocean after a brief spell treading water on Jobseeker's Allowance. We regaled the box-ticking, form-filling, phone-etiquette, and life administration associated with signing on and signing off (not to mention the hopeless isolation that seeps into one's sense of being when it's sign-on day).

The second friend is working as a temp in a government office, with all the box-ticking, form-filling, phone-etiquette and life administration associated with the position (not to mention, etc etc).

I can empathize only too well with both situations. In the latter, I once did an experiment with a piece of paper that entered the system, and tracked its journey, but that is a story for another time. In the former, I once did an experiment with a person that entered the system, but I was lucky enough to be able to exit that system and tell you about my journey since, here.

All I could say was "It does get easier. I promise. I don't mean that it gets easier to cope with, but it does lead to better things eventually. That's all I can say." I remember joking about being unemployed or (a term I learned recently) underemployed, but it was a bitter-tainted humour. Truthfully, I had really resented anyone with commodities and frivolity, and it made me become more selective about the people I spent time with. It sounds incredibly bitter indeed in writing, but it was incredibly hard to hear about some peoples' sailing stories while flailing and treading water myself, no matter how much I liked them. I think, at some really low points, I lost some friends along the way. Those who stuck by me really stuck by me and I love them for it, but I don't really blame those who backed away (I wasn't much fun).

I learned that a kind of social hierarchy has developed amongst some of my peers. People have clumped together according to their socioeconomic status: those without jobs, or those in unrelated/poorly paid jobs, don't speak to those who are doing internships because they resent the fact they they can afford to do internships in something interesting, and those who are doing internships don't talk to those who have career enhancing jobs. It's not nasty, but it's borne out of jealousy and despair, mostly. Moreso because there's a public sector hiring freeze in the UK now. I totally understand it.

It's tough. It's sad, regrettable, but not unpredictable. I'm only now slowly reconnecting with some people I lost connection with, even if we had lived very close by we were in very different worlds.

On my second day in the city I had lunch with two different friends who were embarking on new adventures after breaking the entry-level job period of their lives. One's going travelling, and the other one had received both a great job offer and acceptance to a perfect postgrad course during the previous week. It was truly exciting to hear about the way their lives were going to pan out over the course of the next year. It was wonderful to listen to them talk with such happy anticipation because they had both waited three years since graduating to find themselves in these positions - or, to put it more accurately, to have worked themselves into these positions.

To those at the bottom of this hypothetical hierarchy, I'm not sure if it comes as a comfort to learn that patience and hard graft are eventually rewarded, even if it takes three years sometimes.

And it's easy to isolate oneself while in a rough situation, thinking that everyone else's lot is better. It's probably not, but you might not find out until you pluck up the courage to meet up for coffee one day down the line.

Captain's Lock

My mum told me this story. It happened to her last week.

Her manager's secretary was on her lunch break, and the manager came running through into my mum's office in a nervous panic.

"I've done something on the computer and I don't know what happened and I can't fix it!"

My mum is no IT guru. She works with young people mostly, giving talks in schools and advising kids on a one-to-one basis. But she offered to help anyway.

"What were you trying to do? What has happened?" She asked.

"I don't know! It's gone all wrong! I was trying to write an email and then it broke."

My mum looked at the email that he had been writing and realised that he had accidentally pressed the CAPS LOCK key. She fixed it, and died a little inside.

I don't know if that's heartening or disheartening to me. I can't decide. It reminds me of my time as a temp when I had to save a phone number into my manager's mobile phone because he couldn't do it. I had to do it several times after that because he refused to learn how to do it himself.

I am not lying when I tell prospective employers how good I am with computers and suchlike. I am the Tempest Typist for a start, and that's just one of my many skills. That works out just fine for me, and I understand that not everybody is as electronically endowed as I, but I cannot abide stubborn stupidity. Now I know for sure that it is not just endemic to the field of temp-work.

As frustrating as this is for overqualified office drones around the world, there is an upside. If someone is too reluctant to learn new skills, that can only make me look better. Stories like these give me CV bragging rights...right?

The Tempest

A couple of years ago I was going to start a blog called The Tempest about my experiences of temping. I was just out of uni for the first time and had naively leaped arse over tit into the first job that had been offered to me.

In retrospect it was a good experience, and it also looks great on my CV. However, at the time I was learning just what it meant to have the label of being "the temp" in the office. I'm sure I am not the only one who has experienced the swift shock to the ego that going from a relatively smart and successful graduate to an underpaid and underappreciated office-worker provides. If the instability of the temporary contract isn't bad enough (including the nil that gets paid on holidays and sick days), then add the contradictory disdain that fellow colleagues bestow on you for being a smart-arse graduate and for being the lowest in the pay-roll pecking order. It's even more soul-destroying than the job hunt that precedes.

I'm trying to avoid a graceless return to temping, but there is a distinct possibility that I may have to, depending on how the next few months pan out. For now I am enjoying the refreshing experience of my volunteering stint. People respect me, people thank me for my efforts, and people want to take advantage of my skills, even if it is just my vague understanding of how best to display the politics textbooks! Gosh, what a joy it is to be appreciated and to be rewarded with respect.

And this is certainly assisting with the job hunt effort. When I was temping, I found it difficult to go home and feel excited about filling in job applications, or later when I was doing my MSc, to do the necessary reading. Now, after a day of wholesome book-sorting and customer-serving I go home and feel fired up for a bit of skills-matching and profile-writing. Definitely stirred, not shaken.