The Great Employment Hurdle

Well, after many months of sitting on my merry bottom and doing pretty much nothing with my life, I decided that it was time for me to get a job. Now, far be it for me to say this was a new revelation, I have known this for quite some time. I just, quite honestly, could not be arsed to do anything about it.

Job hunting, for me, is an activity deemed quite as appetising as eating my own vomit. Last year in college, I couldn't stand my job. I looked forward to the week, so I could go to college instead of work as a full-timer might cherish the weekend. My job, as an Eason's sales assistant/counsellor for enraged customers' anger (over things which were totally outside my control, FOR FUCKS' SAKE I AM NOT MR. EASON. YOU'RE DEALING WITH THE WRONG FUCKING PERSON, I REALLY DON'T GIVE A SHIT), was dull, for want of a better word. I can barely even talk about it. I'm bored already. But one thing stopped me from leaving, and that was that the only thing worse than the idea of working at Eason's was the idea of having to look for a new job.

And so, at the end of the college year, after enduring Eason's all year and trying to avoid Topshop like the plague, I had saved up a nice little kitty to tide myself over for a week in California and a blissful, work-free week in Hawaii, which was only exquisite. And then came the job-hunting. Yargh. In Hawaii, there's none of this handing out CVs and waiting for a phonecall business, oh no, that would just be too easy. You have to WORK for your job. You have to fill out the Dreaded Application Form, for every place you apply. They want blood, sweat, and tears. There are questions like "Describe a situation at work where you have had to deal with an unreasonable customer" or "Describe an incident wherein you gave exceptional customer service", and they give you about five lines to write on for each, and the form is about five pages long, and you're thinking, is customer service not kind of all the same? How do you make it exceptional? And ALL application forms are like that. ALL of them. They don't take CVs. It's an application-only world. Of course, you're applying to roughly eighty billion places as well, and by the end of it your finger bones are moderately exposed. It's like Leaving Cert English paper day all over again. My two friends were lucky, they had interviews lined up within a day or two, whereas I went to all the wrong places. Or maybe it was down to the fact that my answers were so obviously generic and I've-answered-this-question-twelve-times-today-alone-can-we-move-on-please? that I was quite clearly not that arsed with the whole process at all. I am so bad at job hunting and feel such disdain for the process, that I eventually left Hawaii, jobless. It was also to do with the fact that there were 4,000 other Irish people in Maui in the same boat as me, and I had practically no chance anyway, but let's not split hairs.

After forty hours travel, I arrived back in Ireland, in debt. I managed to live off what little I had in my bank account for a fair amount of time, effectively ignoring my credit card debt. I deserve a break from job hunting, I told myself, sure wasn't I driven mental by it in Hawaii? Nevertheless, it soon became clear that I was running out of money to tide myself over and my MasterCard was shooting me evils. I went into Topshop at one stage, big mistake, myself and my friend were full on devastated. Everything was so pretty, but so unattainable.

















Distraught.

At this stage, I knew it was time to do it. I had to look for another job. But far be it for me to actually get up and do something about it. I got CVs printed, but didn't hand them out. I was fully intending to wait for a job to come to me. And come to me, it did. My friend managed to swing me a trial at the restaurant where she works, which I failed miserably after I got a second degree burn and couldn't finish out the day cos the burn was so bad. I was all for sucking it up and getting on with it, but they were all "dude it's illegal for us to keep you here like that". Unsurprisingly, I wasn't asked back. Ho-hum. And so I thought, fuck. I'm going to have to look for a fucking job.

Of course, after the trauma with the burn I had to give myself a few days off. Just to recover, like.

So I photocopied more CVs (I only had 10 because I couldn't afford the printer in DCU), and got ready to blitz town, when lo and behold, I got a phonecall from some flashy recruitment place. Apparently a CV I emailed off (when I was sitting on my arse at home) had come up trumps, and as luck would have it I have an interview for H&M next week.

Naturally, I'm not going to be looking for jobs in the meantime, I mean let's not get gratuitous with the luck...

And so another blissful week of doing nothing.

Let's pray the H&M interview comes through, my bank balance needs it.

This may be the most long-winded blog entry on record...