Working week

I haven't written much about my work. It's mostly incomprehensible to someone who doesn't do much the same job. When my daughter was in kindergarden she did a painting of me at work with a caption. "My mummy works at XYZ. It's near our school. She works in a shop" which was her idea of what a proper job was. She would still prefer me to be running a sweet shop but accepts that there would probably be less stationery supplies on offer should that be the case. She adores coming to my office and rifling through the stationery cabinet - fortunately the custodian of the key is my angel secretary without whom my life would be misery. Since I spent most of my twenties doing a succession of quirky jobs and travelling a lot I still have difficulty in reminding myself that I have a senior position in a large multi-national that pays me a generous salary. I guess it's exactly because I have such an odd job history that I am good at what I do. My older daughter was asking me about my work history and which job, apart from my current one, had I enjoyed most. My first job for which I got paid was at 15 and was 2 weeks in my big sister's office at ICL (as was then) in Glasgow. She ran their payroll systems and gave me 2 weeks work doing something or other sorting out punch cards. She took me to lunch everyday and I spent the money I earned on Mary Quant eye crayons and a short sleeved fair isle sweater with a sweetheart neckline from Biba. I adored that sweater. At 16 I had a Saturday job at Saxone shoe shop in Argyll St, Glasgow. That was dire but we used to listen to the Sex Pistols in the stock room while we hunted hopelessly for missing shoes and bemoaned our lack of skill at selling "sundries" - those polishes, shoe trees and waterproof sprays you never want to buy. During university, I worked at the ABC cinema on Sauchiehall St using my torch to show people to their seats and annoying snogging couples by getting them to move along so we could fit more people in. Indignity of indignity, I once had to be the ice-cream lady at the front selling choc-ices and cornettos off my little tray. That's what my daughter calls a proper job. I saw Apocalypse Now at least 30 times during that job and have no interest in watching the director's cut or any other version of it ever again. I did the usual share of bar work and waitressing. Worked in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's library in Slough (come all ye bombs and drop on Slough) - I loved sticking the labels in the books, the adult equivalent of colouring in. Taught English at Al-Fatah University in Libya - more on this another time given the current rehabilitation of Col Gadaffi. Drove a taxi for a women only cab firm in London - hard work for very little money. Chauffered cars that had been clamped back to their owners' abodes, including Nigella's husband's aston martin. So despite not being president of the debating club or having an MBA, my resume is varied enough for interviewers to have a lot of questions to ask me about life choices and how that equips me to do my job. But I am very unhappy in my current role. I realise that I am a very loyal employee and althought I am very adaptable to change, I find it hard to initiate it. However, my boss is also very unhappy in his job and this makes the whole work situation intolerable. I could limp along for another year but I have to find myself another job. Stay tuned for the quest.

Comments

[stef]

good luck in finding a job that you will love and enjoy. i'm on the quest too, as you know, and maybe this new year will bring new opportunities :)

[anne]

isn't it scary to be old enough to remember punch cards? One of my first jobs when I was a student was in King's Cross Station in London working for British Rail who were for the first time computerising their timetables. I worked in the Operational Research department and spent the days transcribing train timetables on to little strips of paper which then got sent off to the "girls" who made the punch cards. There were three of us working on the project and unbeknownst to me the other two were having a torrid affair right under my nose. We all messed up on the coding of the Croydon stations mixing up Croydon East with Croydon West or sometimes Croydon Centre and as a result all got jobs again during the Christmas holidays to sort it all out. By then I think the affair had fizzled out...