Unemployment; I can do it! in Diary

Wednesday was my last day at work. My boss was all nicey nicey for the whole of the last week, I wasn’t fooled, I’m not going to miss him at all. Jackie from my team bought me a big scented candle as a leaving gift; I wasn’t expecting anything as I’d only been there for two months, but Jackie is lovely. She gave me a hug and told me to keep her updated with my job search.

I felt such a sense of relief walking out of there for the last time, I’ve never felt so stressed at work before. Sure I was worried about being unemployed, but I was confident I would get a new job soon.

So on Thursday I had my first interview. It was a five hour “assessment centre” which consisted of an IQ test which was REALLY HARD, a one-to-one interview, which was REALLY EASY; compared to the 90 minute interrogation I had for my last job anyway. The interview was only 25 minutes and had all the easy standard questions; why do you want this job? Why should we hire you? What are you strengths and “development areas” (not weaknesses!). The two people interviewing me were relaxed and laid back so it was fine. The last part of the day was group work. We were in groups of three and we had to imagine we’d been doing our job for a week. They gave us a list of problems and challenges that had come up and we had to, as a group, prioritise them and come up with solutions.

I wasn’t sure if I would get the job as I think they saw about 40 people for about 15 jobs and most other people in my group were already doing a very similar job, whereas I had done the job before, but four years ago.

So I went home and began the very nervous wait for the phone call the next day.

The phone call came, and they offered me the job! I was so excited and relieved. I know how to do unemployment properly; one interview and one day of unemployment ;o)

So I’m going to be working on a Facilities Management Helpdesk, taking calls and emails for reactive maintenance work and raising job tickets; almost exactly what I did at Loughborough Uni, but this is for a private company with lots of customers.

It’s on a shift basis; three different shifts rolling from week to week. 6:00am-3:00pm, 7:30am-4:30pm and 9:00am-6:00pm. Meaning I’m going to have to get up at 4:30am one week in three! I’m not looking forward to that very much, but my dad did it five days a week every week for five years when he was postman just before he retired, and he’s 30 years older than me. So if he can do it, I can do it! I’m quite looking forward to finishing work at 3pm as I’ll still have half the afternoon free to do stuff.

I start on 1st June, so now I have three weeks off to do whatever I want with, I’m going to make a list :o)

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In other news, I went up to Cumbria to visit my family again last weekend, and Jay came with me. A nice relaxing weekend of not doing very much and just enjoying each others’ company. They had a Georgian fair which turned out to be not very exciting. We basically spent the afternoon looking at craft and food stalls in the cold, windy rain, watching some clog dancing and morris dancing while everyone was dressed in Georgian clothes. I said to mam it’s more exciting than our holiday in Florida and I would rather be doing that than going to Universal Studios in the sunshine ;o)

The only thing that tempered the weekend was that I had a skin infection in my earlobe. The skin was all red, hugely swollen, cracked and sore and I had a huge stabbing pain just behind my earlobe, which gradually got more frequent, more intense and more spread out until it the stabbing pain was covering half of my head. I had no sleep for three nights and ended up being really grumpy for most of the weekend. I was just about to go to the doctor when it started to get better. It’s still not 100% better a week later but it’s a lot better than it was.

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I’m back at roller derby after breaking my arm :o) I’ve been to two sessions and it feels ok. Obviously I’ve lost a bit of skill and fitness, but that’s to be expected afetr six weeks off. On Friday, I tried my laps and I only got 24 in five minutes. I tried again on Saturday and got 25.5 so I’m quite please with that. I need 27 to pass minimum skills, the next test is on Wednesday. I’m not expecting to pass, again, so I’ll have to wait yet another eight weeks. It’s so frustrating, everyone’s waiting for me to pass so I can get on the B team and they can play more games. Oh well, I’ll get there eventually.

Last night I went out for Jo’s hen party, so I’ve seen the roller derby lot three times in two days! It was good, there were about 20 of us. We went to two different pubs but when we went to the third one, I walked in and it was absolutely rammed and I couldn’t see anyone I was with, they had all instantly disappeared into the crowd. So I went back outside and caught a taxi back home, I don’t even think anyone noticed I’d gone. Oh well, it was a fun night anyway.