How to Cope With Short Term Contracts

At the end of March, my current temp contract ends. Having been in the same place for a year (“I’m taking the ‘temp’ out of temporary,” I joked to my peers and oh, how we laughed), I’m a little bit on edge about what I'll do to pay the rent next. Still no joy making enough cash from pitching articles to go full time self-employed, you will be amazed to learn, and when Captain Tact signed up to my agency recently they said they’d probably be able to find him a few hours here and there, but there’s not a vast amount of stuff about and for goodness sake don’t rely on them.

The papers continue in a similar vein, which is a little insensitive given the people who have the most time to read the papers are the unemployed, nicking free wifi from outside Britain’s cafes. The Guardian is probably the worst for this – they keep conducting case studies that actually make me want to cry. The constant commentary on unemployment figures (still pretty high, who knew) is enough to strike fear into the heart of any human and I am terrified by the prospect of joining their ranks once more.

So what is my solution to impending employment tragedy? Well, I am going to leave the country. That’ll show ‘em.

As regular readers may already know, I’m not one of your London based journos whose parents can bankroll them to intern unpaid at a broadsheet for as long as it takes for someone to give ‘em a column; I’m a freelance/office temp in Scotland who struggles to get commissioning editors to reply to the most basic of queries (frinstance ‘do you accept work from freelances, Y/N?’). This means that when I say I’m leaving the country I don’t mean in order to travel around the world for a year, to spend some time writing my new book in America, or even to TEFL for a few months in Asia. Instead, my many months of scrimping and saving equate to having almost enough cash to go backpacking around mainland Europe. For a month.

Still, whilst it might not measure up in terms of distance to the travels of my friends and family (who have variously TEFLd in Thailand, Chile and China, volunteered with animals in Honduras/South Africa and orphans in Sri Lanka, not to mention worked their way round Oz, New Zealand and Canada), it’s likely to be the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. My gap year, lest we forget, was spent working for the council whilst I tried (and failed) to get work as a hack in exotic Dundee.

Captain Tact has been prevailed upon to come too, and assures me he’s looking forward to four weeks of sleeping on trains to avoid paying for hostels, walking everywhere by day to avoid paying for transport, and reading the same book four times to avoid paying extra money for the privilege of taking two books on a Ryanair flight to Berlin. It is the sort of once in a lifetime trip dreams are made of, I’m sure you will agree. I don’t know why all those pesky JSA claimants don’t just save up for an austerity gap month too.*

In the mean time, though, I will keep perusing the job adverts and crying quietly to myself. Hooray!

*other than the fact that if you tried to save up for it whilst on JSA it’d take you about twenty years.

Employment Tips

Because I am a lazy person, I am still signed up to receive assorted useless job opportunity updates registered in 2008.

It would make sense if they ever sent me stuff I could do, but they tend to disregard my knowledge and experience. “Why not manage a shoe shop in Livingston for minimum wage?” they suggest, “or apply to be Communications Manager at an enormous finance company in Leeds?”

“Because I am not qualified to do either,” I respond. “Also I have been in steady employment since January 2009 and should have unsubscribed from these alerts ages ago. Delete, delete, delete.”

I receive these emails because I once ticked some boxes confessing to retail experience and an interest in communications. This does not make me manager material, as I’m sure a summary googling of the job description would testify. Still, it’s nice to be asked.

Having said that, Totaljobs have evidently got wise to the “get lost, I couldn’t go for that even if I wanted to” response, because this week they sent me an email urging me to complete a managerial qualification at the University of Liverpool.

They were always prone to sending me messages suggesting I consider improving myself, preferably through distance learning (they aren’t to know about my aborted attempt to do that CTJT course last year). But the courses they suggest are always totally inappropriate for my existing skillset (writing, journalism, drawing) and career aspirations (writer, journalist… drawer).

I’ve taken umbrage at the latest in the series for a couple of reasons. One is that I haven’t taken umbrage for a while and this seemed as good a time as any. Another was the content of the subject line: “Alison, stay ahead with a quality online degree.”

Quite apart from the fact they’ve apparently got Lee Nelson in to do their marketing, this sentence seems to imply my existing degree is somehow not of sufficient quality because I didn’t get it online. What kind of backwards technophobe gets a degree by reading musty old books for four years?! I’ll probably never get a job, and serve me right.

The other way to read it is that they know some people think an online degree isn’t as good as one obtained by attending actual classes and secretly they agree, so are trying to fool me into thinking this particular course is the exception to prove the rule. Don’t get one of those crappy online degrees you sometimes hear about, have this proper good one.

The other thing that grates here is that having a degree, online or print, is unlikely to put you significantly ahead in a world with bugger all job opportunities. A management qualification might help if I had even a passing interest in managing other people, but I suspect my lack of experience would show me up. Furthermore, given my main aim in life is to subsist as a freelance creative type, it feels like a strange way to channel my energy and time.

Then there’s the fact I already have a quality degree (2:1 MA Hons from St Andrews, thanks) deliberately chosen to help me get ahead. I’ve lost count of the number of journalists who advise wannabe hacks going to university to study a subject and work on the student press rather than going for a journo-specific course, which is exactly what I did.

In social terms this was fantastic, but in career terms all it’s done is get me rejected for some things on grounds of over qualification (although to be fair I get rejected from journalism jobs because there are only about three in Scotland at any given time, with hundreds of applicants).

The moral of this story is that I should unsubscribe, but if I do that the blog will be bereft of updates like this…

I’ll probably soldier on.

30 Day Song Challenge - Day Eleven

A song from your favourite band.

That would be The Clash, and Career Opportunities seems a pretty pertinent track to choose, given the current economic climate and all this Big Society baws.

They offered me the office / offered me the shop / said I'd better take anything they got / Do you wanna make tea at the BBC? / Do you wanna be / do you really wanna be a cop? / Career opportunities, the ones that never knock / every job they offer you's to keep you out the dock / career opportunities, the ones that never knock.

I'm posting the version from Sandinista, where they got a bunch of kids to sing it. I think this is fantastic because it gives an extra dimension to an already political and angry song. Well done that band.

Announcement

Well, internet, the waiting is almost at a close, for I have decided that today is the day I shall reveal unto you my HARE BRAINED SCHEME™ for 2011.

You may remember that in November I joined in with National Novel Writing Month and wrote a book - or 52,000 words of a first draft of one, if you wish to be pedantic - in 30 days.

You may also have heard it said that everyone has at least one novel in them - although most people claim they would never have the time to sit down and write it.

I have decided to combine these two thoughts by writing other people's novels for them. One a month, every month in 2011. You may extract more information on the project here.

Meanwhile for those who are concerned that this here site and Confessions of A Jobless Graduate will suffer at the hands of 12 books 12 months, fear not! I am unemployed again, which puts me in the enviable position of being able to build up a bank of auto posts. Not only will this mean more posts than usual, it will distract me when I run out of money to buy food. Hooray!

Chapter Nine

"Like, for repairs?" Bracken asked hopefully.

"No," Adric yelled sadly, twirling one of his bow ties. "One of the local kids was burying a cat out in the garden - don't ask - and he found a big wedge of Mayan gold. At first we thought it was a hoax by some of the older boys – ” he gestured towards a row of computers where a line of older teenage boys sat in silence checking their social networking sites and hatching plots.

“– they need to get jobs like – but the council was interested enough by the prospect of money to get some professor down here to check it out... The kid was pretty annoyed, as it turns out it's real, authentic and very very old."

"Mayan gold, though," Bracken said, incredulous and slow. "As in the ancient civilisation in south America?"

"That's the one." Adric confirmed squeakily, putting up some shelves as he did so.

"But how did it get here? Under a library in Edinburgh? It doesn't make any sense."

"Oh Bracken," Adric said paternally, placing an assortment of library related knick knacks on the aforementioned shelves, "you said it yourself. The Mayans were an ancient civilisation. This building has only been here since the mid seventies. I know that seems ages to a young snip of a girl like you, with your flighty fancies and frippery doodads. But it's really not that long in the grand scheme of things. You'll start to see that as you get older."

"No," she said patiently, "I mean physically how did this gold get from South America to Scotland? Who went to all the trouble of removing what was probably a cursed treasure - they usually are, at any rate - sailing back here, and burying it in the Scottish countryside, never for them to lay eyes on again?"

"I would have thought that was pretty obvious," Adric said, "it must have been pirates. They love nicking shiny stuff and burying it."

"That's a myth propagated by Treasure Island," Bracken informed him wearily, "you might just as well say a dragon did it."

"Don't be silly," Adric said dismissively, "you don't get dragons this far north. They hail from Wales. Must’ve been pirates. With big hats, and peg legs, and hooks for eyes. No, wait. Hands. That’s right, isn’t it? Like in Peter Piper. I mean Pan."

"So what will happen to your jobs then," Esmerelda asked, when the flow of nonsense seemed to have come to a natural end, "what with the economic climate how it is? The Edinburgh Evening News says the council are firing people at a rate of lots."

"Knots," Aloysius corrected automatically.

"What?"

"The phrase is at a rate of knots," he said, "it's a seafaring term."

“I know,” Esmeralda pouted, irritated at her amateurish mistake, “I was just making a joke. God, Al. Way to make me sound like an idiot.”

"We'll probably be offered the chance to go to different branches," Adric explained, blissfully unaware of the tension in the room. Bracken noticed it though, and a flicker of hope twangled in her tummy like a rowdy gerbil.

"Or if we refuse, a minuscule pay out. I'll probably go to another branch, myself. Maybe in the Maldives, haha. Only kidding. The council doesn’t run any libraries in the Maldives. Not any that are legal and above board, at least."

"Actually, I was wondering about volunteering in a Romanian orphanage," said Aloysius, to the evident surprise and chagrin of his alleged girlfriend.

Bracken noticed that their body language was very distant as well. Could it be that Esmeralda had lied to her that night at the hospital?

"Where did that come from, all of a sudden," Esmeralda was asking through gritted teeth.

"I just think that maybe it's time to do something different," he said, "something to help other people rather than worrying about myself all of the time."

Esmeralda looked genuinely blank. This was a concept that was alien to her. Because she was secretly mean.

"And anyway," he continued, shooting a sneaky look at Bracken under his lovely (in a butch way) eyelashes, "there's not really anything for me here."

"Ally-poos," came the tinkling voice of Nigella in full slap, "how can you say that? After last night?"

She emerged from the staff room brandishing two cups of tea, and gave one to Al with a lingering look.

"What happened last night?" asked Bracken and Esmeralda in unison.

"It's always the quiet ones," remarked Adric, pulling a custard cream out of his shirt pocket and munching cheerfully.

"Nothing happened last night," Aloysius said quickly. "I just walked her home, that's all."

Knowing how honest he was, Esmeralda was inclined to believe him.

Knowing what a fantasist Nige was, Bracken tended to agree. And yet there was something not quite right about his demeanour, or her snake eyed look of triumph.

"Well, that was pretty much the most boring revelation ever," Adric said, scanning through a bunch of graphic novels for comic book guy and stamping eight of them due back on the 41st of April 2026 before realising it had been tampered with.

"You know me," said comic book guy, "I'll have them back within the week anyway!". He laughed, implying that this had been a joke of some kind.

Adric, who had never seen comic book guy in his life, was confused.

He overcompensated by laughing uproariously and shouting, "yep, that sounds like you."

"Maybe it's not such a bad thing we have to close," he said sadly after comic book guy hooded up and dashed out into the rain, "I don't know the customers anymore anyway."

"You know me," Bracken pointed out.

"Yeah, but this is the first time you've been here in weeks. Where have you been? We've got a book in that you reserved, actually. That one about the woman who turns everything she touches into marine creatures."

"That the one with the moustachioed porpoise on the front?" Al asked, going to retrieve it.

"The very same."

"I don't have my card," she admitted regretfully, "sorry guys."

"That's alright," Al said, "we put your card number on the book when it comes in."

"Not just yours," Adric qualified, taking the book from him and typing her borrower number into the database. "It's standard procedure."

"Gosh," Esmeralda said sarcastically, "how fascinating. Nobody should live at this speed."

"Thanks," Bracken said quietly, examining the cover.

The moustachioed porpoise gazed back at her with the calm of the sea.

“Maroona Fusible was an ordinary, strikingly beautiful girl… Until the clock struck 12 on her eighteenth birthday,” began the blurb on the back in flowing silver calligraphy. “But then her family’s secret curse was unlocked, and strange things began to happen to the people she loved. Whenever she touched someone with whom she had a connection, they turned into citizens of the sea.”

“I think it’s meant to be some sort of strangled metaphor,” Bracken muttered, “wonder if it explains what for or whether I’ll have to try and work it out from context and the author’s background.”

“Well guys,” Nigella trilled, interrupting her train of though, “I’d better be going. People to do, places to see. Oh, what am I like.”

Bracken rolled her eyes.

“See you soon, Al,” Nige added sweetly, clopping away in her tallest pulling shoes.

“Break a leg,” Bracken wanted to shout after her, but she didn’t.

“I should go too actually,” she remembered, “the kids’ll be finishing soon.”

“No they won’t,” Adric asserted, “they’ve got an in-service day. Nobody in the school at all.”

“Oh,” Bracken said, “that’s why they’re all running about in here making a racket. I’m so used to them now I just tune them out, I thought it was quiet in here.”

“ADRIC,” shouted a chubby boy with mud all over his face, “WHEN AM AH GETTING MA GOLD BACK?”

“You’re not getting it,” Adric explained, evidently not for the first time. “It’s been taken away to go in a museum.”

“Should I not get a reward for finding it or suhin?” persisted the boy, picking his nose and wiping it disinterestedly on the counter.

“Well, in a perfect world maybe,” Adric admitted, “but nobody knew it was missing, so there isn’t really a reward going as such. You got your picture in the paper, though. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“NUT,” expostulated the boy, “ah’ve been in the paper like, about, a HUNDRED times. Like for ma golf and when we did that thing for Robbie Burns night and when my sister got married…”

“Ooooh,” Bracken said, recognizing the kid at last, “you’re Kelly’s wee brother aren’t you.”

“Aye,” he said.

“I was in school wi her.”

“Oh.”

Adric shrugged apologetically.

“Well can I book on the playstation 3?” Enquired the boy.

“That depends,” Adric responded, “have you got your library card?”

“Ew nut,” the boy shrieked, “that’s pure geeky!”

He saw the look on Adric’s face.

“Eh, I mean, I lost it.”

Adric folded his arms.

“Dog ate it.”

A shake of the head.

“Ma wee sister accidentally on purpose flushed it down the toilet.”

“Your wee sister, aye,” Bracken interjected doubtfully.

“Ma wee brother.”

“You don’t have a wee sister or a wee brother,” Adric and Bracken chorused. Such was the benefit of living in a tiny community where everyone knew everyone. Through very different channels, both of them knew that Dillon Mackay (for this was his name) was the youngest of nine children.

“Just find someone who does have a card and play with them,” another kid suggested from the sidelines.

“I think I might go,” Bracken concluded, having glanced outside and noticed that the rain had stopped; “now that I’ve realized they’re here I’m going to end up shouting at them. They’re wee toe rags when they’re in here.”

“What, are they mild mannered and delightful when they’re outside?”

“No. You know what I mean. Youse’re good wi them, but I couldnae stand it.”

“You’d be surprised,” Al disagreed, reappearing from a Super Mario Brothers tournament in which he had been pwned by an eight year old girl. She was now doing a victory dance on the craft table as some other kids cheered her on.

“Well,” Adric told her, “don’t be a stranger, OK? We’re all rooting for you and hoping things work out with Nicky and the wee one.”

Bracken was genuinely touched by this unexpected display of kindness. Because her aunt and Nige and Jeremy Kyle had been so vocally against her, she hadn’t thought that anyone was on her side.

“Thanks,” she nodded, the lump in her throat threatening to swell up to kitten size. “I’ll see you when I bring this back –” she waved the porpoise book – “if not before.”

“You take care,” he smiled.

“Will do.”

Which was ironic really, because as soon as she stepped outside, she was grabbed from behind, a gloved hand went over her mouth, and she was bundled into the back of a car by a man (or a female bodybuilder like on Louis Theroux) in a balaclava.

“What the-” was all she got out before everything went black.