The blog before last I was writing about not having any work, but now I've managed to get 3 completely new jobs. Woohoo! My favourite of the 3 actually came from a friend/neighbour Sarah reading my blog and offering me work in her house as a painter/decorator. It's the best job because it's 5 minutes from my house, it's very flexible, so I can do it when Eric's in nursery or in evenings, and I sometimes get to have a chat with my friend as I'm leaving. An indoor legal chat with an adult who isn't Dan WHOOP! I love Dan an everything, but I need more people in my life than just him. You know when people use the phrase "he's my world" well... he's one on the individuals that I often see in my world - BUT I NEED MORE.
I also enjoy a practical job where you can physically see a difference at the end of the day. I hate invisible jobs, admin jobs are my worst jobs. I was once offered an admin job and managed to persuade them to take me on as a cleaner instead. So far I've stripped all the wallpaper off, and began painting the walls and celling. I've still got painting the woodwork to go and then I can do the mural. It's a kids room and he wants gorillas and bananas painted on. Fun!
Job number 2 is supply teacher assistant for an agency. I've done this job before about 12 years ago, so I thought I'd give it a go. I did two nice enough days in a nice secondary school following round nice enough kids who need a bit of extra support. Then I did one awful half day in a not very nice school where I was the cover supervisor, which means it's just me in charge of the class. I got given a copy of the behavioural code of conduct at the beginning of the day but didn't have time to read it before kids started misbehaving. The school was also so badly laid out, across several different buildings, that it was really hard to find anything. I spent the whole first break looking for an adult toilet. In one of the lessons the real teacher was isolating but taught from home via video link and I was there for some real life crowd control. It was terrible and also really awkward that the teacher could see it was terrible. I sent one kid out but he refused to go, so I didn't really know what to do, the whole thing was awkward. At lunch I managed to find the staff room and then near the end of lunch I went to go and find out where my next lesson was only to be told I wasn't needed, which meant I could have gone before lunch and not spent lunchtime drinking awful tea with strangers. But then I couldn't immediately leave because my car was locked in a car park. A pretty annoying day all round.
Job number 3, I started on Monday night, is Christmas casual for the Royal Mail. I wanted to apply for a Postie job, because being a postie is like joining a gym except they pay you for exercising. I though it might be an alright job but when I looked the only thing going was working in the Warrington mail centre which is this absolutely massive building near Ikea. I'm doing 20 hours a week there until Christmas all 5pm till 10pm shifts. I arrived last night for my induction, I went to the wrong building twice. It turns out there are 3 massive Royal Mail buildings on that industrial estate and I've now been to all of them. I wasn't the only one, at least 50% of the others did too. Then we got a tour of the building, it's so vast! There are so many variables when it comes to post. First class, Second class, Tracked , Special delivery, letters, large letters, parcels, air mail and covid tests (they have a separate room for them). Machines can do a lot but they can't do all the jobs. I was put on parcels, which I was told by the manager was the best job there is. The people on parcels look down on the people who do letters although my team mate on parcels tells me he was on letters last year and it was way better because you get to sit down.
So anyway I'm on Road 6 parcels. Britain is split into 8 "roads" so the people before me in the process split the parcels into one of 8 roads which are colour-coded. Road 6 is green and includes the postcodes BS, CH, LL, B, CA, GL, SY, WA, WV, ST and a few more. It's Wales, Bristol, The Wirral, Wolverhampton and a few others, so my job is to sort a mixed pile of Road 6 parcels into those separate postcodes. We have to do it by throwing, that was the first thing we learnt, there's no time for placing them into the right trollies and I quote "even if it says fragile still throw it". We met a manager who was incredible passionate about her job and can apparently sort parcels twice as fast as the average parcel thrower. When the trollies (called yorks) are full we wheel them over to by the doors so they can be loaded in the vans. The first hour or two its not very busy and you're wandering about trying to look busy and then by 7:30 it's crazy, and then just before 10 it should be all done and you wheel all the yorks to the doors, which means your little fort you were working in disappears and it's just one massive warehouse.
You must leave your bag in the cloakroom, but they accept no responsibility for items lost or damaged in the cloakroom. the cloakroom is a clothes rail next to sign on a notice board that says "cloakroom". You get one unpaid 20 minute break but it's at least 3.5 minutes fast walk to the break room so thats 7 minutes of your unpaid break. I personally think if you're going to give someone 13 minutes to sit down and eat that should be paid. You are allowed to got to the toilet when you want to, but you have to be strategic about it. Theres no point using up your precious 13 minute break doing something you're allowed to do not on a break. After a 20 hour week I will get less money than I used to get for one day in a school in my before covid job. (It's a lot less responsibility and doesn't require admin outside of those times, but still.)
I've really enjoyed meeting people, most people have been made redundant from a previous job due to Covid. On our team there's a 17 year old boy who does college 9am -4:30 and then drives directly there to start a 5 hour shift. He passed his driving test in September crashed in October and all the money he will earn from this job will go to paying back that debt. Then there's a woman in her 30's who was made redundant from being a radio presenter, and a woman in her late 40s whose husband left her in January, the pandemic began and then she got made redundant from her job as a travel agent. That is one bad year! I hope 2021 will be a better year for her! I've also met a furloughed cabin crew member and a mum who hasn't worked for a few years because she has an autistic 4 year old, and in her own words "has decided to do something for herself." Wow, the bar is so low when it comes to mum's doing something for themselves. I guess if spa breaks are off this year being a parcel thrower is the next best thing.
P.S If you haven't yet heard of films podcast you really should. My personal favourite funniest episodes are Titanic, Gladiator and Batman. Here's the link to it in 3 different places
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