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xbellyoftheeast · 11 years

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Unemployment and E8 - Guest Post

Now that we've covered several sure-fire routes of getting yourself into petty romantic fiascos, we should probably take some time to reflect on those hard, sticky months we're all going to spend (or might have spent!) choosing between paying the bus fare or buying a reduced pack of sausage rolls before bed, aka the unemployment months (if you're lucky).

So without further ado, I give you my friend Jekaterina Banghard's first guest post on quitting your soul-crushing retail job, sifting through endless bureaucratic procedures at Hackney Council and other musings.

Unemployment and E8 aka I don’t have money but I still go out

The days are dragging on. London is this humid impenetable breathing and living hell, crushing down under the recent heat wave. The air is so thick that even the smallest tasks require an effort of climbing mountains. I have spent now more than two weeks in unemployment hell and this a shout out to everyone who is experiencing the same.

The absurd pun in the situation is that I have brought it upon myself so every complaint I make tastes sour and self-loathing is soon inducing a certain level of craze. What happened is that after working for 8 months for a „high-end” high street retailer (you know those ones where a cotton T-shirt is a minimum of 50 quid but still everything is made of questionable quality raw materials in all the sweatshops of the world) and receiving a disciplinary action for not wearing enough make up I have called it quits and went over to a similarly positioned but slightly better paying brand. The problem was that even after the change I have felt miserable. Working in retail is just not very rewarding for your self-esteem and general mental health. Although I would have never left by myself, the company went into administration on my third day therefore I thought I would leave the sinking ship and bid farewell.

This has been nearly three weeks ago. Yesterday it was saved from bankruptcy by a high-scale buyer. Cue face palm of face palms.

But still even after these 20 days of walking everywhere because I have no money on my oyster I feel that I have learned something valuable. I feel that now I can share my relevant experience about job hunting, general benefit claims and how to keep your sanity while you have nothing to do during the day and all your friends are at work.

The Life Insurance of The Jobless – aka Benefits

Contrary to what mass media, and all those urban legends about a friend of a friend of a friend who lived on benefits for 2 years straight after moving to the UK suggest, it is not that easy to get your money’s worth. First of all you are up against tough competition given the general climate in Hackney. You will queue with like-minded creative types out of a day job/trust funds, single mothers with an amazingly high number of children, half of Eastern Europe and plain lazy ones.

I might add that going to the Jobcentre each week is the highlight of my life. I was assigned Abdul, a handsome and well dressed Middle Eastern gentleman as my consultant. The sheer surprise that shows up on his face each time when I go in on Thursdays and I confirm that I actually have applied for jobs makes every visit worthwhile. Not to mention my registration procedure where I had to confess that yes, I did a BA in something art related, and yes this is where it got me.

Interviews – How To Become a Compulsive Liar

The key to landing a job in my experience is not about skills, looks or any of that bullshit. It’s about estimating what the company wants and being the best possible version of it. Additional chance booster if you make your future manager feel very important of him or herself.

Sometimes you end up in situations where the expectations of the company for future workforce consist of provincial shitheads and former Primark employees. In this case, like I did on Monday at the recruitment day of a well-off high street shoe brand, just look at it as a social experiment for your future obscure art project or whatever and get out of there ASAP. Especially if anyone mentions Shoreditch as an up-and-coming cool and edgy neighbourhood.

Branching Out – Or How I have learned that I love working in bars

This is the tricky one. You go to the hundredth interview in retail. Still never make it to the second round. You start to feel burnt out and ashamed. And that’s when a deus ex machina takes place. Your flatmate hooks you up with a club owner friend of his and you do a bar job for one night and your life is changed forever. You realise that after 10 months of faking it you don’t have to do any of that in a bar. Basically you spend the night screaming at people because the music is so loud you would have to do it anyway and nobody fucking minds because they are drunk. It doesn’t matter what the complaint is because in the given situation you are on the winning side of the argument being relatively less drunk than anyone else present. And it gives you the push you needed to immerse yourself in handing out your CV to all of the dodgy places Hackney has to offer. Problem solved.

#london jobs #london graduate jobs #london life #unemployment #unemployment london #london twenties #graduate life

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xbellyoftheeast · 11 years

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A non-comprehensive list of delusions me & my kind like to indulge in from time to time

What do I do when I’m not trying to conjure up fake gourmet meals cooked using exclusively Iceland ingredients or googling highly-rated budget Tarot card reading services in London, you ask? Why, I daydream about fighting patriarchy whilst attending monthly Brazilian waxing sessions to prepare for the possibility of having hate-sex with a scruffy looking pub chef with a soft spot for animal activism and/or continental philosophers.

As such, I feel like it’s my duty to reveal and expose a couple of trains of thought that may or may not be the reason why my happiest Saturday nights were spent in the company of Netflix cult films, posh ravioli microwave meals and half-price Australian wine drunk out of plastic cups on top of my all too crumbly duvet covers.

Although the following may sound like sensible, logically sound conclusions (albeit ones you usually think up in the shower, because, let’s face it - it’s better than staring at the squat-level mouldy ceiling while washing off the shame in its various manifestations), I promise you that at least 70% of the time, they provide a very unsexy springboard to scenarios of millennial self-delusion. I’ll stick to the somewhat romantic realm for now, but fret not, for I have plenty of career-related lies I systematically tell myself to stop myself from getting a train to the asscrack of Eastern Europe every morning - these will be published as soon as I find some time to face up to my fears, which is to say, probably not this year.

Statement no. 1:

‘Just because he’s a photographer/graphic designer/music producer who bartends for a living doesn’t automatically make him a douchebag!’

No, it doesn’t, but the juxtaposition of these two occupations basically means he’ll be desensitised to all your sensational anecdotes, thus leading to more self-contempt/crying. Oh, you went backpacking in Northern Mexico and witnessed a gangland shooting and subsequently made friends with a few corrupt policemen who turned out to be feisty Catholic boys at heart? Well, chances are that his friend’s friend’s already taken him there last year in hopes of exposing the cruelties of South America’s drug trade, thereby successfully managing to get him off cocaine. Ah well.

Statement no. 2:

‘No, it’s fine, I mean he’s a bit shorter than me, but it’s totally cool - he has loads of other redeeming features, plus he’s weirdly toned even though he never works out.’

Make no mistake, I am a compulsive people pleaser, which includes repeatedly seeking my friends’ approval re: my latest infatuation. You might have tricked yourself into thinking height doesn’t matter because he’s a bad-ass cook and his secret writing skills would put most amateur journalists to shame, but the moment your friends go ‘Oh, you never mentioned he was…you know…5 foot 5! What? No, I’m just making a casual observation, he looks like a totally interesting person!’, the rose-tinted glasses kind of start slipping off your mildly greasy nose, and you inevitably end up drawing weird comparisons between him and your balding dad during sex which, as we all may well suspect, is no good.

Just kidding though, height DOESN’T matter. Although you know, being a bit thick skinned does help if you’re going to date a short guy.

Statement no. 3:

‘So he works in finance and wears pastel coloured polo shirts, big deal. At least he has a real job and maybe it’s time I stopped doing this whole artsy shtick anyway. He’s a working class boy at heart, you know.’

Not sure how you’ve managed to convince yourself that dating a guy who pretty much bets on food prices in third world unregulated financial markets is going to have any sort of moral compass/soul, but here we are. Good luck developing an authentic personality beyond your twenties while you’re busy mentally preparing for the fact that this guy is probably going to have a one night stand with one of your relatives at a family reunion and then post a smug bilingual status message about it.

Statement no. 4:

‘So he occasionally posts photos of chubby women on his Facebook page where he shames them re: being ‘fat’. Who doesn’t have mummy issues? I’m sure it stems from his dislike of American imperialism and his genuine desire to slow the obesity epidemic.’

Sure, his ‘lad’ persona might have seemed alluring at first, pandering to your self-deprecating sense of humour and overall self-loathing, but maybe it’s time to see it for what it is - men in their late twenties who spend evenings regaling your friends with ‘epic’ tales of how their buddy left a girl’s house whilst pretending to have to pee during sex are inevitably going to make you go down the path of settling for a career in a DIY store stockroom once you pop out the first baby.

Statement no. 5:

‘So he has a bit of an addiction to prescription pills and the occasional tranquiliser, big deal. He’s an emotionally damaged guy with good reason, and I’ve pretty much gotten used to his manic phases. Yes, he does have a bit of a mucus/snot build up but I’m sure that’s just hayfever.’

Ah yes, the witty poster boy who may or may not have once been on his way to becoming a successful corporate lawyer. You construct elaborate fantasies of magical nights in, where in between two bong hits you somehow manage to convince him to go back to school but choose a profession that is more of a middle ground, like environmental law. He’s quirky and he ‘gets you’ but anyone who’s this self-indulgent will probably end up ditching you once the first helping of ‘crazy’ gets served to him via dramatic arguing. Or not. You know, he might be the one. Except for the mucus build up.

The point is, we’ve all constructed dismissive arguments in our head, speeches in the mirror where we defend the behaviour of a so-called crush before anything has been put to the test, really. I certainly have, obsessively pigeonholing guys in the hopes of reconstructing my personality around their (very complex and understandable) needs. So far, it’s been bogus and I haven’t ditched the ravioli ready meal alone time yet. I suppose it’s early still, but how many of them spent hours building analytical narratives about me just to get the wording of their texts right? The evidence suggests that not many. So get back to sweetening your deal a bit by being extra attentive to whoever manages you in your (unpaid) internship, or whatever it is that young people do in hopes of ‘making it’.

#twenties london #london social #socialising london #dating london #self delusion #insecurities #twnties dating

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