Gissa Job Mister, continued,,,,

My apologies for not updating this sooner but I have been a bit busy with the dreaded OFSTED visiting the Newington School, more of that later perhaps.

Again many thanks for the continuing messages of support and encouragement and also for the many tales of woe that have reached my ears, I have ensured that these have been passed on to James Purnell the Minister responsible for these matters, I will post any feedback from him here at some point. I can hear some of you saying “well why don’t you use your connections to get a job?. I suppose I could if I was that way inclined but in my view that is no better than some of the more sleazy things that Politicians of all Parties do to further their own ends. If I find another job I want it to be because of me and my skills and abilities (or lack of them) not because of the fact that I am on nodding terms with some of the so called great and good of this Island.

Anyway I had to ‘sign on’ last Tuesday and duly attended at the appointed time and place. For those of you who fortunate enough not to have had this experience it is a steep learning curve. On arrival you are met by a greeter who takes your collection of forms from you and a gorilla in a Group 4 uniform who tells you to ‘take a seat’ with a vague wave of the hand in the general direction of some seats, nearby is a sort of podium thing that contains the electronic job board. While doing the uniquely English thing of queuing you are expected to look through this list of available jobs. There are a series of touch screens to follow and in theory you should arrive at something suited to your talents or preferences. I wont dwell on the fact that I arrived at a list of jobs for children’s nursery assistants, despite the fact that as a Grandfather of 7 and I am probably uniquely qualified to keep children constructively occupied for several hours I don’t have the bit of paper that says I can so that was a non starter, ironically as I am a School Governor I have been List 99 checked so met at least 50% of the criteria. Also there were several jobs that were described as ‘driving’ I am assuming that from the descriptions attached to those that weren’t specific about being a delivery driver were private hire/ hackney carriage driving jobs.

Having been there, done that, and had my own taxi company I didn’t fancy that at my age, it’s a young mans game. Another really helpful fact was that the White Van Man jobs were all out of the area. So after dutifully browsing the jobs I took a seat in the area indicated and started reading my Thanet Times, starting with the sports pages then the front page then the inside pages and oh I suppose I had better look at the jobs page as well, during this my peaceful reverie was frequently interrupted by a hatch being opened and a name being called followed by people going up to the hatch and receiving wads of cash! It seems that I was sitting in the area reserved for folks getting crisis loans, as I was sitting up taking notice of what was going on around me I could hear a voice calling out my name in the distance so I got up and went to investigate, as I walked round the screen I was met with a sea of desks with privacy screens around them but couldn’t see anyone standing calling my name. Undeterred I started to approach all the empty ones to see who had summoned me, eventually I found the right person who very snottily told me that I had been sitting in the wrong place and she was just about to mark me as ‘absent’, resisting the temptation to tell her exactly what I thought I politely pointed out that I was sitting where the gorilla in the Group 4 uniform had told me to sit but I would know better next time and also know my place. I also thought better of telling her that she had called me 20 minutes late. And so to the signing on ceremony, I was asked a series of questions about what I had done to find work and asked to produce my documented proof, she seemed a bit surprised that I had copies of a couple of letters and emails I had sent to various employers also a copy of what passes for my CV to show as proof. This all seemed to satisfy her and she completed the necessary paperwork and instructed me to attend in a fortnights time and I got the feeling I was being dismissed, not so fast Missus, I want something from you now !! As I have got a couple of payment protection insurances in case I couldn’t work for some reason, I needed something called an ABI 1, well actually I needed four, so I politely asked her for four copies of this form, the look I got had to be seen to be believed, with extreme bad grace she manually filled in four of these forms and threw them across the desk at me. By now I was very pi55ed off with this bints attitude and told her that next time I expected to be seen on time and treated with respect as per the Customer Charter, I also told her that without folks like me she would be out of a job. I am still debating whether to write a strong letter of complaint to the Job Centre Manager, copied to my MP and James Purnell.

It remains to be seen whether she has marked my file ‘Troublemaker’ or maybe I just caught her on a bad day.