You have to be at work all day so you might as well do something that doesn’t make you want to contract explosive food poisoning just so you can achieve a day of escape. As my mum depressingly says all too frequently, “You spend a large part of your life at work.” I first realised I hated my job several weeks after I started, but I didn’t realise I had realised I hated it until several months later. I found it hard to understand why I was in such a bad mood every morning, why I spent Sunday evenings filled with dread and why, on finally arriving home at the end of the day, I didn’t really recognise who I was. That last comment sounds a bit odd, but I was so bewildered by my first months in the office environment that my personality died away as the day wore on. By half past five, I would have completely lost my sense of humour and all ability to recognise jokes, as well as struggling to string together any halfway decent sentence that might pose any interest to any of my long-suffering flatmates.
Just after Christmas, I had given up mentally. Each day was to be survived, with hometime the only thing to aim towards. I completed my duties as required, but hardly clamoured for the extra work that others lusted after in order to gain good standing among the office’s important people.
“I think I hate everything about my job,” I told my mum on the phone.
“Yes, I thought it wasn’t right for you when you took it,” she said sagely. Right, great, so the whole time she waited for me to realise my mistake, simply so she could wade in with some quality ‘I-told-you-so’ statements and thereby prove that even though I had moved out of the family crotch, I was still a lost child.
I knew I never really wanted to do headhunting, but I thought it would be a good wage and a good start. To compound the mistake, I chose financial headhunting, just to ensure that what might simply have been boring was also strangely incomprehensible. Whenever anyone tried to explain financial aspects to me, I would switch off uncontrollably, becoming distracted by their socks or their fingernails, wondering what they had for breakfast or thinking about what I had had for breakfast. Other times, a bizarre mist would spread in my mind, paralysing all processes of memory formation and forcing me to fall back on my god-given ability to blag.
I could go on and on about the things I didn’t like but there’s no point being depressing. I vowed that I would enjoy the wage just until I had paid off the money I owed my college, then I was out of there, possibly smearing my dirty business on the walls as I waltzed out.
But having already decided to leave, it became even harder to at least look like I was performing. My behaviour deteriorated, I read online papers and Wikipedia in small, discreet windows on the screen, emailed friends at the same rate as normal spoken conversation, stared into space, learnt the Tube map off by heart, wrote to-do lists, doodled in pads, sat in the toilets playing games on my mobile and offering to make cups of tea every five minutes.
A partner I was working for pulled me into a room. “I’m just wondering where your head’s at, Rob.” Aargh someone was on to me. My head had just been reading the Wikipedia entry on the tiny Polynesian state of Tuvalu and now I was going to have to bring the blag like never before.
“What do you mean?” I asked, all innocence and incensed expressions. The kick up the arse kept me going a little longer and saw a bit more effort made begrudgingly. Then the grad scheme began to fall apart around us. The crumbs of the credit crunch had tumbled down to our level, business was slowing, partners were greying and I still wasn’t interested. My role in the firm became more freelance instead of being attached to a team, which meant I more or less reported to no-one. I worked on a project for six weeks and did nothing the entire time. I also completely got away with it as people just weren’t expecting such brazen dickheadedness from anyone.
Meanwhile, I was out most lunchtimes meeting recruiters, all the while making my own applications to any job where I might be able to wear skinny jeans and trainers and not have to shave. In other words: media. The recruiters proved useless, either harassing me about wholly unsuitable jobs, making me sit maths tests the moment I came into their offices or doing nothing at all besides displaying inferiority complexes that my field of recruitment was more prestigious than theirs. Recruitment’s recruitment and it just wasn’t for me.
Bagging an offer was an amazing feeling, as was dashing out of a company meeting to take the call informing me. I returned to that meeting unbearably smug and proceeded to neck as much free wine as possible in private celebration while everyone else squinted at tiny profit figures on the plasma screens. Pressed for a start date, I geared up to hand in my notice, coming in as the second grad to jump ship.
“I’d also like to resign,” I informed our lovely line manager.
I had barely finished the sentence when she broke into a relieved smile and asked, “It’s not for you, is it?” Fair enough I suppose...
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