By JAB
Different day, different
idea.
“I’ll
take a year off,” I decide out loud.
“Six
months,” says Husband.
“Year,”
I say.
“Maybe
one day a week, perhaps at the local surgery,” he says.
Yeah right.
Next thing, I’m redoing my
resume and swanning into a big city shoe shop, one that I’d scorned a few weeks
ago when I’d heard it was Hiring Mature Sales-people. I’m sort-of
dressed up, for a change, and forcing a brave face.
As it happens, the hiring
manager, whose name I recognise from my frantic-googling for company
information while travelling in on the tram for this purpose, and the assistant
manager are both standing at the main counter. They get straight on with the
business of screening me there and then.
“What
are you looking for,” she says?
“Oh,
one or maybe two days a week,” I prevaricate.
“We
don’t have anything at the moment,” she says as she jots my availability onto
the unopened envelope enclosing my-brilliant-career.
“Will
let you know if anything comes up?”
I
figure I’ve missed the bus here too
but at least she sort of noted my availability and Spring is here and Christmas
is, after all, only months away and show me a women who doesn’t need new shoes
then…
“I
am a customer of yours,” I throw in, thinking
it might just turn the tide. The hiring manager is unmoved but the nice
assistant smiles warmly at me.
As I leave, I ponder the
hiring sign still in the window. What did I say wrong, I wonder? Maybe I didn’t say anything wrong. Maybe she
wanted full time. Maybe it’s my hair. Maybe it’s just not for me.
Perhaps the recruitment outsourcing
service will unlock some new tricks to winning over these powerful people
because it’s different now. I am older.
I wander into the chocolate
shop next door and gaze vacantly over the exotic choice.
Perhaps it is time to follow
my dreams: finish writing my dad’s memoirs, finish my Cert IV, sell some copy
writing, begin the volunteering to write-aged-biographies program, work for the
Victorian Writers Centre and The Wheeler Centre, visit my ageing parents at my
leisure, play more golf. At the very least, start a TO - DO List.
I would like to add to my post above that Siobhan Argent has written a brilliant piece on redundancy for The Big Issue 10 - 23 OCT 2014. I concur with everything she has written. From one 'redundy' to another, I too feel invigorated, far more than I ever imagined.
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