Lowlife 93 – Careering into the Unknown

Careering into the Unknown

By Dominic Horton

Having taken redundancy in the summer from my long term job in banking I was always going to have to face up to finding another job sooner or later and now the time for for such a daunting quest is drawing near. As part of my redundancy package the bank have enlisted the services of a reputed firm of redeployment specialists to provide me with their expertise to help me in duping an unfortunate employer into giving me a job. So this week I resigned myself to attending a two day career transition workshop in Solihull so I could be enlightened about the rules of the highly complex game of job hunting.

Michael Douglas as William Foster in Falling Down.

After taking advice I travelled by train as apparently the traffic from Halesowen to Solihull is like a scene from Joel Schumacher's film Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas.  And I didn't want to fall down at the first hurdle and turn up late for the course. My destination after leaving Birmingham International train station was a business park a couple of miles down a nondescript A road and the directions seemed simple enough. Not being a fan of paying extortionate taxi fares I elected to walk and it was a beautifully clear and bright, yet crisp, autumn day and the sunshine enhanced my mood of optimism for what lay ahead.

The whole area seemed to be dominated by business parks and industrial sites of one sort or another and I thought that there would be little chance of finding a public house around there to nip out for a taste at lunchtime. But low and behold I soon found myself walking past what looked like a typical out-of-town A road boozer, the sort of place that usually has 2 for 1 workmanlike meals, poor quality real ale (if any), bland piped music and surly staff who are just marking time before their shifts end. But at least it is a pub, I thought, and it is better than nothing.

Half way through the walk down the A Road there was a path that appeared to go through some woods and a sign post informed me that it apparently lead to the business park where I was headed, so I gladly took the short cut to get off the tedious dual carriageway. After strolling down the path for ten minutes I came out onto a massive business park but nothing was sign posted, no one was around and I didn't have a clue where I was going. There was only five minutes until the start of the course and I sensed a hint of panic rising up in me. I calmed myself down and tried to find a distinctive landmark so I could call the office where I was headed for directions. I got to a man made pond that was besides an office block and called the redeployment firm and explained my predicament. “Where are you now?” the receptionist asked me, to which I replied, “By a pond.” “Oh, you could be anywhere,” she said to my dismay, “there are loads of those ponds dotted around here.”

The business park pond.

But as I ran around in a frenzy by sheer chance I spotted the relevant building and I arrived there in the nick of time. But I was a flustered mental and physical wreck. I had cooked a mushroom stroganoff the night before and the mixture of olive oil and sour cream had not agreed with me and had lead to a dicky stomach and I was sweating pure garlic, as I had used four bulbs in the recipe as opposed to the suggested two. All of a sudden going to the Flagon & Gorses the night before to settle the nerves seemed like a bad idea as I was a bit post-booze jittery. All in all not an ideal start to the day.

I scanned around the room to spy the other course attendees to suss them out; there were no other drinkers. I didn't need to ask them, you can just tell. The person leading the course was a highly professional and rather attractive woman in her mid-fifties and she told us that we are now products and we need to sell ourselves. I had visions of my product gathering dust on the shelf of a corner shop in Cradley Heath and remaining there until well after it's sell by date.

We were asked to introduce ourselves and say a bit about our situation. I informed the group that until the summer I had worked for a bank since the 1990's but that I would like to change career completely. The course leader stated that 80% of people looking to change career actually end up back in the same industry that they left as it is a comfort blanket to them. That's not going to be an option for me, I mused to myself, as the banking industry won't have me back.

Charles Bukowski, by request of Toby
In-Tents

Most of the people on the course, like me, had been in their last job for a long time and had been made redundant. We were told that these days longevity in employment is not regarded as a good thing as it is seen as stagnation and that the expectation is that by the time a person reaches forty five years old they have have had ten jobs. To reach the double figures milestone I will need to live like the late writer Charles Bukowski, the laureate of American lowlife, who in his book Factotum described bumming around from one dead end job to another, constantly getting drunk and being fired and living on skid row. I am sure that this is not quite what the course leader was driving at.

A grueling morning of information and exercises lead us towards lunch and the lifeless pint of badly kept bitter that I would no doubt be served in the A road boozer had never seemed so desirable. But we were informed that lunch was laid on and we were all corralled into a coffee room where sandwiches from an outside catering firm were waiting, and we were expected to talk to each other while we were eating. Despite most likely costing a fortune the sandwiches were a little dry, a far cry from Chilli Willy's fresh and buoyant cobs in the Flagon & Gorses, but the sandwiches were gratis and I will undoubtedly greatly appreciate a free lunch once I reach the state of unemployability. I had to settle for water to drink after failing to work the coffee machine. I pressed a button and instead of coffee pouring out, the front of the contraption sprang open, so fearing that I had broken it I thought I had better keep schtum and l made a sharp exit.

Mid-afternoon the course leader issued a light hearted threat for us not to nod off but by then I had cracked the coffee machine so I had caffeine coursing through my veins and besides there was no chance of resting one's eyes with the fast pace of the activities demanded of us.

Over the duration of two days all the complex rules of the sport of giz a job were explained in intricate detail and the thorough course leader left no stone upturned in furthering the group's understanding of the rule book. We learnt that these days interviews are worse than a grilling by a House of Lords select committee and that they come in several different varieties: panel interviews, round robin, one-to-one and even by means of Skype, which would be desirable as you could wear a shirt and tie on top but remain in your turd catchers and slippers below in order for a quick return to the sofa to watch Channel 4 racing once the interview is over.

Apparently the days when a fellow could walk into an interview and flash an RAF tie, be offered a cigarette and a brandy and be given the job after being deemed a thoroughly decent chap are long gone. Now the interviewer scrutinises you, cross questions you and is looking for evidence, as if you are being questioned by a detective inspector as part of a murder investigation. The chances are that if I am subjected to such a probing examination that I will crack under questioning.

By the end of the second day of the course I had taken in so much information that I was worried that my brain would be so full that other useful knowledge would be forced out, such as the PIN number to my ATM card or the line up of Coventry City's 1987 FA Cup winning team. I left the building and marched down the mundane dual carriageway back to the train station fully appraised of the formidable undertakings that one has to now complete in the crusade for employment; it appears that it is quicker to write a novella than to compile an acceptable CV. The sky was dark, overcast and forbidding and my spirit a little lacking in morale. It was time to head back home.

© Dominic Horton, October 2014.

* Email: lordhofr@gmail.com

* Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall