Thank You - Your Application Has Been Received!

TIME: 6:18 pm
JOBS APPLIED FOR: 1
CUPS OF TEA: 0
QUOTE OF THE DAY: 'Good times for a change/See, the luck I've had/Can make a good man/Turn bad/So please please please/Let me, let me, let me/Let me get what I want/This time.' - The Smiths

Those statistics above are pretty dire. One job and NO cups of tea? How did I manage that?

It turns out that I'm kind of unproductive when surrounded by zines and lovely kittens who buy me chocolate and noodles-in-a-box. That's...actually not that surprising when I write it down. Hmm.

Other things were achieved though. Things that I'd call on a resume 'internal redesign' and 'entertainment engineering'. So, we lifted a couch into the shop from the Mason's club and I chose a lot of the music on Susy's ipod to play on the speakers. I also got new fishnets for Derby and lost my glasses (I imagine the latter won't aid in the staring-at-screens required for a job search).

So, what is this one job you applied for, Ms Brimstone? It was a cushy sitting down checkout ch*ck job at Aldi in Hamilton. Hammo! Look, okay, it is way way below my skill and qualification level but it pays money. I can still write in my spare time and submit articles to keep my hand/head in the game.

I've gotten to the point in the past where I've been so desperate for cash that I've rolled up my cuffs to plunge into a sink of suds and grease and slough poor dead pig fat off the plates of rich shit-head customers. I did not enjoy it. But there's no pride in being poor and making your partner poor along with you, so I did it. Pride is, as a friend once said to me, a luxury.

My anarchist and socialist friends would probably hackle at this but as much as I agree with their aspirations to a better, fairer, more dignified world, I am a realist and I can't spend my time not acknowledging the one I live in. I have to work within the system the best I can to get by. It isn't nice, but it is reality.

I find it amusing how chirpy and chipper the confirmation emails you get from applying to these jobs are. As if they are telling you a piece of really EXCELLENT, AMAZING news. Errr - I would prefer terse, I think. Excellent and amazing would be appropriate if I actually got the job.

Anyway. Let's hope ALDI thinks two degrees makes me smart enough to sweep some tins across a bar-code scanner.