work

I had a job interview last week for that really interesting job I mentioned before.

I think the interview went fine, but I was a bit crap on a couple of questions. I'm fairly sure I gave a good impression of myself though and I think I did the tests well. I can't have been all bad because my possible future boss is taking up my references already, so I know I am short-listed at least.

Just waiting to hear now. I guess if I get the job it will be a phonecall, and if I don't it will be a letter. Keep your fingers crossed for me anyway.

It seemed like it might be a pleaseant place to work. A small but bright office, and everyone I met (and there were three on the interview panel) was smiley and welcoming.

In marked contrast to the awful interview I had last year for some charity. Had to traval all the way down to SW1, the building looked fine from the outside but was grotty inside, the office was large but packed out with boxes and files and awkwardly placed desks, and the people I met were very unfriendly. One of the two women who interviewed me just kept staring at me with her beady eyes, as if I had done something very wrong. I did an awful interview. I was tired from the travelling, only a few days after having an op on my eye, and so wound up about it all (I had spent days and days studying the charity and its work and was terrified I'd forget it all - in the end none of my newly gained knowledge was needed for the boring questions they asked and so I tried to get the info in with the questions they did ask. Bit of a mess)

I didn't expect to get that job. And lo! I didn't. My only hope would have been if everyone else was even more awful and they weren't fussy.

(Bad on them for having offices in SW1 anyway. Shouldn't a nationwide charity be saving money by having offices somehwere cheaper? And why drag all candidtates down there to be interviewed? It would have saved on all those travelling expenses they had to pay us all, just to hire a hotel room and do them up here)

Then, of course, there was the interview for the cattery job. Mr Cattery was so nice to me, always so nice to me. I still feel bad for walking out on him like that. I talked him into giving me a chance, and he gave me a chance and I really let him down.

I sometimes think of writing to him and fully explaining what my circumstances were at that time. I can clearly see now that the pain and anxiety that overwhelmed me then was a consequence of being on Prostap.

But there was as much wrong with that job as right. Working on my own with the cats, part-time, radio on, no computers, no phones, no office meetings and Team Briefs was lovely. But the older part of the cattery was oppressive for both me and the cats. I hated to see them in their little wooden hutches. It wasn't safe either. Cats could easily escape and be lost into the rafters and so nerves were always on edge. And I was told always to look out for poos, but some of the cats wouldn't come out of the hutch onto the floor and would attack you if you tried to move them or check the hutch. Some were truly vicious with me, not helped by the stress of feeling so hemmed in, in their little dark cages.

And then there were the other workers. Hard workers, but little in the way of social skills. Unwelcoming, sometimes down right rude. They would often stop talking when I walked into the little hut that served as washing-up and tea room. I was never invited on tea breaks or on their nights out. I don't know whether it was jealousy that I got to work with the cats (seen as easy compared to working with the dogs), and that I got to work part-time, or whether they just thought me "not like them". Perhaps I had too much of a manergerial manner about me to be amongst them slopping buckets of disinfectant around and scooping up poo and wee. Certainly I tried to keep true to myself and as myself its hard just to fade into the back-ground.

And OH GOD! The snitching. EVERYTHING reported to the boss without fail. I found out on my second day that the slightest percieved mistake was faithfully reported. Then along would come Mr Cattery, a jovial smile in that unusually fat, uneven and generally knobbly face of his, patting me on the back and talking to me in kindly sorrow about not having pulled a blind down, or wiped a smudge off some window.

I will never forget the humiliation of that. The sense of being such an open target for colleagues so willing to get me into trouble.

Blah! It was a horrible time in my life.

After the back-stabbing I had had in my previous office job it was everything to convince me that people and work were two horrible combinations and one could never be happy whilst one was made to be in such a toxic environment.

But I'm forgetting how my office job started. When I first joined the company after leaving uni I found a good band of co-workers. Two of the girls were best pals and aloof with me, but I don't remember letting it bother me. I got on too well with the others for it to be an issue. Friendly Mark, James and Matt, supportive Sarah, funny Dave. Even the boss, though later we had our issues, not someone I couldn't handle. The supervisor was the best. He would just piss off for hours and leave us to it. And because we were all good at our jobs we did just as well. We would even organise our own rosters and work out what overtime was needed amongst ourselves. The supervisor cried when I left the company, even though he hadn't managed me for a long time and we'd had our differences.

Makes me shake my head when i think about the people I worked with later. Organise their own roster? They could organise themselves to get in on time. They did half the work we had done for twice the pay. No wonder I often got frustrated with them.

Anyway. That job set me up for life. It got my house, my wedding, several trips abroad. It made me really, and I always feel grateful to being given that job when no other company even offered me an interview.

That's a bit how I feel now. That a need a break to get back into work. I've been off work for two years and I know that doesn't make me an attractive prospective employee. I think the people I had the interview with last week got that.

Perhaps I'll hear about it today.