"That's my playdoh"

I have a bed, finally.

I spent this morning building it; it went mostly without incident, except for the part where I knocked over the headboard that I had balanced onto my shoulder.  So it’s only taken 6 weeks but I have a bed, which means I can now somewhat sort my room out and make it a bedroom and not a storage facility for boxes.
When discussing how we were going to have super fancy bedrooms, we found a box and upon opening it this was said:

“These are your glow sticks and cookbooks, but that’s my Play-Doh”

Ah, Adult life that’s where you have been hiding.

In light of my bed’s imminent arrival I thought I’d get on with painting my room. So… I can’t paint. Well I can’t paint well. My room now has two patchy white walls which were formerly blue.

Oh and I bought a potato masher, just to update you on the lack of potato masher, so we can now have mash whenever we feel like it, without having to borrow one beforehand or having friends and family rushing to our rescue at the last minute.

Why do you want to work here?

I had my first interview ever, and it went great.

No sarcasm there… at all. Well it wasn’t that bad I don’t think, but it isn’t going to win the best interview ever award: too many umm’s, arrr’s and errrr’s and a complete inability to elaborate things to make them sound right: “I worked in a shop”, simple, direct and conveys the point. “I previously worked in a customer facing retail role”, completely unnecessary, complicated and not so direct.  So I don’t think I’ll be getting that job.

This brings me to my new pet hate, job applications.

Why is it that we can’t all just be honest when applying for a job? Well it’s because of this question:

“Why do you want to work here?”

Why we really want to: “Because I need a job/money”

But we can’t say that so we have to come up with creative bullshit: “I think working here offers a great new opportunity for me”. Yeah, it’s ASDA not Alan Sugar.

Option #2 is quite clearly a lie and everybody knows it, so why can’t we just be honest. You know, that thing we are always told we should be, but let’s face it from a young age we are all programmed to lie right from the “don’t tell mum”. And of course politicians set a blistering example of honestly.

So maybe we should all start being honest:  you want to job because you need the money, you have rent, bills and food to pay for, you have to, you know, live.

Next on the list of questions I hate is:

“What are your interests?”

My question is, why does this question need to be asked? What I do in my free time should not matter to any potential boss, so long as my outside activities aren’t being a mass murderer they are entirely my business. As they have no impact on work performance they should not be taken into consideration during the application process.

“Oh I really to cook, so don’t mind me if I casually stroll over to the bakery section to start cooking up a storm rather than stacking your shelves.”

Another one that I dislike is being asked what skills I have, mainly because I find it difficult to answer. I’m good at making a room a mess in record time, but I don’t think they want to know about that skill. All this talk of jobs just reminds me that the Job Centre is still top of my list for most useless people ever.

The Job centre seems to be incapable of keeping appointments and doesn’t seem to think that I need to know things in advance. I went 2 weeks ago to go to a meeting which turns out to have been rearranged but nobody told me that. I go to sign on two days later only to be told the time they originally gave me is wrong. I go today to go to that rearranged meeting and guess what? Cancelled. She re-books it then says that she won’t give me the letter with the appointments details on, and that she will give it to me the next time I’m there, (which I think she said was 6 days before this appointment, so mental note to myself: “Don’t arrange anything more than 6 days in advance I might have a phantom appointment”.) Oh and have I mentioned that if I don’t turn up to appointments my payment is stopped? I have to let them know a day in advance of my appointment, but they don’t feel the need to tell me when they’ve cancelled it. Sounds fair.

Make Something Up

[There is a slight change in the schedule of tonight’s broadcast: this post is not about my current search. Sorry of any inconvenience]

This post is not strictly about me, this is about Riley. But I thought it was infuriating enough that I had to post it.

You may not know this but students are exempt from paying council tax. It works like this, you tell the council you are a student and provide them with proof, job done. The Uni is even kind enough to provide ‘proof of course certificates’ upon request.  Get form. Post Form. Done. Right?

Wrong. Well until this year that is how it worked, and it did work. So abiding by the age old saying of “if it works change it anyway” the system has now changed. The Uni no longer gives out the forms and the surrounding councils have been sent a list of names of all the students. So now the students ring the council and tell them they are a student and in theory the council consults the list, done.

Wrong again. When Riley rang the council they posted her a form to fill in and asked for proof.

Proof = not a problem

Form = problematic

Riley was unable to answer one of the questions on the form, “How many hours do you study”. The reason for this question being so problematic is that a full time student is classed as studying 16+ hours. Now Riley is doing a full time course, but being a 3^rd year and having a dissertation to do, the actual hours she is in lectures is only 6, but each module comes with an allotted amount of ‘self-study’ time, as well as there being a certain amount of hours that you are supposed to spend on your dissertation. All of this means that Riley doesn’t actually know how many hours of study she has a week.

In order to solve this problem she took the form into Uni with her to ask at the office how many hours her course was. This office, the same office that does/did the council tax forms, first of all tells her she doesn’t need to fill out the form and that she just needs to ring the council. After explaining that she had done that, the office then told her that they didn’t know how many hours her course was and that they had never seen that form before.

Maybe the English department office will know how any hours her course is, it is after all the English office and she does do English Lit, they’ll know. That’s what you’d think, but they had no idea, in fact they said:

“Make something up that sounds reasonable”

I find it unbelievable that no one within the Uni knows how many hours study each course has; someone should at least have some sort of idea.  I was once told by a lecturer how many hours I was supposed to be putting into just one module. If I can be told that, surely someone knows how many hours a whole week is, and if they don’t someone should, and the information should be made available to the students, not just for council tax reasons, for actual study reasons (sometimes students require some sort of guide line to help them plan study).

So here we are, a week later and the form is still sitting on the table, waiting to be sent whilst she figures out just how many hours she is supposed to study. Just wait until the council start complaining about the wait…

Adult Life?

My flatmate is still a student and as I had nothing better to do with my day, I went with her. It offers a change of scenery, a chance to look at all of the stuff that I can’t buy and perhaps more importantly – it means I’m not just lying in bed all day wishing I had better things to do.

It was a very surreal experience, walking around town with the knowledge that everyone I knew had left, yet I still expected to see them.
Well most of the people I knew have gone, there are 3 or 4 still around. One of which we were meeting up with. While the 3 of us were together, Riley got a phone call informing her that she had got the job she’d applied for; this prompted my friend to make the following remark:

“One of us finally has a real adult life”

Now I know she meant nothing by it, but it suggests that in her eyes I am not living a ‘real’ adult life… does having a job define adulthood? If so many 14yr olds are adults. I may not feel like I am an adult, but that does not mean that my life is not adult. I have my own flat, pay bills and at the age of 21 I’m legally an adult in every way, and in every country. I’m just missing the job.

So what defines ‘adult life’?

On a different note…That night we decided to have sausages, mash potatoes and gravy. It was only after the sausages and potatoes were cook did we realise that we do not if fact own a potato masher…

I have 5 living rooms

And no bed.

After finally working out how to change my address with the jobcentre, I rang them to sort it out. I am less than great with phone calls...
After I answered all the questions in order to confirm that I was me (and apparently knowing my mobile number is one of them, surely they could tell that I was ringing from it?) we moved on to questions about the flat. I excelled at these questions... Honest.

Advisor: "Do you pay [something I can't remember the name of]?"

Me: "What?"

Advisor: [Repeats previous statement]
Me: "I don't know what that is"

Advisor: "How many living rooms do you have?"

I heard: "how many rooms do you have?"

Me: "Five."
Advisor: "Five?"

Me: "No, four"
Advisor: [shocked] "Four?"

Me: [picking up on his shock] "I'm sorry, did you ask how many bedrooms I have?"
Advisor: "No, how many living rooms do you have"

[After establishing that I have 1 living room, 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom and 2 bedrooms he realised my earlier mistake.]

Advisor: "Was the last place you lived privately owned?"
Me: "I was homeless" [then I laughed, it's not funny]

So I have five living rooms and no bed, as when I woke up this morning I was on the floor. I've tried blowing my air bed up since but it has a hole in it. Not to worry though as my real bed gets delivered soon! … Or so I thought.

[Enter Argos]

They rang again this morning... they are not delivering my bed tomorrow, so for the second time they are rescheduling. I'm never going to get this bed.