Rejection and Recuperation

Ah, another moderate gap between entries. This can only mean one of two things, either I have been busy or I have been avoiding writing. It is the latter. The reason for this is my failure. Yes, my dreams of becoming Scotland’s next poisons expert were shattered on Friday when yet again I received another rejection letter. I have applied for 42 jobs in the last 12 weeks and while you may think that is a small number, you must realise that each job application can take from up to 1-3 hours (sometimes more) so complex are some of today’s application forms. Also you have to factor in the time searching for appropriate jobs added in the bimonthly pop into the jobcentre which takes up an entire morning due to its location far away from my flat. Plus there’s the ever important tea breaks.

Tea breaks are important to me. Apart from my last job in the hospice in which I would say, in 50% of days there would be a communal staff tea break, regular tea breaks were unknown to me. In my first job in the hideous GI ward I barely had time to take my coat off let alone leisurely drink a cup of tea. My second job in the Belford was a strange beast in which I always managed to get myself busy (Andi who works there presently seems to do nothing but have tea breaks, I can’t decided whether this is due to a recent lack of patients or my inability to manage time). My 3^rd job in Sick kids was variable beast in which my role rotated round the various areas. Whilst on the ward it was tea a-plenty, but on the acute unit or day case- the insanely busy centre where you see what seems like hundreds of patients all with minor ailments all demanding far too much attention in my opinion- you never even got the whiff of a biscuit. I then move onto my FY2 year which heralded a new kind of frantic activity first in A&E then the surgical ward. A&E was supposed to have regular breaks, but all I managed was a lunch stop and tea is not a speedy lunch beverage. Also I sweated so much in my shiny plastic suit that adding a steaming hot cup to tea to the mix would have only have increased my malodour. We then come to ward 33, surgical ward from hell. If hadn’t already decided to quit before this job, I definitely would have stormed out in a triumphant and spectacularly melodramatic style whilst working in this post. I did at one stage actually stamp my foot on the ground with sheer anger and frustration (then promptly burst into tears with one of the lovely secretaries), but worst of all in this job if there was a tea break, well, there was no tea. Instead a monstrous coffee machine that demanded feeding and not a tea bag in sight. It was quite horrific. And now full circle back to the afore mentioned hospice and now my current state of affairs- unemployment.

It has now been 3 months since I moved to Edinburgh and tried to get a job. In my head, I had predicted I would have a job by Christmas. That predication seems unlikely to be fulfilled. I have had interviews for 3 separate jobs (and 3 interviews for one of them) with 3 rejections and countless rejection letters from positions that I never even got interviewed for. There have also been the non-informers- the jobs to which you apply for and you hear nothing, not even a letter to say ‘NO WAY YOU UNDER-EXPERIENCED PILLOCK’ which I personally feel is the least they could do. Even a wee email, not even the cost of a postage stamp. I despise them most of all.

I was in the jobcentre today in fact and sitting, waiting for the man to sign me off and I looked around me at all the other people sitting and waiting for the same thing. Literally dozens of people all looking and applying for the same jobs as me and I thought ‘dear lord what chance do I have?’. Now I know many of them won’t have degrees, but scarily a lot of them looked perfectly respectable. I wondered what had brought them to this ghastly place and were they thinking the same about me? If they knew what I had given up, would they beat me over the head with their sign-in clip boards?

But then I remind myself that my flatmate who is meant to finish at 5 never gets home til nearer or past 7. My recently married friend isn’t getting have Christmas with her husband because someone screwed him over in the rota. My friend in the Borders has been forced to be rota master and having to work her holidays to cover for 2 absent colleagues. Another friend in Perth is working 2 jobs and is about to eat her juniors they are so incompetent. And Andi, well, he lives on friggin’ Fort William for crying out loud.

And then I remember, at least now I can have as much tea as I want.