Pleasantly Surprised, Rant Averted

Today I was going to go into the subject of unemployment, one that always manages to get my hackles up. I've been unemployed twice since I gained my degree in 2008 - once for a spell of 5 months before my old employer Tesco finally took pity on me and offered me my old part-time job back, and again presently as I moved to Bourne after arriving back in the country. 

I was dreading that I'd be stuck without any hope of work for as long as I was back in 2008, which I'm sure anyone who has been in a similar situation in the past two years can understand how grim a prospect that is - a return trip to the Job Centre, an institution more likely to crush your soul and self-esteem under the heels of unsympathetic staff than actually provide you with any helpful advice or opportunities. Mailing CVs left, right and center, visiting endless businesses in the vain hope of an opening. I could put together a pretty impressive portfolio of rejection letters if you asked me to, and they'd only represent about 50% of all applied vacancies that escaped me - most businesses don't even bother with the pernickety business of letting people know that they were unsuccessful in their efforts. Apparently sending a quick bulk e-mail to the rejections is beyond the abilities of most administrators.

But now, not even two months into being unemployed (and only about 1 month of actually properly getting my arse together to find work) I have been offered a job! A temporary Christmas job, but a job's a job, right? It's at GAME, a video game store corporation at Peterborough Queensgate Shopping Centre. I begin this Monday, which is great - I can finally begin paying off some of the overdraft that has been gathering since I came home. There's also a handy 25% staff discount which is available immediately, so I can stock up on a few gifts for Christmas on the cheap (in typical penny-pinching Jim style - I swear I have Scottish blood in me somewhere).

What really surprised me, and confirmed some of the reasons why I struggled so much to find any work two years past, is that the assistant manager of the store admitted to me that GAME have not taken on any new staff members at their branch in two years. Two whole years! For a retail business, that is shocking. And for the first time since then they also have a few permanent vacancies up for grabs, depending on who they feel is strongest out of the 12 Christmas temps they're taking on. Better get working, then.

And to think, with the good news of new job openings you would think that the British economy is actually in recovery from the crash that began unravelling in 2008. Ahem. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?