A job! After years at spent at home raising children and keeping house, doing odd jobs at odd hours for pin money, it was time to get a proper job.
I thought about it for a while (about a month) then I forced myself to buy a local job paper. I wrote three letters applying for vacancies that sounded remotely suitable (i.e. easy). From these three letters I received three interviews. It was then that my heart started to swell in terror and my bowels turned to blancmange.
I was absolutely terrified. How did Real People behave out there in the Real World? Would I fit in? How would I cope?
I spent four hours getting ready for my first interview at a newsagents shop in Hockley. Being neurotically punctual, I arrived 45 minutes early, rode around on my motorbike for a while, realised the shop in question wasn't where I thought it was, panicked, rode around some more looking for it, finally asked a pedestrian where it was, and pulled up outside.
I took one look at the shop with its peeling paint, grime-encrusted windows and dingy interior, and turned my bike around. I definitely didn't want to work in a place like that. I had 'O' levels!
My second interview was for a part time audio secretary at a small firm of chartered accountants. Their secretary was on maternity leave and they needed someone to cover for her in the afternoons. I wrote after it because it was close to where I lived (and close to the school where my children might have to be rescued if they were ill!). I turned up (early!), dressed smart and feeling very calm because (a) with my total lack of experience they wouldn't think I was suitable, and (b) I didn't particularly want to work for accountants because I’m numerically dyslexic. So, positive thinking, I arrived at the office, thinking I don't want to work here, I really don't want to work here. A very cheerful woman led me to the waiting area and asked if I wanted a drink.
"Tea? Coffee?" she beamed.
I had visions of me spilling it over my clothes, the chair and the floor, so I declined and, with a final beam of delight, the cheerful woman disappeared.
'I don't want to work here,' I told myself, as I tried to turn the pages of the newspaper without making too much noise. 'I'm only here for interview experience.'
A man rushed passed. "Morning!" he cried.
"Morning," I called back, thinking 'Hey, he's nice and friendly. But I still don't want to work here.'
I sat there, in the utterly silent waiting area, pretending to read a newspaper and feeling desperately uncomfortable in the clothes I usually reserve for weddings.
Another man appeared, mumbled something I couldn't quite hear, and disappeared. Seconds later, he reappeared in the waiting area and this time indicated that he wanted me to follow him to his office.
I got up. Was I smiling too much? Maybe not enough? Would I make it to his office without tripping over my own feet?
I sat in front of his enormous desk. My heart started to pound, but I told myself Don't worry, we don't want the job, we're only here for interview experience.
"Have you worked in an office before?" he began.
I could hear my own heart pounding in my chest. "No."
"I see from your CV that you haven't worked for a number of years.'
I was sure he could hear my heart pounding too. “No.”
“Have you had any experience answering the telephone?” he asked.
“No.”
I thought it was going really well. I hadn't fainted, thrown-up or had a heart-attack. Yet.
I asserted myself (i.e. pretended I was someone else and that this wasn't really happening). “I don't actually like using the phone,” I said.
“You will be expected to take incoming calls,” he said.
It didn't matter. I didn't want the job anyway.
The man - one of two partners at the firm - stared at my CV on his desk. “Clean car and motorbike licence,” he said, “You ride a motorbike?
“Yes.”
“Will you be coming to work wearing leathers?”
“No,” I laughed, “I won't be wearing my leathers to work.”
“Oh. Pity.”
He tapped his pen on his desk for a while. Hours seemed to pass before he finally said, “I can't think of anything else to ask, can you?”
I shook my head, smiling madly, while my heart thudded like a pneumatic drill.
“I'll get our secretary to take you upstairs and show you around.”
The secretary duly arrived, a supremely smart, supremely confident woman who was the image of the efficient, indispensible secretary. I was in awe. I wouldn't get the job. There was no way I could give off that kind of aura.
I didn't want the job anyway.
The secretary, Jane, took me upstairs. She showed me the computer (easy stuff), she showed me the telephone (Oh My God!), talked for almost an hour about my duties (none of which I took in) and introduced me to the other three people working in the office upstairs (“Hiya” I blurted, blushing profusely).
Jane talked some more while I wracked my brains trying to think of something intelligent to say.
“Do you have any questions?” she asked me.
I shrugged, “No.”
“You've discussed your hourly rates with the partner?”
Now there was something I'd forgotten to ask!
Jane took me back downstairs to the interview office. The partner hummed a bit, mumbled a bit, then said, “£4.80 an hour okay?”
£4.80! I was expecting much less. £4.80 was an absolute fortune. “Y-yes,” I spluttered, thinking £4.80! £4.80!
“Can you start on Monday?” he asked.
I didn't want the job. I didn't want to work at a firm of chartered accountants. I was no good with figures and I hated the phone.
“Yes, fine,” I said.
I walked out of the building on a cloud of air. They'd offered me the job! I didn't want it, of course, but they thought I was good enough to work there! Amazing!
A letter arrived the following morning, detailing my duties and my pay rate. I didn't want the job, hadn't expected to be offered the job, so I wrote back saying, 'I look forward to working with you on Monday.'
I cancelled my other interview as a check-out person at a big supermarket. I was too good to be a check-out person. I was about to become the audio secretary at a firm of Chartered Accountants.
Amazing!
I had a week to prepare myself. I spent the first day smiling like a Cheshire cat and wandering round in a blissful daze (I got the job, they want me, they think I'm good enough!) I cried for the next six. I wasn't good enough at all. I'd spent the last few years at home raising my three sons and doing 'odd jobs'. What the hell did I know about working in an office, and how on earth was I going to answer the dreaded telephone?
By Sunday night, I was a nervous wreck. Why had I accepted? I kept asking myself. I hadn't wanted the job in the first place. I'd be terrible. They'd realise I was terrible and fire me. I'd had delusions of grandeur - I was a mother, just a mother, not an audio secretary.
Monday morning arrived. I got up at five in the morning to prepare myself. Showered. Ironed the only set of good clothes in my wardrobe. Got the children ready for school. Put my make-up on with trembling hands. By ten o'clock I had donned the 'work gear' and stood in the living room so I wouldn't crease it.
I was ready to start work.
I didn't have to be there until two.
I cried some more. Panicked some more. Considered phoning them and telling them that I wouldn't be coming, I was ill, I was dying, I couldn't possibly come to work ... ever.
But I didn't.
I left the house at 1 o’clock, shaking like a leaf. Deciding to go by public transport, I stood at the bus stop, telling myself over and over again that the first day was always the worst and it would be better tomorrow. I imagined myself breezing into the office, chatting with everyone, creating a really big impression. I imagined myself to be someone else, someone I was not.
In reality, I arrived at work forty minutes early, feeling acutely overdressed in floaty black dress and sequinned woolly jacket. I hadn't put my hair up, so at least I didn't have to worry about that, but I was wearing heels, which I wasn't used to.
I didn’t create any impression at all. I was that shy and that in awe of ‘real working people’ that I barely spoke for weeks. But I did feel quite important going to work on the bus. I was a Normal Person, a Proper Worker. I just paid my money, sat down, and didn't have to worry about traffic.
This lasted three days, after which I was so cheesed off with the slow, arduous progress of the bus I decided to use my motorbike. It took twenty five minutes to get to work by bus in the morning, and took anything up to forty-five minutes to get home in the rush-hour traffic.
By bike, it took seven minutes each way.
TWO WEEKS LATER
Right, today is the day I make the breakthrough. I am going to be chatty, I am going to be calm, I am going to be myself. Nothing is going to bother me, I'm not going to be so bloody self conscious, and I'm definitely not going to blush.
I parked my motorbike on the path on the other side of the car park wall, and dropped my helmet on the floor. Struggling to retain a bravado I didn't feel, I threw a couple of mints into my mouth (everyone looks casual when they're chewing something, right?) and walked into the building, tripped up the stairs, pounded my helmet against the coat stand, knocking it over, almost chocked on my mouthful of mints, and flopped casually into my chair feeling like a complete loser
Another day I asked Jane if I could squeeze my motorbike into the small car park outside the building. “Oh, I don't know about that,” she said, “But I'll find out for you.”
She came back later saying, “Sorry, no. Our clients and the other companies in the building might not like it.” (The implication being that a motorbike parked outside might lower the tone of the place and give a bad impression, but I let it pass) “But,” Jane added, “There is somewhere you might be able to put it. Come downstairs and take a look.”
She led me outside the back door, turned, and peered down a muddy twelve inch gap between our building and the building next door.
“Could you get it in there?” she asked.
I raised a sceptical eyebrow. “I wouldn't get the handlebars in there,” I told her.
She looked surprised. It was then that I realised that she’d never actually seen my motorbike (parked, as it was, on the other side of the car park wall). They must all think I toddle around on a little scooter!
The following day, I made sure they noticed my bike . I roared my 1000cc Yamaha Virago into the car park beneath their windows, ostensibly to turn round and ride back out again. They certainly looked at me differently after that.
At Christmas, I decorated my bike with tinsel and baubles - primarily to stop my husband taking it when his bike wouldn't start in the morning. It made people smile as I roared passed and caused quite a stir at work. I felt it gave them a taste of the person I really was (i.e. weird, just as they'd always suspected.)
After Christmas, I took all the decorations off, except for the fairy, who was squashed behind my screen with her thin plastic arms thrown across her face. I'd grown quite attached to her. She became my Hells Angel.
FOUR WEEKS LATER
In my head, I could see the person I wanted to be. Lively, outgoing, interesting and well-liked. In reality, I was quiet, very quiet, quieter than I'd ever been in my life, because I wasn't sure of things, wasn't sure what to do or how to behave or what to say. I struggled to become the person I wanted to be every single day, and only occasionally got close to it.
Everything seemed to take on gigantic proportions, even making a drink seemed like an endurance test. First I would, into the morgue-like silence, have to ask if anyone wanted a drink. Then I'd walk into the kitchen-area trying not to trip over my own feet, struggle with the coffee jar, drop a spoon, spill the milk, telling myself to stay calm, I was only making a drink, but becoming more and more worked-up - which cup did Norman use, did Paul have tea or coffee, how many sugars did Kevin take. I was trying to remember everything and remembering nothing.
I would stutter if someone spoke to me. They said 'Pardon' a lot because I spoke so quietly. The office was so quiet that I never spoke unless spoken to, and I dreaded, absolutely dreaded, the telephone.
At first, I was useless. It took me three weeks to remember the partners names (I would chant them in my sleep at night). I knew it was important to remember their names, and so I developed a mental block about it.
I'd put clients through to the wrong partner - they'd ask for Brian and they'd get Norman, and I'd be completely thrown if they asked for Mr Jones or Mr Smith (I would rifle through my stack of papers trying to figure out who Mr Smith was ... ah, it's Brian, or have I written it down wrong). I would call Brian ‘Norman’ and Norman ‘Brian’, and they would look at me as if I was some form of bacteria from another planet.
I couldn't remember clients names either. I'd put the calls through and say, 'It's Mike somebody on the line.'
'Mike who?' they'd ask irritably.
'I don't know,' I'd whine, really starting to lose it, 'It sounded like Burrows, or it could have been Brown. It started with a B anyway.'
I'd tried to write the names down on piles of scrap paper I kept on my desk. 'Who's calling please?' I'd ask in my most efficient (horrifically accented) voice. They'd tell me and I'd spend endless seconds scribbling it down and still got it wrong because I couldn't read my own writing, or I'd only written the first name because I'd forgotten the rest and didn't like to ask again.
It didn't help matters that everyone else spoke with such Nice voices. I opened my mouth and thick Brummie dialect fell out.
And Jane was so supremely efficient. She loved to talk, and she was so calm and composed on the phone. Me, I was a nervous wreck every time it rang. My brain would scream, 'I'm outta here.' There was no way I would ever be like Jane.
I tried to console myself by saying, to myself and to the great Jane herself, that everyone would realise how good she was because I was so awful.
Jane became my hero. Jane could do no wrong. Jane was everything I wanted to be and everything I knew I would never be. I felt awed and deflated in her presence. Why couldn't I be like that?
Jane and Angela, one of the female accountants, talked about diets. I didn't diet, and felt like a frump. They talked about clothes. I had no interest in clothes and felt like a frump. They talked about work, and I hadn't a clue what they were going on about (Self-assessment Forms? Form 36-8? Tax offices and Companies House?).
I kept telling myself it would be better tomorrow, that I would hand in my notice tomorrow
One day I walked into Norman's office to ask him something. He obviously hadn't heard me coming and spun around looking startled.
'I'm sorry,' I said, trying to keep my voice low and calm (instead of high-pitched and panic-stricken like it usually was). 'I didn't mean to startle you. Did I frighten you?'
I heard myself sounding like one of those psychotic murders in horror films who say Did I Frighten You with great relish. Norman looked even more startled.
Then the day came when the secretary who was on maternity leave rang up to say she was ready to come back. “Oh,” I said, when Jane told me. Jane went all sheepish and said she wished we could both work there, while I sat there thinking Yes, Escape Is Near, I'm Outta Here.
They brought me flowers and chocolates on my last day. I felt quite sad, but relieved too. It had been good experience, but it wasn’t my kind of job. I was to learn later that I’m more suited to large and loud environments (I’ve worked for building surveyors, it doesn’t get any louder than that!) But it was my first step on the ladder.
After this job I thought I'd try something completely different to boost my sagging confidence. For a couple of years I worked part time hours in the Student Shop at the University of Birmingham, which I thoroughly enjoyed (I supplemented my income by typing up dissertations and theses for students - who always left everything to the last minute and sometimes I'd be up until 3am finishing work that had to be handed in the next day). Only when I needed to work full time after my marriage broke up did I venture back to office work via a temping agency....
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