Last Christmas I was made redundant. It was a bit shit.
Welcome to my Christmas Redundancy Diary. It’s a cracker.
You may like to read my introduction, or just dive straight in. But please wear a wetsuit, some of my comments are icy cold…….

DAY FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THREE

Breakfast; A bowlful of disappointment & a mug of steaming hot bitterness.

I’m not a factory virgin. A large chunk of my employment history lists everything from prestige chinaware to high-perfomance car engine blocks. I’ve shovelled sand for 12 hours at a time, I’ve minded a machine that makes the little toilet blocks that you pop in your loo and I’ve stuck eyes on collectible porcelain figurines. And although I was weened on retail and gravitated back to it, I did think I’d be suitably qualified and would make an excellent candidate for a spot of mind-numbing, back-breaking, repetitive-strain inducing toil.

I must add that those factory jobs feature high up on my ‘if I really must leave the house each day and find a way to pay for food and rent then I don’t really mind doing this’ list. They have been my best paid positions and I actually like the monotonous repetition of a production line. It suits me very well. Also; guaranteed breaks! The biggest decision to make each day; what colour scrunchie to tie your hair up with. And in factories, for us minions at least, clocking off time IS clocking off time. No taking that crap home with you or lying awake worrying about your work. A blob of glue is a blob of glue. It does not cause you sleepless nights.

Having said all that though, every single factory I worked in has closed down behind me. E-V-E-R-Y  S-I-N-G-L-E  O-N-E. This fact isn’t restricted to those entries on my CV either, but that’s another story. I like to think it’s because they couldn’t carry on without me, though it has been suggested in some quarters that maybe I’d run them into the ground. Perhaps that would explain the next two words;

‘Application unsuccessful’.

Well Mr Fancy Factory. That’s extremely insightful.
Can you offer specifics? Is it my age? You know you’re not allowed to discriminate on age and, if the work is physically demanding, it only ever takes me a minute or two to catch my breath. And occasionally a little sit down. Somewhere dark.

Or are you concerned I can’t multi-task? Well I often laugh, sneeze and pee at the same time so don’t you worry about me not being able to juggle more than one ball.

Perhaps you think the rotating shifts will be an issue for me? Not a problem. As long as I can do the nights in my pyjamas and have an hour’s nap at 3am, I don’t see any obstacle there.

Maybe you believe my mind isn’t sharp enough for your ‘fast-paced environment’. I would beg to differ. I know all the words to Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, and that song’s 35 years old. Razor sharp.

But I’ll assume you know more about me than I’ve learnt of myself over the last 50 years, so I bow to your superior knowledge and experience. Now, where did I put my mug of…….

I’m using artistic licence with the chronology, throwing in extra vowels and consonants for a fun, enjoyable read.
However, all events and breakfasts are accurately portrayed.

If you are employed or otherwise content and stable with your work/life/domestic situation, please pop over to WANTED. NOT WANTED. where you can have a smug, self-righteous, cosy giggle at my crumbling self-esteem. You’ll find my self-initiated Job Club, my ridiculous misguided applications for ANY kind of work and my redundancy diary, a revealing look into the day to day life of the lowlife worthless pits of humanity the unemployed. If you are not content and stable with your work/life/domestic situation, then let’s hold hands and stick our tongues out at the rest of the world. But you still have to go read all the stuff.