employment

i have a pretty odd job history. i have to have a job that fits me or else i just cannot stand it. it gets visceral. so if i hate a job for whatever reason, i'll start throwing up, getting ill for real just to avoid going to work, in effect just amplifying the effect of the non-liked job. that's how it happened before. i wonder if i was just actually making it worse than it actually was.

since coming back here in january, i've had two jobs. the bookstore job, that i began in late november, coming back to town on the weekends to work there and going back to the city for university (univercity? ha ha, kiss me, i'm clever). i left that job in mid-february because i had gotten a production job at a semiconductor facility of a multinational that i am not going to name. that job would have made me earn enough money to go back to school this september instead of september 2005. things were okay during the training. boring job, niiiiiice paycheck so it balanced out... but then, after training i was transfered to my assigned team-and-work-shift... weekend-night shift. so that's two twelve hours shifts during the night (midnight to noon) on saturday and sunday and then two normal night shift returns during the week. that's how things got bad. i was already rather at odds with the workplace and the people i worked with, but then, with the working during the night, things got really complicated. turns out i'm one of those people who can't work night shifts. it was sending me right into depression relapse. after three weeks, i was a replica of how i was when clinically-depressed two years ago. that's one bad bad side effect.

i called the woman who organised our training to see if i could be transfered to another team or something like that. during our training, that woman kept on telling us that they were there for us, that if we needed anything, if we had a problem, we just had to go talk with them and they would try and help us. so i called the woman about my problem with night-working, left her a message, asking her to call me back and explaining the situation quickly. then went to bed (it was 9 in the morning and i was working that night). she didn't call back. the person who called back however was my director (the boss of the area), with a transcript of the message i had left the woman (can you say breach of confidentiality?) and basically saying: "hello Olivier, this is ******, YOUR DIRECTOR. i got a message from ********* saying that you had troubles with night working... well my reply to you will be that if you have a problem with night working it is your problem, we never switch people from teams. well, we do, but only after nine months. so in your case, the dog is dead, haha. if you have a question, call me back at ***-****". i called back, got an aswerphone, left a message really explaining the case and stating that if there was no available solution, then i was quitting right after my shift of that night. he didn't call back that day.

then i went to work. during first break, i went to the vending machines to get something to drink. some man came and asked me: "are you Olivier?" so of course i said yes. him replying: "well, good, 'cause we have papers to sign, you and me". turns out this was the weekday night shift director and then weekend night shift director had transmitted the whole "case of Olivier" to him during the day. so we signed the papers and after the shift, i was done working for that company. total worked weeks: 7.

i'm back to being unemployed now. but i started looking. i gave my resumé to a really cool design jewelry and accessories store. (trust me, they are really cool. the other day, they were playing Massive Attack. in my town... wow ). after giving my resumé to them, i was convinced they weren't going to call back. the woman-owner of the place called me back the same day asking me to come in for an interview. interview was yesterday. went rather well. then i came back and the woman called again, asking me to come in for a "working on the sales floor test". so i went back, same day as the interview. it went quite well. but i'll know if i nailed it or not only sometimes "before tuesday at 8pm", because there's another candidate (a girl...) for the same job and same type of shift as me... i guess that if it's meant to be, i'll get it. if not there's going to be something else waiting.

that's the state of employment for me, for now...