Right, this is a long one. I have a big yellow box full to overflowing with job applications since I left college as a mature student at the age of 41. I loathe being unemployed, hate sitting on my own in the cottage, would much prefer to be out earning money and meeting people and making use of my talents instead of writing writing writing advice on Y!A.
After I left college, I was in the thick of court proceedings trying to win contact to see my children, where I was claiming Legal Aid. If I worked, then I would have had to pay it all back, with barristers at £500 per hour, expert witnesses and hours and hours of solicitor's time. So I could not work until the final hearing. By then, there was a gap in my CV and nobody wanted me. Endless applications, interviews, building up hopes and persuading myself and them that there was nobody in the world better than me for their job. Then three weeks on, a letter saying they were very impressed with me and wishing me luck for the future. Over and over and over again. I did voluntary work with Riding for the Disabled. Anything to get out of the house for 3 years.
Then at last a temporary job inspecting toilets. Someone else had pulled out, and did I want it? I was there like a flash, and actually loved it. The attendants were such characters. But the boss was a woman who really preferred to work with women, so when the permanent job came up, they gave it to someone else.
6 months. Then a New Deal admin. assistant job. Filing clerk. One day they asked me - do I know anything about databases? They had a whole load of data on village halls and were fed up ploughing through it all every time someone had a query on the phone. Could I do an on-screen query screen. So I grabbed a book on Access from the library and taught myself. It was done by the time my 13 weeks were up. But a permanent job? No, a woman had applied for it, so they had to give it to her.
Only 2 months before I landed this job for a bathroom company fobbing off angry fitters who had not been paid, so that their payment could be delayed a few more weeks and help the company cash flow. They had a policy where they expected their staff not to take their annual leave and lose it at the end of the year. "Going the extra mile" it was called. It was the autumn of 2001, and air fares to the USA had never been cheaper, so I asked to take my holiday in November, during a lull in the work. In the end, they said I could go to America, but not come back. Most people were amazed I survived 6 months working for that company!
This did lead on quite quickly to a low-paid temping payroll job at a local hospital. Loved it. There were so many different sets of terms and conditions and working patterns to come to grips with, and within these were exceptions and complications, not to mention regradings, promotions, rule changes. It was like being in a football match where the ball stayed still and the pitch, the goalposts and the stand were moving around in all directions. And everything had to be spot on accurate. Came home with major headaches often, but at least everyone got paid! Because I was temping and they had already appointed women for the permanent position, it came to an end, but fortunately another temporary position materialised immediately sorting out inconsistencies in Government records for a Government department, which lasted until Christmas when they sacked all the casuals.
I did not want to go on the dole, preferably never again, so a good friend found me a job in his canal boat timeshare company, which I did off and on for two years. At the end of the second year, it was getting ridiculous sending me 100 miles at company expense to paint a boat when they could get someone locally to do it cheaper, so in the end I was laid off. So then, at the start of 2005, having to do these applications over and over again.
By then, my CV was in trouble. The boat job did nothing for my credibility in offices, and it was back to where I was when I left college, except that this time I was approaching 50. Each job in 2005 was a disaster. Taking on any temporary job, however dead-end, however useless, however badly-paid just to get my hand back in. The first temping job travelling over 20 miles to find nothing for me to do, and the boss saying by lunchtime I could go home without offering to pay for my petrol. They needed the help, but they were just not organised enough to get their papers in a state that I could be useful as an agency temp. The second was for a Government department where I had three weeks training in diversity and anti-discrimination and anti-bullying. But the manager was a 30-something woman who had a dislike for middle-aged men and put me in the far corner by the photocopier and spent most of her time with two other temporary staff half my age. One day I was told that my contract was terminated with immediate effect. When I queried why, it was suggested I was not picking things up fast enough compared to the others. The third was a school as a payroll officer. They had a payroll of 350, a turnover of 12 per month, two payroll systems (Sage and an awful thing on Word where you had to use the mouse continuously), and were demanding that working part-time 21 hours a week, I produced a fully accurate live monthly pay run in my first week. I told them I needed 5 days the first week to learn the ropes, understand their systems and the payroll, and that I would want them to correct any mistakes I made on Wednesday, so that I could be sure the payroll was corrected and right by Friday. I actually completed the payrun, but they said on the Wednesday there were too many mistakes, and Head Office would not allow me the extra two days to finish the job, so they got rid of me.
Back to the job applications, this time completely demoralised, but still having to sell myself somehow as a brilliant prospect. 50th birthday came. All through 2006, just application after application and the usual story - brilliant application, brilliant presentation at interview, very impressed, and we gave the job to a younger woman who was more appropriate and wishing me every luck for the future. By that time, I was sick of the whole rigmarole and operating on a fortnightly cycle of fed-upness. One week I hated employers, hated my country, hated the society that made such horrible people and just wanted to be shot of the whole employment circus. Not the best frame of mind to sell myself on an application form. So I used that week to highlight possible jobs and no more. Second week, absolutely sick of my own company, sitting at home, getting no further with life or career or making myself in the slightest bit marriageable, and there was nothing for it but to fill in these wretched forms. That worked ok until the Jobcentre put me on a weekly sign-on and sent me into a spiral of serious clinical depression when I just had to sign off JSA and onto Incapacity Benefit for a while.
Onto 2007 and at last one of my applications gets somewhere. I was far and away the best application for a job as a filing clerk in a Legal Section in a local authority, and they could not offer it to an equally-qualified woman because none applied. They got round this by telling me at interview that it was not the permanent job they advised, but temporary covering someone who was on long-term sick and was unlikely to return. Unless she came back to work, the job was mine for as long as I wanted it. Good enough - I would use the time to work myself into another position within the local authority. Three weeks into the job, I was getting worried because they were not training me in things I needed to do my job, such as inputting data onto their accounting system. I was also made aware by female colleagues that I was not welcome, and really they were expecting their filing clerk to be a young woman college leaver, rather than a middle-aged man. Then a brown paper packet landed on my desk. It was my terms of employment that had been changed to temporary with monthly termination reviews which was not what we had agreed when I was taken on. I asked for an informal chat to discuss my worries with a friend within the organisation. Instead the admin manager took me and my line manager into a room and told me she was going to ask HR to terminate my employment. I complained to senior management. The result was that I was hounded out and on the day before my termination interview with three line managers, all solicitors, I had a mini nervous breakdown and just stopped functioning. I was advised to accept their offer of one month's pay in lieu of notice and leave immediately.
Rather than go on the dole and face more of those wretched applications, during my notice period, I accepted a part-time casual job on minimum wage delivering and collecting cars, which I did until the start of August 2008. It was semi-retirement. The driving was too tiring to manage it five days a week, and safety was paramount, but at least it was a way out of the house and meant no job applications or signing on. I earned very little. In the end they sacked me because someone had complained that I was seen eating my sandwiches during the working day that stretched from 7am until late afternoon. The truth I found out later. The woman general manager of the car delivery company did not like men with beards, and nor did the woman general manager of the agency allocating my work, so they decided that while there was a surplus of agency drivers and not enough work, they could get rid of me.
Now I am back at 52 with facing more applications, not having done a proper job now since I left the Government department in 2002. My CV is a wreck and there is a downturn in the economy. If I sign on JSA I have to prove I am actively seeking work, and yet now the whole process is making me very very ill. The doctor wants me to go on stronger antidepressants, but I know the problem is not with my mental health, it's with being totally sick of job applications and the whole cruel process of excluding me from work time and time and time again. What next? My last slender hope is with the good friend who got me the boat job, who might have some other part-time work for me when he gets back off holiday. Yes, of course I am suicidal. I cannot afford to retire without a pension, and nor do I particularly want to.
So many middle-aged men must be in precisely the same situation as me, and all they are getting from women, who have no trouble securing well-paid or even modestly-paid careers is "get off your bums, you lazy losers".
I am probably a lost cause, and I have to come to terms with that. I know I am not wanted here, people have told me that enough times in their "we wish you every luck in the future". Britain and certainly New Labour only loves women. But what hope and advice is there for others in the same boat reading this?
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