Pits and Prospects

My name is Ms Havisham.

Jilted and unemployed, I am the lost cause of the twenty first century. I also have the embarrassment of being able to say that I am receiving a Young Person’s Job Seeker’s Allowance…more commonly known as The Dole.

I make the excruciating ten minute journey from my home to the Job Centre once a week to have a piece of paper signed and positions paying minimum wage that I am largely overqualified for presented to me. The silver lining is that this cannot possibly depress me as I’m not sure it’s possible for my spirits to be any lower. In fact, I have started to welcome the change of scenery and fresh faces. (Perhaps grounds on which I should be committed?) I went a couple of weeks ago and someone actually asked me out. This was during my glory days where I was able to truthfully say I had a boyfriend which thankfully prevented me from having to invent a kind excuse to this gentleman of excellent prospects…

During my last visit, a charming advisor with the most soulless eyes I have ever seen suggested he make an appointment with a careers advisor for me. I took the term “suggestion” with a pinch of salt as I wondered how quickly my weekly check would dry up should I decline. I then took myself to my appointment with the woman in question who after consulting me on my history, to my surprised enquired after my personal life. I asked her to exemplify, thinking that I should at least confirm what she meant before I took this meeting in a direction she'd had no intention of going in. I consequently learnt that what was holding me back from a successful career was the miserable weight on my shoulders.

I exited from the session feeling unfamiliarly positive. I may have been fed a fair amount of clichéd phrases as I was told to take the boxes out of my CV formatting because “Ms Havisham cannot be boxed in!” but the thing is that they actually worked. Temporarily, this woman had actually made me enthusiastic about the Real World. And so, perhaps was a certain amount of truth in her revelation:

My pit may come pre-supplied with wireless, but job prospects it does not.