Start Again

Introduction

How many times do we start again, and it is the same as last time but different?

We go to sleep at night and wake up each morning, and often follow the same routines.

Remember the Gulf Wars, I remember watching a Bill Hicks routine during the second Gulf War, same antagonists, same reasons, and the president was George Bush (father than son) but Bill Died of Pancreatic Cancer in 1993 and this still resonated in 2003 and does today:

But this is just a precursor to my story, which is about something that may have happened to all of us and certainly has happened to me.

Starting a New Job!!

I have lost count of the number of times I have done this, and I know this is meant to be fiction, so although I am entering it in the challenge, I know it won't be considered because it is about my observations extrapolated from the many times I have done the second first time starting a new job.

A new job usually starts with a prepared interview to sell yourself to your potential employer. You have to make them believe in you, but more than that, you have to believe in yourself. I have applied for jobs that I didn't have the right experiences for, but researched them and convinced the interviewers that I was the right fit' and if they took me, I always hit the ground running.

But getting the job is just the start.

Then you have to find how you will commute to your job (in the last millennium, homeworking was not a thing for me). At first, it was by car, but I only had my own parking space in my first two jobs

The next thing is that you are given a place to do your job, and for me, that is usually a desk. This is the same time after time, and when you first start work, you do not realise that you may have to do this many times, although to tell the truth, I have only had three jobs over the last thirty five years. Before that, I lost count, but probably around twenty because I did a lot of contracting.

Then once you are there, you have to find your way around your building, or buildings. My first job was in a fairly small office, but my second was a much larger building, an old cotton warehouse, and although I worked as a computer operator in the computer room on the first floor, I still had a job of distributing printed paper reports to various sections of the building s that was a lot of learning that my first job did not prepare me fore.

So every "second first time", you have to learn lots of things that you have never done before, and very often that puts people off looking for a new job unless they absolutely have to.

Sometimes you don't have a choice. I have been made redundant three times (and collected a decent severance payment) and have only been sacked once from a contract (but that section had a 95% staff turnover in the six months I was there).

Then the next thing is to meet the people you are going to be working with, and I have had the good fortune to meet with some amazing people, often resulting in lifetime friendships. I've also had to deal with bullies, incompetents and liars, but that is life.

I have even pushed for the sacking of several charlatans who managed to get jobs as contractors.

More importantly, I have met some amazing managers, peers and great teachers who have given me the tools to find my way in the world of employment.

So this is observational rather than fictional, but thank you so much for reading.