I am a firm believer in "everything happens for a reason", but sometimes I do just want to shake my fists at the universe and shout..."well what the fuck was this for? Was I a toilet brush in a past life!!!"
I genuinely sympathize with anyone trying to get a solid 30h+ job in this day and age. I have a 20h a week job in a certain high street retail chain, and I love my job, but this time of year overtime is hard to get as all the uni and collage kids are out stealing it all. But my husband has been in retail and then hospitality for as long as I've known him. He's always worked 30-40h a week without question....until recently.
He was a Duty Manager at a bar in a local Hotel. Really nice people, great job, but career advancements weren't quite as fast paced as he wanted so when he was offered the role as Manager of a bar he leapt at the chance, and left his secure job to go and work for a much smaller pub, but it'd be his own place to manage, and much better pay for the hours.
He was originally hired with the pretense that he'd be replacing their current manager as she was terrible and they wanted to fire her. That didn't happen at all. Despite multiple complaints against her too. He was there for his 3 week trial, during this time the 'woman' that he was supposed to be replacing had began what we have worked out was her usual torrent of abuse to a new member of staff (this place has had more people leave than I've had hot dinners and we figure she is why) and he made a formal complaint about her after he started suffering with anxiety at just the thought of working with her. That's pretty much as far as it went. And it turned out after the 3 week trial they just wanted him as a general dogsbody. A barman. No set salary, no set working hours...Not slating barmen, it's a hard job, he's done it for years, but when you've worked your way up to manager you don't want to take that much of a step backwards, and why should you! So he left. But trying to find any job over 30 hours or that isn't a zero hour contract seems to be impossible around here. I truly think they don't realize how much it costs to run a house here in the UK. We have no savings left as we didn't have much in the first place and we used what we did have while he was transitioning over into his "new" job.
He has got himself another new job within 9 days but its only 14h a week and the pay alone wouldn't even cover one months rent. It's going to be tough. It already is tough. When you include rent, gas, electric, council tax, water rates, internet, tv licence, feeding the pets...feeding ourselves, plus debts were still paying off from years ago...it's all too much and can so easily snowball out of control. We will never, EVER be in the financial situation where we could get a mortgage or a business loan to open our own bar/pub. Our credit history is just appalling, and then in times like this when you get into arrears again it just affects it more.
We've already been arguing. Money is the ultimate stress maker. I hate it as much as I love what it can do for a person, the lack of it can royally screw up your life in a very short space of time. And I find myself getting annoyed with myself as I struggle with my various health issues, I wish I could push myself to find a job with more hours, or that my back problems and my mental health would allow me to work more hours, regularly without breaking myself. But i'm finding even doing extra overtime at the moment is making me feel broken and fragile mentally and physically. It's a terrible horrifying thought that we just exist to exchange hours of our lives to make money, to pay bills for things we don't inherently need to survive and live on this planet...yet here we are...little hamsters in our wheels turning the cogs on the industry. Our reward...4 weeks holiday a year, food money. bills to pay...and then retirement money...that you should have saved up yourself as there is no retirement/state funded pensions anymore.
I'm going to have to work until i'm dead just to be able to eat.
I do feel sometimes that if you have a disability or a mental health issue they just like to brush you off and ignore you until you break and remove yourself as a problem to them... and by "they" I mean any government body that's supposed to be there to help you financially and medically. But this is probably the defeatist in me coming out because of recent events and lack of help out there for people who have worked most of their lives who are having a bit of trouble...there is NO HELP.
I GIVE UP.
Side note; I'm also a tad proud of myself that given my list of disabilities from such a young age I do hold down a job and get up and go and do things. I know some people aren't able to do as many things as I can who suffer with similar issues and worse. So I do feel fortunate. It's just really hard sometimes to pretend to be fully functioning human being when really you're lucky your broken shell and mind can even roll you out of bed in the morning.
