Blog Tired

Excuse me… have you got two minutes?

Standing on the corner by my local station, clutching a branded t-shirt and raincoat, I look sadly at my new ID badge. My laminated face pleads back at me, a forced grin betraying my discomfort through the murky pixels. They’ve spelt my name correctly and everything seems to be in order. Unless I can find another job in the next four minutes, this is me. Trained and equipped, I am a short tube ride away from being a charity mugger. I honestly could cry.

This could be me

A few weeks ago, my financial circumstances hit a rock. I needed something, anything, that I could sustain and count upon for regular income – even a crappy one – until the real jobs came up. With a number of applications pending for genuinely challenging and interesting jobs, I grabbed a local paper and circled everything else.

Frantically calling round, I spoke to a recruiter who booked me an interview for what she called ’street fundraising’ but what everyone else calls ‘annoying strangers’. I can’t explain why I find it so abhorrent but I do. Maybe I’m being unfair, but any time it’s been directed at me, I’ve never found it to be anything less than emotional blackmail.

But good jobs fell through and mediocre ones were postponed. With chugging lying at the bottom of the pit, I watched my safety nets disintegrate as I plummeted towards its dank security, swallowing my pride and landing in a training room populated primarily with university students – all charming and fascinating people with a variety of careers ahead of them, but painfully obvious I wasn’t part of the usual demographic. Still, I needed the work, so I took notes and nodded along to a tone of voice I had not received since I left school twelve years ago.

Seriously, any other job will do

And so, after a day and a half’s training, I find myself standing here, constructing a smile for my new team leader as she stands cheerfully beside me, keen to get her new recruits out onto the street. She sips tea from a paper cup and I can’t help but like her. She’s a positive person and I have no doubt that she believes in her work and does it well. It just hurts me to join her on this quest because it’s not me. I am already in the midst of several other quests and I have to bury my sadness and disappointment just to remain standing here. I feel like a bad person, but I’m really not up for this.

I prop up my regulation umbrella by the wall and check my phone again. Nothing. Earlier in the day, I had spoken to a former employer who had tentatively offered me a few weeks’ work. A potential lifeline but the manager is away tomorrow and if I can’t get hold of her before that cup of tea is finished, I’m out of here and doing this for the rest of the week – Old Street today, Brixton tomorrow, Wembley the following day, and on and on. I can’t bear it.

I sneak off and make a quick call, to the person I’d rather be working for. Her assistant picks up. I rattle off my situation quickly and ask him if I can start this week. I tell him I’ll walk away from this job right now if he can guarantee me a start this week. He says he’ll see what I can do. I hope he hurries.

I am actually jealous of her job

My fearless leader works on her tea, its dark horizon descending like the sands of time with each sip. The final gulp will have me on the southbound line, six stops from being the person on the street that you most want to avoid. Excuse me… have you got two minutes?

I go back over the day’s training in my mind. I’ve learned enough about my allotted charity to rattle off a loosely rehearsed spiel. I might need it. I imagine bumping into any one of a number of friends who work in that area, and ducking into an alleyway. Is it really that embarrassing to bolster a charity’s membership? Yes. Yes, it is.

And then a glimmer of hope as that familiar beep-beep vibrates in my pocket. A little bump of adrenalin. I hope it’s not my bank, or my phone company. I slide the phone out of my pocket, unlock it, hit ‘read’. Praise the fates, for I am rescued.

The next hour is a giddy blur in my memory. I explain to Chirpy McTea that I need to leave, thank her for her time, and wish the rest of the team all the best, before heading back to HQ to hand in my badge and brolly. One of the trainers makes a joke about me breaking the record for the shortest ever career with their agency. I know he’s exaggerating because one of the other recruits already left yesterday. I thank them all again and bounce home to my enormous personal to-do list, still uncertain, and yet so relieved. All I can think is “I don’t have to do it, I don’t have to do it, I don’t have to do it”.

This is what it looked like when I quit

Now that it’s no longer looming over me, I can look back at it with a different perspective. I’ve always avoided street fundraisers, convinced I’ll donate on my own terms, and not on theirs. That’s bollocks though. I’ve never made anything more than sporadic donations… and yet some of these charities rely on regular donors for 50% of their income and street fundraising is, after television advertising, the most effective form of gathering donations. ‘I can’t afford it’, and ‘I’ll do it online’ are the most popular excuses but please hold me to this: when I can afford it, I will do it online. I feel like I owe them.

OK, now you can cross the street. Thanks for your time.

Tags: charity, quitting, tea, work

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.