Application

I’m still at it. I feel as though I have written out about a million of the damn things, but when Jack’s friend asked me over dinner how many job applications I’d made, I realised the sad truth,
“Oooh, er, loads. That is, um, not including the two where I missed the deadline… um… three.”
“Three?”
“Three.”

I munched on my jacket potato feeling slightly embarrassed. Three job applications? Is this the behaviour of someone who has no source of income AT ALL after her current job ends on the 24th July? Is this the behaviour of someone who went into her bank today ready to offer sexual favours to the poor guy behind the desk if only he would agree not to reduce her overdraft? (He did it anyway. Luckily.)

No. This is not. This is the behaviour either of someone stupid, or someone with a good private income. And I am definitely not the latter, and refuse to be the former.

The thing is… I just don’t like filling out job applications. I don’t like anything about it. I don’t like agonising over choice of words (when is formal too formal? When is casual sparky and surprising and when is it irritating?). I don’t like the questions. I don’t like spending my evenings in front of the computer when I’ve already spent all day there.

And perhaps most of all, in my most British way, I don’t like the sheer vulgarity of the dramatic self-belief you have to demonstrate on application forms.

Tell us why you would be good for this role.
(Job application self):I am, goddammit, just a plain all-round excellent person. I am dedicated, I am organised. I have a long list of worthy, charitable and self-improving personal interests. I am strong. I am hard-working. I am clever. I am….

(Real self):Who, me? Oh. I’m not sure I would be any good at this job, actually. Better find someone else. You wouldn’t want to employ me. Just the other day found me weeping in the kitchen at work because of some problems that were wholly surmountable, although they didn’t seem that way at the time. I tremble at my Inbox in case anyone has said anything nasty. I wobble under pressure. I bitch when people don’t agree with me. I don’t plan ahead. Don’t employ me. Your company might not survive.

I just can’t help it. Call it a cultural thing if you will, but I was brought up to hide my light under a bushel, to never sing my own praises, and determined that I would squash any trumpet of mine rather than blow on it even faintly. Especially not to a stranger. Particularly not in print. I’m sorry to offend my American readers, but I have to say that to the discerning Brit there is something rather distastefully American about inflated self-belief, and something reassuringly, rainingly, greyly, fish-and-chip-ly British about under-statement, and self-deprecation. You have to understand that I come from a family where on my graduation day, my father said, “I’m proud of you” and while I was very pleased and proud of myself because he’d never said it before… I also didn’t really know where to look after this emotional outpouring of personal feeling. It was a bit embarrassing. We haven’t mentioned it since.

Perhaps it’s not about nationality. Perhaps it’s about gender. I do get annoyed when men use the style of speaking that my friend rather hilariously calls, ‘getting their dick out and waving it around’.I do get frustrated when men with ponderous, wise, considered, informed tones start talking rubbish at great length. I particularly get annoyed with them and myself when they are talking about things that I am well informed about and they are not. I know I shouldn’t let myself be intimidated by these people. But I often am.

And the feminist in me WILL NOT let myself be shunted into some rubbish job in London. If I have a bad first job, it’ll be a stepping stone, a planned move, the first steps on a decided career-path. I will not end up as some fat old man’s PA. (unless the man in question is likely to pop his clogs, leaving me as the only one who can take over the whole company…. 😉

And so. I find myself here. Writing on Open Diary as a means of distracting myself from the awful process of spending another couple of hours decidedly, with intent, with ego and with … dare I say it… pride writing about exactly what it is that makes therumtumtugger more organised, dedicated, efficient, intelligent and sheer damn-it-all brilliant than the next application form.

I’ll let you know how I get on.
RTT
xxx