A brisk walk in the morning to get the blood pumping is exactly what the doctor might order, and this is where I find myself this morning.
I’ve been free and available for most of the day for several weeks now, trying to fill my time, and apply for as many opportunities as possible. The building’s exterior is late 19th, early 20th century but brutal. A large, brick warehouse, with two entrances labelled. I walk to the first entrance. No signage tells me this entrance is out of use, but the door doesn’t open, so I proceed to the second entrance.
The door opens to an inner door that leads to a reception area. Security asks my name to check me into the building. I am instructed that the lift is not for me, something that MPs have already called unacceptable, and my appointment is on the third floor of the building, so off I go. The toilets are for staff only and I’m informed when I ask where I can go that the Tommy Tucker pub around the corner is the designated spot if I want to relieve myself. I’m in the building for around an hour and fifteen minutes total, and when I get out, I am keen to fill the cool air, get a drink of water and use the facilities as soon as possible. I rush into the nearby shopping centre, where the Underground will take me to my next job search opportunity, where I can finally release my bladder. And then I can breathe.
This is the hostile environment that is the DWPs Jobcentre Plus. If Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall want to get people back to work or into work, there has to be a reality check somewhere. This means meaningful employment. Being unemployed or not fit for work should not be a badge that is worn with shame and this does not mean that I am proud of my current situation. I just haven’t found a fit yet that is right for both parties. The assumption should not be that we are workshy or that we need to be coaxed. As people and prospective workers, we have interests that fuel routines in our life. Because I can, I might go to bed at 2am this morning, in order to do the applications I need to do and in order to debrief from the busy day of job searching I have had already. I then get up at 9:30 and start again, with the first app I open in the morning being LinkedIn.
On average, I spend 9 hours per day looking for work- well over the 35 hours per week I am expected to look for work by the jobcentre. How this is quantified I will never know, as there is no requirement to submit a timesheet, just to list the roles you have applied for. Does some poor sod at the DWP have to sift through the applications I’ve made on the system, and if this is the case, is there a check that these applications are genuine? I am not a bad actor, but what hypothetically is to stop me from being one? This is the idea that Liz Kendall nor any other minister within Keir Starmer’s government can prevent. The job-search continues, sifting through jobs that LinkedIn has deemed of use to me that may well be non-existent, and reaching out to mutual connections, and connections of mutual connections who might be of value to my job-searching efforts. It’s also key to understand the rise of bullshit jobs. Jobs like Content Creator being advertised across the board can’t all be relevant. Even if you do it yourself, it mostly can’t be a business.
The rest is spent on developing skills, and doing the daily tasks that need to be done. Skills I have developed so far include vector design and web development, and I’ve been honing these skills for a fair period of time, as job satisfaction matters, and whilst my old job served its purpose, it was a temporary apprenticeship contract and not what I thought I was signing up to. This was because of the way it was sold, as a path to potentially doing a PGCE. Still, once I got six months in to my job contract, it was something I knew I wanted to stick out to the end to say I’ve done it. This feeling was partially born out from the woefully inadequate amount of people who saw through apprenticeships in the first place.
I wasn’t alone in finding the process extremely laborious, the keeping of meticulous timesheets on activities I have undertaken in addition to my working hours dedicated to my qualification. 7.2 hours a week must be dedicated exclusively to your apprenticeship. These hours were labelled as off the job, except they’re anything but. The apprenticeship also taught me an awful lot, and I can use this when pursuing the jobcentre, but why do we make the job search so fiendishly unwelcoming and hostile in the first place? The competition element aside, I put it down to the change of communication in the workplace, how we perceive work as a society, and the rise in useless jobs. Living to work rather than working to live is something I desperately want for myself. Will it ever happen? I don’t know, but perhaps this is something that Liz Kendall should ensure the DWP becomes.
